Scattered Straws

Even though Maine left them grasping for straws. Republicans found precious few to grasp in the primary election winds that blew in eleven states last week.

In Arizona, Democrat Ernest McFarland, bumped out of the U.S. Senate by Republican Tenderfoot Barry Goldwater in 1952, leaped from Arizona's governorship to the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator by 104,000 to 39,000 over weak opposition--a show of strength that for the first time rated him a chance to beat Goldwater in November.

In Minnesota, stirred by a lively competition between onetime Governor Hjalmar Peterson and Representative Eugene McCarthy for the senatorial nomination, Democrats moved pollwards in impressive hordes, handed McCarthy a rousing majority of 176,000--and some 40,000 more votes than Republican Incumbent Edward Thye rang up in his race for the Republican nomination against two little-known competitors. Consensus for November: Thye will have to hustle to keep his seat. Neither the wraithlike opposition of Marvin A. Evenson, a Moorhead businessman, nor the wrath of her husband Andy, who cried bitterly and vainly for Representative Coya Knutson to come home last May (TIME, May 19), deterred Minnesota's Ninth Congressional District (15 northwest counties) from handing hard-talking Coya another chance--her third --to keep her Democratic seat in the lower House.

In Utah, Incumbent Republican Senator Arthur V. Watkins, 71, easily won renomination over a political nobody, but now faces double trouble. By starting early, indefatigably stumping the state from one end to the other, Salt Lake County Attorney Frank E. Moss, 47, won the Democratic nomination by an unexpectedly heavy vote (total Democratic vote was 5,000 greater than total Republican). And waiting in the wings until November is ex-Governor J. Bracken Lee. Diehard Republican Lee, running as an independent, is not expected to win --but might siphon off enough Republican votes to let Democrat Moss sneak through.

In Washington's seven congressional districts (six of them Republican), Democrats outpolled Republicans by more than 20%--in a state where Democrats historically do better in the general election than in the primary. Shiniest Republican statewide hopeful: Newcomer William B. Bantz, 40, burly, personable former U.S. district attorney from Spokane, his party's nominee to unhorse Democrat Senator Henry M. Jackson. Big Bill campaigned hard for regulation of labor unions ("My stand on labor bosses is damn popular"), polled 136,000 votes, about 100,000 more than anyone expected him to get, set starved Washington Republicans hollering, that Bill Bantz was their white hope for the future. But it looks like a distant future: "Scoop" Jackson, running against admittedly feeble party competition, took every county, grossed 320,000 votes.

In Wisconsin, Democrats for the first time bagged more primary votes than Republicans--50.2% of the total--largely because Republican voters, offered nothing but one-man no-contests, stayed home in droves. In the Senate race, Democrat William Proxmire was easily renominated against indifferent opposition, but Republicans hope to recapture his seat in November with popular Wauwatosa Judge Roland J. Steinle, the Republican nominee who ran unopposed, pulled 5,000 more votes than unpopular Democrat Proxmire.

In Massachusetts, onetime state House Speaker Charles Gibbons, a write-in candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor (to replace Attorney General George Fingold, who died of a heart attack two weeks ago), won it handily. But Gibbons' chances against Democratic Governor Foster Furcolo seem remote. Republican chances to dislodge presidential-minded U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy with hapless Political Patsy Vincent J. Celeste, Boston attorney: less than nil.

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