Eyes on Missouri

Few Democratic Senators have fought Franklin Roosevelt more bitterly than Missouri's mulish, rufous Bennett Champ Clark, who never forgets a grudge. (His oldest grudge: in 1912 young Franklin Roosevelt, 30, helped swing the Democratic convention to Woodrow Wilson and away from the Senator's father, the late Speaker Champ Clark.) Yet Bennett Clark, campaigning for his own third term, swallowed his isolationist line and pledged himself to support Franklin Roosevelt's peace program.

He also enlisted the help of two potent Democrats, National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan and Vice Presidential Nominee Harry Truman, both of whom are from Missouri, and both now very close to Franklin Roosevelt. Neither had to be shown that Bennett Clark was in deep trouble. Their aid was of no avail. In last week's primary Bennett Clark was snowed under. Reasons: 1) his own soggy inertia--he neglected his mail, several times stood up audiences that had come to hear him; 2) the opposition of C.I.O.'s Political Action Committee; 3) the aggressive campaign waged at every creek fork by owl-eyed Roy McKittrick, the state's Attorney General.

In Roy McKittrick the Missouri Democrats got a nominee who might run a poorer race in November than Bennett Clark. For one thing, his victory split the party wide open. Bennett Clark let fly a statement in which he "cheerfully" accepted the verdict of the voters. This cheer was spoiled somewhat by the statement's heavy sour-graping over what he called the "communist-controlled" P.A.C.

"Hotspur." As a crusade-loving Attorney General who usually tired of his crusades in a week or two, Roy McKittrick has been savagely caricatured by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's brilliant Cartoonist Dan Fitzpatrick as a fireman charging off to a dozen infernos at one time. Editorially, the Post-Dispatch habitually referred to him as "Hotspur" --until it decided to support him in this campaign. Roy McKittrick has always referred to himself as "just a country boy."

In November, Nominee McKittrick must face Republican Governor Forrest C. Donnell, who deluged six other candidates in the GOPrimary.

The Barometer. Missouri (pop. 3,800,000) is the most populous of the political border states (Oklahoma, 2,170,000; Kentucky, 2,730,000; West Virginia, 1,755,000; Maryland, 2,100,000; Delaware, 281,000). In every Presidential election since 1904 Missouri has voted for the winner. The pundits last week scrutinized closely the Missouri score.

In a light primary Democrats polled a higher vote: 324,000 to 299,000. Both parties were torn by internal dissension; both now have a hot campaigner at the top of the ticket. Bob Hannegan and Harry Truman are sure to pour in all the money and speakers necessary for a thumping campaign; the Republicans likewise. (One reason for Tom Dewey's Governors' meeting in St. Louis was to pep up the Missouri G.O.P.) If Missouri is any barometer, and it has been a true one in the past 40 years, the 1944 Presidential election will be the closest since 1916.

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