Mandate for Moderation

The two candidates who crisscrossed North Carolina from the Tennessee border to the Atlantic in pursuit of the Democratic nomination for Governor were at opposite poles on the issue of race relations. Stocky former State Senator Terry Sanford, 42, had led a field of four in the first primary last month by soft-pedaling his own segregationist sympathies, pushing instead an ambitious program of building schools and luring industry. His runoff opponent, Dr. I. (for Isaac) Beverly Lake, 53, ex-professor of law at Wake Forest College, fired up rebel-yelling segregationist rallies by damning North Carolina's token school integration, promised to "create a climate of public opinion in strong opposition to integration" and draw closer to the diehard Deep South.

Last week North Carolina's voters held to their traditionally independent path, gave Sanford a 77,000-plus majority and a clear mandate for moderation as the state's next Governor. Sanford, manager of the late, liberal Senator Kerr Scott's successful campaign in 1954, had painstakingly built the smoothest county-by-county organization seen in three decades. Endorsed by most of the state's newspapers, he appealed to city folk and labor unions as a protector of the public schools ("We need massive intelligence, not massive resistance"), attracted Piedmont bankers and textile manufacturers with his go-getting industrial program, got overwhelming support from North Carolina's 160,000 Negro voters.

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