Victory by Organization

Hours before the newspapers were ready to concede anything, Minnesota's )ouncy senior Democratic Senator, Hubert Horatio Humphrey strode into the headquarters of the Democratic-Farmer- Labor Party in Minneapolis to congratulate Five-Term Congressman Eugene McCarthy for winning Minnesota's second senate seat. Humphrey knew his voters; as the hours rolled by, McCarthy rolled to a 70,000 margin victory over Stassenite Republican Ed Thye, and the D.F.L.'s popular Governor, Orville Freeman, roared to re-election by 161,000 votes for a third term. Long before dawn it was clear that for the first time since the Depression, Minnesota's three top offices were in the hands of Democrats: Humphrey, 47, Freeman, 40, and McCarthy, 42.

How They Planned. Of all last week's Democratic victories, the Minnesota win was the surest payoff of painstaking party organization, of long-range planning, of relentless year-round politicking and careful selection of candidates.

When Humphrey, a druggist's son who learned his economics and his liberalism in South Dakota's dust bowl, pulled debilitated Democrats and Farmer-Laborites into the D.F.L. in 1944, Stassenite Republicans held all of Minnesota's top offices. The D.F.L. took a stand on a coalition platform of "sincere liberalism" that ranged (and still ranges) from high, rigid price supports for farmers to high unemployment insurance for labor, etc. Humphrey tramped the University of Minnesota, Rochester's Mayo Clinic, even high schools, recruited promising young liberals, put them to work in the tightly disciplined D.F.L. organizations and marked the comers as future candidates. Humphrey was elected to the Senate in 1948; Sidekick Orville Freeman won the governorship in 1954.

How They Won. Characteristically, the D.F.L.'s detail planning for Gene McCarthy's victory began last May. The problem: Republican Senator Thye, 62, two-term Eisenhower Republican incumbent, had a great personal following of fellow Scandinavians, fellow Lutherans, fellow farmers; the D.F.L.'s challenger Gene McCarthy, onetime St. John's University economics professor and ten-year Congressman, was 1) a Catholic, and 2) an all-too-arch egghead type from St. Paul who might just get massacred by Ed Thye in the farm counties. The D.F.L. decided that folksy Governor Freeman, a lead-pipe cinch for reelection, would give up some of his anticipated 200,000 majority to concentrate on working for Gene McCarthy in what Master Planner Humphrey called "a unified campaign." Specifically theD.FL.: P: Ignored the political rule that candidates traveling and handshaking separately get more crowd exposure, sent Freeman and/or Humphrey handshaking in tandem with quick-to-learn Gene McCarthy. P: Refined a technique of farmers' socials, got local D.F.L. farm contacts to invite neighbors for coffee and ice cream, drew 100-or-so hard-to-reach farmers at a time to shake friendly Humphrey-Freeman- McCarthy hands and hear out criticisms of Republican Ezra Benson (but rarely of respected Ed Thye) in one sitting. P: Put on new-style women's tours in which the wives--Muriel Humphrey, Jane Freeman and Abigail McCarthy, old friends, old political pros--went on two-to-three-day outstate swings, shook more hands, won women's votes. P: Backed up the campaign teams by unifying all campaign staffs, coordinating congressional candidates and county chairmen, setting up adjoining headquarters in St. Paul's dingy Capri Hotel, unifying all funds, spending wherever needed.

How They Dream. No sooner had the victory vote been wrapped up than the D.F.L. started work for 1960--when Humphrey himself is up for re-election and is also an offbeat Democratic presidential possibility. There were lessons to be learned from the D.F.L.'s 1958 failures --failure to hold freewheeling Coya Knutson's Ninth District and need to develop a vigorous young replacement who would measure up to the D.F.L.'s home-loving and service-to-constituents standards. The D.F.L. was quick to recognize a new problem: in 1958 the long-moribund state G.O.P. developed some new county chairmen, new candidates, held two congressional seats the D.F.L. had fought hard for, held the state senate. Moreover, maverick-minded Minnesotans do not like one party to get too powerful whether Stassenite in the 1940s or D.F.L. in the 1950s.

But this kind of situation is D.F.L.'s meat. According to Humphrey's favorite maxim: "Power goes to those who seek it." And by defining "seek" to mean the kind of hard work that Republicans dislike, D.F.L. thinks it has the key to power in Minnesota for at least a decade.

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