Unsolid South

Amid the bulletins that torrented forth, the most astonishing was that Democrat Lister Hill, veteran of 25 years in the U.S. Senate, was running behind his Republican opponent, a political novice named James D. Martin. And, of all places, in Alabama--where no Republican had come within miles of winning major office since Reconstruction.

As the late returns trickled in, Hill edged ahead. But he still ended up with less than 51% of the votes. His narrow escape obviously reflected Alabama anger at the Kennedy Administration's recent armed intervention in neighboring Mississippi. But it was also significant as one of the most important political realities to emerge from the 1962 elections: the Republican Party is making real headway in what used to be called the Solid South.

Stirrings of Life. Not for a long while has the South been solid in presidential elections. Herbert Hoover (mostly because he was running against Catholic Al Smith) and Dwight Eisenhower gathered big batches of Southern electoral votes. In 1960, even in defeat, Richard Nixon carried Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, as well as Oklahoma and Kentucky on the borders of the South. But in elections for lesser offices, the South with scattered exceptions held firm to its Democratic traditions. The G.O.P. showed stirrings of life in the South in 1952 and 1954. Then it stalled, gaining not a single additional congressional seat in the old Confederacy in 1956, 1958 or 1960. This year the G.O.P. got moving again. And the South was suddenly a two-party region.

In Oklahoma, Republican Henry Bellmon captured the governorship by a hefty margin, becoming the first G.O.P. Governor in the state's history. In Kentucky, Republican Senator Thruston B. Morton decisively defeated Democrat Wilson W. Wyatt in one of 1962's most meaningful political battles. It was an uncompromising clash, without any me-too touches to blur the issues: Morton, a former G.O.P. National Chairman, a hard-punching conservative; Wyatt, a founder of Americans for Democratic Action, one of the last of those who might be described as an unmistakable left-winger. The New Frontier made Morton's defeat a principal campaign objective. President Kennedy twice went into Kentucky to campaign for Wyatt. The Administration suffered a second jolt in Kentucky when Democratic Congressman Frank Burke, who had voted down the line for the New Frontier, lost his seat to Goldwater Republican Gene Snyder.

In the eleven states of the old Confederacy, the G.O.P. fielded 62 candidates for House seats--as against 42 in 1960 and only 24 in 1958. The party's seven incumbent Congressmen all won their races for reelection. In addition, the G.O.P. captured four new congressional seats--one each in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Talk about Tide. Republicans won some surprising victories in contests for state and local offices, made some respectable showings elsewhere. In three counties in North Carolina, G.O.P. candidates swept every major contested office, upsetting the speaker of the state legislature's lower house in a contest for a state senate seat. In South Carolina, Newspaperman William D. Workman Jr., who joined the Republican Party only a year ago, gathered 43% of the votes for U.S. Senator in a race against Incumbent Olin Johnston. In the Texas gubernatorial contest, Republican Jack Cox lost to Democrat John B. Connally, former Navy Secretary in the Kennedy Administration, but came closer to winning than any G.O.P. candidate for Governor of Texas had done since Reconstruction.

Republican National Chairman William E. Miller hailed his party's gains in the South as a "breakthrough." Crowed I. Lee Potter, head of the Republican National Committee's Operation Dixie: "The tide is coming in now in the South."

Well, the tide still has a long way to come. Much of the G.O.P.'s Southern showing was certainly due to regional anger over the Democratic Administration's actions in Mississippi. But a much more important factor was that Southern Republicans, for the first time in decades, were really trying. If they keep on, they may bring about the weightiest shift that domestic U.S. politics has felt in almost a century.

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