Local Concerns

Jumping the gun by a year, Republican candidates from Kentucky to New Jersey proclaimed that the pivotal issue in last week's statewide elections would be President Johnson's waning popularity. As it turned out, the voters were concerned with local questions--notably taxes, education and racial controversies--more than Administration policies, domestic or foreign.

Kentucky: Nunn Better One of the few bright touches in Kentucky's humdrum gubernatorial race was provided by an irreverent underground slogan: "Half an Oaf Is Better than Nunn." Republican Candidate Louie B. Nunn, 43, a back-country lawyer who in years past managed the successful senatorial campaigns of John Sherman Cooper and Thruston Morton, countered with his own vaguely punny slogan: "Tired of War? Vote Nunn." Kentuckians chose Nunn. Defeating Democrat Henry Ward, 58, a former highway commissioner handpicked by retiring Governor Edward Breathitt, Nunn became the first Republican Governor elected in Kentucky since 1943.

The long-entrenched Democrats suffered from tired blood and intramural peevishness, and Candidate Ward campaigned on a broken record of me-tooism, echoing Nunn's opposition to a statewide open-housing law and new taxes. Neither contender openly courted Kentucky's segregationists, but both gleaned more votes from that quarter than Conservative Candidate Christian Glanz Jr., who was seeking 2% of the total vote in order to qualify his party for the 1968 presidential ballot and thereby qualify Alabama's George Wallace for a third-party spot. Nunn received 449,788 votes, Ward 423,189--and Glanz a scant 5,169, barely half of 1%. Thus Kentucky's vote in effect was for moderation.

Mississippi: Back to One Party In Mississippi, Republican Rubel Phillips, 42, an erstwhile segregationist who this year appealed for an end to racial rancor, lost to Democrat John Bell Williams, 48, by a vote of 293,188 to 126,753. Williams, a strident dissident who bolted the Democratic Party in 1964 to support Barry Goldwater and thereby lost his seniority in the House of Representatives, cashed in on Phillips' plea to voters to give up the fight against desegregation in order to elevate Mississippi economically. Phillips' radical suggestion tarred other Republicans: only one of 60 G.O.P. candidates was victorious, and the Republicans lost the two house and one state senate seats they had captured in 1963. Lamented one Mississippi Republican: "They just set us back another 15 years."

Louisiana: Moderation's Dividend Louisiana's Governors traditionally alienate their constituents in a single term. But voters were sufficiently pleased by John J. McKeithen's style as a racial moderate to grant him a second straight four-year term--permissible for the first time this century since passage last year of a McKeithen-backed state constitutional amendment allowing a Governor to succeed himself. When results of the Nov. 4 Democratic primary were tallied last week, McKeithen, who once belabored an opponent for courting Negro votes, had buried segregationist Congressman John R. Rarick beneath an avalanche of 836,304 votes; Rarick got only 179,846. McKeithen, an able administrator who is unopposed in a general election next Feb. 6, received widespread Negro support, and more than 250 Negroes sought office in the primary. Most fared poorly, but New Orleans Lawyer Ernest N. Morial won outright to become Louisiana's first Negro state legislator since Reconstruction, and two others won places on a Dec. 16 runoff ballot against white candidates.

New Jersey: Big Swing New Jersey often swings with the nation. This year, voting for an expanded and reapportioned legislature, Republicans demolished Democratic Governor Richard J. Hughes's control of both chambers, sweeping 31 of the senate's 40 seats and 58 of the assembly's 80. Hughes, 58, who has raised taxes, improved welfare and pushed integration in his five years as Governor (his second term ends in 1970) was no doubt hurt by last summer's riots. His reaction: "Sometimes leadership bears the burdens of retaliation."

New York: Rooky's Triumph New Yorkers overwhelmingly approved the biggest bond issue ever proposed anywhere--$2.5 billion to revitalize the state's highways, airports, commuter railroads and city subways. The outcome was a major political victory for Nelson Rockefeller, who had stumped the state on behalf of the transportation issue as vigorously as if he were campaigning on his own behalf.

At the same time, New Yorkers slapped down a new constitution to replace the state's outmoded 1894 charter and its tangle of 162 amendments. The proposed charter, drawn by a Democratic-dominated constitutional convention, lost by 3,361,000 votes to 1,308,000, largely because it incorporated repeal of a prohibition on state aid to church-run private schools. The Roman Catholic hierarchy vigorously backed the constitution, whose advocates spent more than $500,000 on hard-sell advertising that succeeded only in opening half-healed religious wounds. Governor Rockefeller, who split with other Republican leaders to give tepid endorsement to the charter, actually came out with a net gain. Presidentially speaking, his stand will probably help his image among Catholic voters.

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