Wild Cards

They love wild cards in Nevada -- and they've got a whole deckful in this year's game for Governor. Thus, while Incumbent Democrat Grant Sawyer may be the most competent of the lot, he seems about as exciting as a two-eyed jack.

In 1958, making his first try for state wide office, Sawyer won by a surprising 17,000 votes -- which, in Nevada, is a landslide. Since then, he has given the state an efficient, scandal-free administration, tightened control over gambling, attracted light industry. That record should be enough for his election unless one of those wild cards takes the pot.

Three men will oppose Sawyer in next week's Democratic primary:

> Singer-Composer Gene Austin, 62, campaigns by playing on the piano the song he helped make popular in the 19205--My Blue Heaven. He has asked Harry Truman to join him in a political duet (no answer), declares that he "can do all the things the present Governor is doing and sing too." A proven musician (he wrote The Lonesome Road, When My Sugar Walks Down the Street, How Come You Do Me Like You Do?), he hopes to become a smash political hit with a platform plugging $100-a-month pensions for every Nevada resident over 65, to be financed by boat-race sweepstakes on Nevada lakes. He also urges that all the candidates take lie-detector tests to see if they will keep their promises.

> George C. Moore Jr., 52, former maitre d' at The Sands in Las Vegas, is an egg-carton maker whose only visible campaign activity has been to plant one of his campaign signs on the Governor's reserved-parking curb behind the Capitol and another above a toilet in Virginia City's Delta Saloon. Explains Moore:

"I'm conducting a sort of silent campaign. Right now things look good."

> M. D. Close, 61, owns a Las Vegas mortgage loan company, has a house with a palm tree growing through it. The top of the tree is spotlighted at night, now bears his campaign poster: M. D. CLOSE FOR GOVERNOR. His vague platform centers around a state lottery, which is illegal. But, platforms aside, he candidly admits: "I have a purpose in running--I wanna be elected."

If Governor Sawyer wins in the Democratic primary, he will face one of two Republicans:

< Hank Greenspun, 52, freewheeling publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, is a New Yorker who arrived in Las Vegas in 1946, became a publicity man for Mobster Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel, later bought 1% of the Desert Inn. In 1950 Greenspun pleaded guilty to running arms to Israel, was fined $10,000, finally had his civil rights restored last year by President Kennedy. He long used the Sun in a vendetta against the late Senators Pat McCarran and Joseph McCarthy, once wrote a column in which he called McCarthy a "disreputable pervert." In taking on Sawyer, Greenspun would have some embarrassing Sun paragraphs to live down. Wrote he about the Governor in 1959: "He has exceeded our most extravagant hopes and predictions. Grant Sawyer is a man among men." Greenspun also gave his views last spring on newspaper owners who go into politics: "Too many newspapers have been destroyed by publishers with political ambitions. This I will never permit, for this little old paper means more to me than all the rewards which high office can bring."

> Oran Gragson, 51, is a first-term mayor of Las Vegas and a furniture-store owner. Respected and honest, he too has a tendency to say the wrong thing. Replying to Greenspun's charge that his election as mayor was a "fluke," Gragson countered: "My election as Governor of Nevada will be an even bigger fluke."

Unofficial Las Vegas odds: Gragson 2 to 1 over Greenspun in the primary; Sawyer 7 to 1 over Gragson in November.

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