Getting the Garden Growing

Across the Hudson River from New York City, 90 minutes after the polls closed, it was plain that New Jersey's Democratic Governor Richard Hughes was in for a resounding victory. The returns from prosperous Bergen County, a longtime Republican stronghold, wound up by giving Hughes a 49,000 majority. So it went all evening, from the slums of Jersey City to the bird-watching wards of Cape May. In all, Hughes carried 16 of the state's 21 counties and defeated Republican Challenger Wayne Dumont by 350,000 votes, the highest margin ever recorded in a New Jersey gubernatorial contest.

Hughes's achievement was heightened by the fact that booming New Jersey is fundamentally a Republican state. Until last week, the Democrats had not won control of both houses of the state legislature since the 1912 election, when they swept in on Woodrow Wilson's swallowtails. This year more than ever the issues were made to order for a lively, Lindsay-style Republican. The most densely populated state in the Union (860.3 inhabitants per sq. mi.), New Jersey has almost as many problems as people. State-supported colleges are so crowded that 50% of the qualified applicants have to be turned away each yar. Other public institutions, from hospitals to orphanages, are archaic and inadequate. Highways are clogged, while the state road program lags for lack of funds. Though its rivers and air are hopelessly polluted, the Garden State has only a token anti-pollution program.

No Excuses. Yet as always, the G.O.P. came apart in the primary, in which Wayne Dumont, a small-town lawyer and state senator, emerged as the party's gubernatorial candidate. To the virtual exclusion of all other potential issues, Dumont seized on the case of Eugene Genovese, a Marxist profes sor of history at the state university of Rutgers, who had declared that he would welcome a Viet Cong victory in Viet Nam (TIME, Oct. 22). Dumont called on Hughes to have Genovese fired; the Governor refused, arguing that a question involving academic freedom should be settled by Rutgers' board of governors.

Meantime Hughes mounted a hardhitting, bountifully financed campaign, capitalized on the appeal of President Johnson, who carried New Jersey by a smashing 900,000 votes last year.

When it was over, a party wheelhorse at the Governor's victory party gloomed: "My God, now we really will have to produce!" At any rate, the Hughes administration will no longer be able to blame the state's ills on lethargic Republican majorities in Trenton. Its first, most ticklish task will be to find broadbased sources of revenue to finance the state's accumulated needs. New Jersey is almost unique in levying neither income nor retail sales taxes. One or the other, Hughes said throughout his campaign, will be the price of progress.

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