New Face in Wisconsin

Almost to its own surprise, Wisconsin's G.O.P. state convention papered over its perennial Old Guard v. Ikeman feuding in Milwaukee, settled last week on a promising new "unity candidate" to run for Democrat Bill Proxmire's U.S. Senate seat in November. The convention endorsed former State Supreme Court Justice Roland Joseph Steinle, 62, a burly (6 ft. 238 Ibs.) stemwinder with a cheesemaker's handshake who calls himself neither radical nor conservative. Steinle's prime asset : as a supreme court justice he was not involved in last year's bitter seven-man G.O.P. Senate primary in which the Old Guard lost out to Ikeman and former Governor Walter Jodok Kohler, then stayed home in strength while Kohler lost the election to hard-campaigning, Fair-Dealing Bill Proxmire.

Although Steinle still has an uphill battle, his least expected asset for November is that it is now the Democrats who are plagued with faction fights and feuds. Last fortnight State Senator Gaylord Nelson, Democratic candidate for Governor against hard-to-beat G.O.P. incumbent Governor Vernon Thomson, launched a crunching head-on attack against Ticket-Mate Bill Proxmire. Reason: Proxmire invited Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson to speak at Milwaukee's Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on May 17, and even though Johnson could not come, Nelson took after him as the spokesman for Texas oil interests inimical to Wisconsin liberalism. Beyond that, Proxmire is losing the devotion of many fundamentally conservative Wisconsin independents for his high-spending recommendations in the Senate.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.