Kansas' Hopeful

Clyde Martin Reed Jr., 44, seemed shy and diffident to Kansas Republicans who remembered his outgoing and handsome father, the late crusading editor (Parsons Sun), able Governor (1929-31) and well-known U.S. Senator (1939-49). But Junior, now the Sun's publisher, did his best. He took a public-speaking course, worked so hard for the Republican nomination for Governor that he got home only six nights in the last three months of the campaign, traveled 30,000 miles and walked two pairs of soles off his shoes. Last week, by a vote of 147,438 to 35,085, he walloped one-term (1954-57) Governor Fred Hall, who had thoroughly split the party in 1956 to lose his second-term bid to Democrat George Docking.

Reed's huge majority welded the Kansas Republican Party together in a way to threaten, for the first time, Democrat Docking's hope of becoming Kansas' first two-term Democratic Governor in November. The last three Democratic Governors in orthodox Republican Kansas, recalled Clyde Reed, from lessons learned at his daddy's knee, were beaten by Republicans from his area. One of them by his own father.

Kansas' former State Democratic Chairman, Marvin A. ("Mike") Harder, 36, professor of political science at the Municipal University of Wichita, last week lost his own precinct committeeman's seat to Donald E. Anderson, 23. Winner Anderson's oddest qualification: he earned his political science degree last June after racking up a high grade in the political parties course taught by Professor Harder.

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