Choice in Minnesota

Through the streets of Rochester, Minn, to the jampacked Mayo Civic Auditorium rolled an eight-car motorcade and four-piece band complete with a noisy sousaphone. It was Minnesota's Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party convention, and for the first time in years there were signs of polite dissension inside U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey's and Governor Orville Freeman's tight-knit organization as the D.F.L. settled back to choose a candidate to run for Eisenhower Republican Ed Thye's Senate seat. The contenders: St. Paul's Eugene McCarthy, 42, onetime St. John's University economics and education professor and five-term Congressman with one of the most liberal voting records in the House; Red Wing's Mrs. Eugenie Anderson, 49, Harry Truman's Ambassador to Denmark, who had campaigned hard through the state by 1953 Oldsmobile to overtake Gene McCarthy's early lead.

This year the value of the D.F.L. endorsement for U.S. Senator was unusually high. The recession was hitting diversified Minnesota later than the rest of the nation and the D.F.L.'s labor support was vigorous and active. Despite the farm upturn, the D.F.L. was heartened by an increase in National Farmers Union membership since 1956 from 35,000 to 41,000 families. Beyond that, the D.F.L. Senate ticket would be helped mightily by the fact that popular Governor Orville Freeman, running for his third term, is considered such a lead-pipe cinch that the leadership-starved Minnesota Republicans have yet to find a man who will launch a campaign against him.

At week's end, with Humphrey and Freeman looking on benignly, the convention gave the plum to Congressman Gene McCarthy by 615.5 to 278.5 on the second ballot.

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