BATTLE FOR THE SENATE

Republicans Can Gain but Cannot Win Control

Although 34 U.S. Senators will be elected next month,* the Democrats are certain to retain control of the Senate for at least two years. It is mathematically possible but politically inconceivable for the G.O.P. to take over. Ten of the Senate seats are Southern and automatically Democratic (Georgia's Richard Russell and South Carolina's Strom Thurmond are running unopposed). In six other states--Alaska, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma--the Democratic candidates are so far ahead that only a Nixon landslide could beat them. The Republicans are shoo-in favorites in two states-- New Hampshire and Nebraska. The real fights are for these 16 slots:

Colorado. Republican Gordon Allott, the incumbent, walks the sidewalks with his right hand at the alert for every passerby. His Democratic opponent, chunky Lieutenant Governor Robert Knous, son of a former Governor and federal judge, is campaigning strenuously on a far-out liberal platform. Allott holds a breathless lead, but the race is wide open, could be decided by the Nixon-Kennedy results.

Delaware. Political touts size up the race between Incumbent J. Allen Frear Jr., conservative Democrat, and Governor Caleb Boggs, moderate Republican, as fifty-fifty, although a successful Democratic registration drive has the G.O.P. worried.

Idaho. Republican Henry Dworshak is almost home free for a fourth election, but Democrats cling to a slim hope that Bob McLaughlin, their attractive, aggressive young candidate, may yet turn out to be a sleeper.

Kansas. White-thatched Andy Schoeppel, 65, seeking his third Senate term, has backslapped his way through the state to hold an edge over Frank Theis, 49, a humorless lawyer and a Democratic Party bigwig. Despite a lackluster record, Schoeppel has a way with Kansas voters ("He just looks like a Senator").

Kentucky. In a dark and bloody ground of national political contention, Kentuckians are paying much more attention to the presidential race than to their own drab Senate campaign between Incumbent John Sherman Cooper and former Governor Keen Johnson. Able Republican Cooper, onetime U.S. Ambassador to India, is probably more liberal than his challenger. Johnson, a prominent businessman (vice president of Reynolds Metals), is locally famed for his frugality: as Governor (1939-43), he ran a tight treasury, spent less than the legislature allotted, liquidated the state debt and ran up a surplus of $10 million. Cooper is ahead.

Maine. The Democrats lead in every major event but the all-girl Senate race. Incumbent Margaret Chase Smith has come up fast, with a ladylike, personal-touch campaign, is outdistancing her Democratic rival, Lucia Cormier (TIME cover, Sept. 5), who sticks stolidly to peace and security, aid to education and other national issues.

Massachusetts. Like a homely Yankee trader, Republican Leverett Saltonstall is stumping the state in his five-year-old Mercury, meeting the people on a personal level ("You lost many Dutch elms?"), bridging his eloquence gap with a powerful homespun personality and the constant reminder of past favors. At the Andover town hall, a man nudged him, beaming: "You got my boy in Annapolis." At a Lawrence electronics factory, a foreman observed: "Eighty percent of the people in the plant are Democrats. Most of us will vote for Salty. It means jobs, you know."

Tom O'Connor, the wiry young mayor of Springfield who upset favored Foster Furcolo to win the Democratic nomination (TIME, Sept. 26), is breathing hard on Salty's neck. With the endorsement of Kennedy, he whirls through a daily round of "Teas for Tom," banquets, speeches, rallies, living on one meal and 20 cups of coffee a day. Said he truthfully: "I'm definitely the underdog."

Michigan. Six months ago Senator Pat McNamara was a runaway favorite to win reelection, but Republican Congressman Alvin Bentley, campaigning diligently, has been so successful that local Republicans are watching the race with new hope. McNamara, a onetime president of the Detroit Pipefitters Union, has the backing of the old-line A.F.L. and Walter Reuther's United Auto Workers. He is a deplorable mumbler on the speakers' rostrum and a delightful mixer at voters' gatherings, has been taking great pains to demonstrate his good health (he was operated on for cancer last July), appearing without a topcoat in the chilly Upper Peninsula. Conservative Multimillionaire Bentley, proud of his backing for the late Joe McCarthy, has made sizable inroads on the ethnic vote (he has learned to speak passable Polish and Magyar, has won the endorsement of the normally Democratic Polish-American Congress). He wades recklessly into sticky subjects, bluntly brought up the question of McNamara's health and charged Jack Kennedy with deliberately fanning the religious issue in order to woo Catholics. Jews and other minorities. Bentley is a bit of a grandstander, still displays the riddled wallet he carried when he was badly wounded during the 1954 shoot-'em-up in the House chamber by three Puerto Ricans. McNamara retains a lead, based on his huge majorities in Wayne County (Detroit), but Bentley is gaining.

Missouri. Lieutenant Governor Ed Long stepped into a Democratic brawl when he was nominated to succeed the late Tom Hennings. A farmer-banker-lawyer from Pike County, he wears sharp-lapelled country-boy suits, is an ineffective speaker but an able public servant. His Republican adversary, St. Louis Lawyer Lon Hocker, is a better performer but short on campaign funds. The Democratic strife has cooled off, and with a fat campaign purse and a pulsating party machine behind him, Long is the favorite of the political morning line.

New Jersey. The voters have a choice between two able, liberal intellectuals, the Republican incumbent, Clifford Case, and Democratic Kingmaker Thorn Lord (full name: Balfour Bowen Thorn Lord). A big-time lawyer, Lord works in Trenton, lords it over a claque of intellectuals at home in Princeton. No mere egghead, he is a shrewd politician who rebuilt the Democratic Party statewide after the collapse of Jersey City's Boss Hague, was one of the earliest advocates of all-out registration drives. After Lord masterminded Bob Meyner's rise to the governor's mansion, the awed northern Jersey bosses acknowledged his political genius.

Case, having overcome rebellion of the G.O.P. right wing in last April's primary, is like Lord waging a cultured above-it-all campaign. Physically, he is much more attractive than the high-domed and weathered Thorn Lord, but he faces many pitfalls: resurgent Democrats, a large Catholic, pro-Kennedy vote, simmering revolt in the local G.O.P., rising unemployment. He barely mentions Dick Nixon in his campaigning.

New Mexico. Democrat Clinton Presba Anderson, 64, seeking his third term, has borrowed the "experience" line from the Republicans (his campaign slogan: "Succeed with Seniority"), is carefully sidestepping the intense, local Democratic squabbles. His conservative opponent, William Frank Colwes (pronounced Call-wes), is tall (6 ft. 4 in.), grey and handsome, a civic leader and onetime Pontiac dealer who is scarcely known outside of Santa Fe, given little chance of upsetting Old Pol Clint Anderson.

Oregon. Onetime State Representative Maurine Neuberger is the favorite to succeed her late husband, Dick Neuberger, in the Senate, although irascible Democratic Senator Wayne Morse, who has long feuded with the Neubergers, is giving her minimal help. Her Republican opponent, ex-Governor Elmo Smith, is neither as well publicized nor as supercharged with corny slogans ("Join the Maurine Corps").

Rhode Island. The surprise primary victory of Democrat Claiborne deBorda Pell (TIME, Oct. 10) upset the campaign plans of Raoul Archambault Jr., who thought he would be running against one of two old-line Democrats: former Governor Dennis Roberts or former U.S. Attorney General J. Howard McGrath. Archambault, a conservative's conservative, has shifted to a frontal assault on Democratic spending. A strong Democratic trend, a big Catholic vote and the proximity of New Englander Kennedy should put Pell over.

South Dakota. For the first time in generations South Dakotans have a clear-cut choice between a genuine conservative, folksy Karl Mundt, 60, the Republican defender, and a purebred liberal, Congressman George McGovern, 38, the Democratic challenger. Mundt is running for an unprecedented (for South Dakota) third term, stressing his seniority and experience and the Nixon-Lodge capability for "handling the Russians." He has repudiated Ezra Benson. McGovern, a deceptively soft-talking former history professor (and World War II 6-24 pilot with D.F.C., the air medal and three oakleaf clusters), offers his own farm program, attacks Mundt for his position on rural electrification, and even reminds him of his vote against the fortification of Guam before Pearl Harbor. Methodist McGovern's early edge has washed away in the religion reaction against Kennedy. It will be close.

West Virginia. In 1956 Republican Cecil Underwood, then 34, was elected Governor and thereupon became the pride of the Young Republicans. Ruggedly handsome, a fiery speaker and a cool debater. Underwood is campaigning to unseat Incumbent Democratic Senator Jennings Randolph. Using his sex appeal, his flashy oratory and such gimmicks as a helicopter-borne blitzkrieg through West Virginia's barnyards and mountain hamlets, he has won high praise from his audiences. His worst adversary is the state's chronic unemployment and the bleak misery south of the Kanawha River.

The portly, courtly Randolph is a more skillful speaker, with a genial approach, a firm handshake, and a trace of the snake-oil vendor. On the stand he uses his ammunition to the best advantage ("Jack Kennedy, within 90 days after he's elected, will sign the Area Redevelopment bill"). In informal settings, Randolph shines. Stopping at a roadside diner last week for a supper of country ham and redeye gravy, he charmed the proprietor, his son, the waitress and a Republican truck driver, then went to the kitchen for more of the same. With his beguiling ways and the issue of hard times, plus the support of labor, the liberals, and a slice of the business community (which respects him as a longtime official of Capital Airlines). Randolph is forecasting Democratic weather in November.

Wyoming. In a contest created by the retirement of Democrat Joseph O'Mahoney, the Republicans have their best chance of picking up a new seat. Keith Thomson, 41, an aggressive, hard-riding rancher and ultraconservative lawyer, is campaigning effectively against "welfare stateism as opposed to free enterprise." His rival, Raymond Whitaker, also 41, has overcome many of his .starchy, hesitant campaign mannerisms of the past, is plugging hard for federal aid to education. The bookmakers figure that Thomson, who beat Whitaker easily in a 1958 contest for Wyoming's only seat in the House of Representatives, will do it easily again.

* The 34th: a special election in Missouri to fill the vacancy caused by the death last month of Thomas Hennings.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.