As Oregon Goes

Oregon has long been a Republican state, but it is less conservative than conservationist. For almost a year, Democrat Richard L. Neuberger, a state senator, free-lance writer and amateur conservationist, has been barnstorming around Oregon in a bid to unseat Republican Senator Guy Cordon. Hitting at what he called the "giveaway" of natural resources, Neuberger seemed to be campaigning less against Cordon than against Interior Secretary Douglas McKay, whose "partnership" power policy has been received with mounting hostility in McKay's native state. To balding Dick Neuberger, this issue, especially the fight over the nearby Idaho Hell's Canyon project, coupled with the discontent among 100,000 lumbermen after a ten-week lumber strike, made 1954 the year, if any, for a Democrat in Oregon.

Returning to the state from Washington in mid-campaign, colorless, conscientious Guy Cordon, 64, discovered he was in a horse race, rode off to the hustings to deliver attacks on Republican-turned-Independent-Democrat Wayne Morse, his Senate colleague who backed Neuberger. Although Cordon's managers, unused to hard bush-beating, never got his campaign into full gallop, it seemed unlikely that a Republican would lose in Oregon.

Early on election night, Dick Neuberger, trailing by 10,000 votes, agreed. Thinking himself defeated, he went to bed. Next morning Neuberger and his wife, State Representative Maurine Neuberger, paced up and down their pink kitchen, where the telephone buzzed from time to time bringing them election returns. The first delayed returns from Multnomah County (Portland) halved Cordon's lead, but Candidate Neuberger sighed gloomily. "Not enough," he said, and gathered up some grocery bills on which to tabulate votes.

By afternoon New Jersey veered into the Republican column, and the race for control of the U.S. Senate was tied. Neuberger's interest in the matter warmed when, at 3:50, he learned that he was 109 votes ahead. "Isn't this the damnedest thing. I mean the fact that the entire U.S. Senate rests right in this kitchen," he declared. "Right in this kitchen," he repeated.

The tally: Neuberger 285,000, Cordon 283,000. But the first Democratic Senator elected from Oregon in 40 years ran 6,000 votes behind his wife in Multnomah County. Said Maurine dutifully: she will retire from politics to help her husband in Washington--two years from now, that is, when her term in the legislature is up.

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