Choosing Up

> Regular Mississippi Democrats, headed by old-line segregationist and four-term Senator James Eastland, 61, overwhelmingly defeated a challenge by the Freedom Democratic Party, whose membership is almost 100% Negro. Though the F.D.P. received only 12% of the primary ballot, the election nonetheless marked the first time since Reconstruction that Negroes voted in significant numbers in Mississippi. Also for the first time, Eastland will face substantial opposition in the general election. Representative Prentiss Walker, a leader of the newly vitalized state G.O.P., has made no bid for the Negro vote; yet many Negroes may vote for him, if only to unseat Eastland.

>South Dakota's Republican Senator Karl Mundt, 66, was nominated for a fourth term, winning nearly 75% of the vote in a race against Richard Murphy, 37, an arch-conservative Sioux Falls attorney. Murphy dropped his membership in the John Birch Society in February, accusing it of interfering in his campaign; yet with the Bircher's characteristic astigmatism, he went so far as to label Conservative Mundt as a liberal "like Hubert Humphrey." With the prestige and seniority of 18 years in the Senate, Mundt is seen as a shoo-in over Democratic State Representative Donn H. Wright, 44, in November.

> The Massachusetts Democratic Convention endorsed former Governor Endicott ("Chub") Peabody for Senator and former State Attorney General Edward McCormack for Governor in the September primary. Peabody, who won the convention but lost the primary two years ago, while he was still Governor, now faces a bitter duel with Boston's Mayor John Collins, who angrily claimed that he had been "jobbed" by party leaders. McCormack, nephew of U.S. House Speaker John McCormack, faces an easier race against former J.F.K. Aide Kenneth O'Donnell. Chief gainers from the Democratic infighting: Attorney General Edward Brooke, all-but-certain G.O.P. nominee to replace retiring Senator Leverett Saltonstall, and Republican Governor John Volpe, who is running for a second consecutive term.

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