Touch & Go

The man everyone was watching in next week's Minnesota primary was sitting on the sidelines. Harold Stassen had risked a small loss against a major gain in Nebraska--and missed (TIME, June 24). Now, in his home state, he was staking his political future and his chances for the GOPresidential nomination in 1948 on the belief that his handpicked Governor, Ed Thye, could beat four-term isolationist Senator Henrik Shipstead for the G.O.P. senatorial nomination.

At the start it had looked like a shoo-in for the Stassen camp. There was so much rejoicing that "Harold is home again," so much confidence in the prestige he had gained at the San Francisco Conference, so much faith in the appeal of the Stassen war record as Admiral Halsey's flag secretary that it seemed nothing could go wrong.

Besides, Ed Thye was a formidable vote-getter in his own right. Friendly, honest, an able administrator and an indefatigable campaigner in smalltown, door-to-door electioneering, he had piled up the biggest majority in Minnesota history when he ran for re-election to the Governor's chair in 1944. Purring with power, the Stassen machine coasted easily.

In the early weeks of listless campaigning, the confidence seemed well-placed. There were no fireworks, no weighty speeches, no burning issues. Amiable Ed Thye and his running-mate, gubernatorial candidate Luther Youngdahl, toured the back country, slapping backs, shaking hands, remembering faces. In the Minneapolis Tribune polls, Thye's popularity climbed: from 61% to 62% to 67%.

"Hearty Feed." But by last week Stassenites suddenly realized that they might be heading for a sharp comeuppance. Despite published polls, reports from district leaders and the gossip of professional politicos showed that shrewd old Henrik Shipstead had been retrieving ground fast, might even be edging ahead.

In 24 careful years in Washington, silver-shocked Senator Shipstead has learned to avoid controversial domestic subjects, has never signed his name to any important piece of legislation. But he has remembered to look out for his constituents. He blatantly promised "to lead the farmers up to the Treasury-trough for a hearty feed." Originally a Republican, he paid no attention to party lines. Minnesota had first sent him to the Senate as a Farmer-Laborite, returned him twice on that ticket, finally as a Republican again.

His intransigent isolationism was no handicap in the German and Scandinavian areas of Minnesota, where isolationism is still a potent political force. Instead of trying to whitewash his record on foreign affairs, he made no bones of the fact that he and North Dakota's Bill Langer had cast the only votes in the Senate against U.N. Rural voters nodded approval.

But he saved his biggest rocks for Harold Stassen. Trumpeting "dictatorship," Shipstead hinted at "small, select, secret meetings" with the "bosses in the East." Cried he: "They have prostituted the primary . . . [Stassen] must have eaten pretty red meat at his luncheons and dinners on his trips to New York."

Alarmed, Harold Stassen sent down the order: step on the gas. Though he kept mum himself, he was working hard behind the scenes, directing every move, writing or editing most of the speeches. With ten days till election, the outcome was touch & go.

By week's end the pendulum was swinging back toward Ed Thye and Harold Stassen. But it was going to be close.

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