Veteran's Viciory

Because the state constitution forbids them to succeed themselves. South Carolina's Governors usually spend the latter part of their four-year term looking around for a new job. Embarking on just such a search in 1944, Governor Olin Dewitt Johnston, then 47. combined youthful vigor and a slashing attack to unseat Senator "Cotton Ed" Smith, a scarred old veteran who broke all existing records for Senate longevity.--This year, at 65 a veteran of more than 17 years in the Senate, Olin Johnston knew how Cotton Ed must have felt. Opposing him in the state's Democratic primary was handsome Governor Ernest F. Rollings. 40. with a record as a strong vote getter. South Carolinians looked for a heated, down-to-the-wire horse race.

It turned out to be nothing of the sort.

Last week Johnston soundly thrashed his youthful rival in the primary, winning 65% of the 300,000 votes cast and all but one of the state's 46 counties. "I thought." said a crestfallen Rollings after walking alone through the night to concede personally to Johnston, "that I'd run you a better race."

Like Measles. Both Rollings and Johnston supported Kennedy in 1960, and both are avowed segregationists. But their political similarities end there. Rollings pledged during his campaign to adopt a conservative approach that would have put him at odds with Kennedy on various issues; he flayed Johnston for submitting to "the hierarchy of the northern labor bosses." charged him with supporting "radical leftwing" elements. Ignoring most of Rollings' charges. Johnston stressed his record in helping labor and agriculture, promised to back such Kennedy programs as medical care for the" aged under social security, took a generally liberal line on everything but segregation.

Rollings simply failed to overcome a Johnston image that has been nurtured in ten statewide races since 1930 and solidified by his powerful position in the Senate. Johnston is chairman of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, vice chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a member of the Democratic Steering Committee. A neat and frugal man who washes his own socks every night and sews on his own buttons, Johnston has the reputation of getting what he wants for South Carolina. Since the Kennedy Administration came into office, he has secured contracts for about 40 new post offices in the state. Moaned a Rollings supporter: "They're springing up like measles."

Serious Candidate. In South Carolina, where a victory in the Democratic primary is almost the same as election, the Republicans have put up a serious Senate candidate for the first time since Reconstruction. Running against Johnston will be William D. Workman Jr.. 47, a segregationist and former reporter (he still writes a syndicated column) who joined the Republican Party only last fall.

Workman plans to appeal to both conservative Democrats and Republicans with a platform attacking "the welfare state, the diminution of local government and the grab for power in Washington." But Johnston does not seem worried. "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it." he says, "but I think I'll have a good strong bridge to go across. I'm not fearin' it very much."

# Smith spent nearly 36 years in what he called ''The Cave of the Winds," dazzling his colleagues with his overblown oratory and the voters back home with a simple platform that promised to keep i) Negroes down and 2 ) the price of cotton up. He punctuated his Senate speeches with "pings" at a spittoon ten feet away (or. if it was not there, at the Senate carpet), often rose to his feet in the Senate in a fit of temper, hacked petulantly on the arm of his chair with a penknife if he could not get the presiding officer's attention. He defeated Johnston in Johnston's first try for the Senate, died in 1944 before he could finish his lame-duck term.

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