The Price of the Meal

THE ROCKIES

While the Johnsonian consensus shows signs of nationwide strain, nowhere is the return to partisan normalcy more noisily evident than in the Rockies. In the leading electoral contests in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, Republican candidates are keying their campaigns to a shared sense of resurgent conservatism. Democrats, for their part, are going somewhat less than all the way with L.B.J. The three races, all pretty much neck and neck, are made all the more uncertain by the frontier-style independence--economic as well as political--that still characterizes Rocky Mountain voting patterns.

Montana. Republican Governor Tim Babcock, 47, running for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by liberal Democrat Lee Metcalf, 55, maintains stoutly that "the rights of the people are being taken away" by Washington. Though Montana has elected only one Republican Senator in 60 years, the Governor strikes a responsive chord among the state's inflation-conscious cattlemen and lumbermen by demanding cutbacks in federal spending. Potentially, however, the most profitable issue for Babcock is the junior Senator's disagreement with the Johnson Administration's Viet Nam policy. While Metcalf advocates that the U.S. "pull out of the jungles and hold the enclaves we have in hand," Babcock attacks what he calls a "no-win" policy, urges intensified bombing in the North.

A high school graduate who built a successful trucking business, Babcock was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1960, acceded to the governorship two years later when Republican Incumbent Donald Nutter was killed in an airplane crash. Since barely winning election in his own right in 1964, Babcock has become a cocky, polished political performer. The G.O.P. has plastered the state with "Win with Tim" billboards and issued 30,000 bumper stickers proclaiming WE EAT MONTANA BEEF, NOT L.B.J. BALONEY.

Metcalf has little money for advertising. A burly onetime varsity boxer at Stanford University, he was a four-term Congressman when he won his Senate seat in 1960. Though a somewhat listless campaigner, Metcalf stands to benefit from the fact that Babcock, who has two years to go in his four-year term as Governor, promised in 1964 to serve it out. The Senator also invokes his congressional experience, while tagging Babcock as a political novice beholden to business interests--though Metcalf himself relies heavily on Big Labor's support. Above all, Metcalf is counting on help from Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield, the mahatma of Montana politics.

Wyoming. Like Babcock, Wyoming's G.O.P. Governor Clifford Hansen, 54, hopes to move from the statehouse to the U.S. Senate, is running hard for the seat of retiring Republican Milward Simpson, 68. Though Rancher-Banker Hansen can point to a fairly progressive record as Governor--including an increase in the state's minimum hourly wage from 75-c- to $1--he is unmistakably conservative. Stumping the state, he blames inflation on needless Government spending, advocates that U.S. military commanders be allowed to go all out in Viet Nam.

Hansen's opponent is Democratic Congressman Teno Roncalio, 50. As Democratic state chairman, Teno (rhymes with beano) aligned himself with the Kennedy forces in 1960, was elected to Wyoming's sole congressional seat in the Lyndon landslide of 1964. A brash, breezy campaigner, he acrobatically presents himself as both a loyal Great Society supporter and, in recognition of Johnson's sagging popularity, as completely independent of the White House.

The pollsters give Roncalio a slight edge. Benefiting from a Viet Nam stand that is firm, yet more restrained than Hansen's, he also gets mileage out of reminding voters--especially in the labor-heavy towns along southern Wyoming's Union Pacific Railroad tracks--that when union partisans packed the galleries during enactment of the state's 1963 right-to-work law, Hansen edgily dispatched National Guardsmen to the state-capitol basement.

Idaho. By contrast with Montana and Wyoming, Idaho's No. 1 contest--the race for Governor--is hopelessly muddled. The principal candidates, Republican State Senator Don Samuelson, 53, and Democratic Colleague Cecil Andrus, 35, stand at far ends of the political spectrum. The confusion began when Goldwaterite Samuelson pulled a stunning primary upset over progressive Republican Robert Smylie, whose twelve years in the statehouse make him the dean of U.S. Governors. Smylie had alienated voters with the state's year-old 3% sales tax, while Samuelson stayed neutral. To back the tax, the subject of a statewide referendum on the November ballot, Perry Swisher, 43, a Republican state senator and Pocatello newspaper publisher, jumped into the campaign as an independent.

Compounding the confusion, the original Democratic nominee, Lawyer Charles Herndon, was killed in a plane crash last month. The state Democratic Central Committee selected Andrus, who had lost to Herndon in the primary. Campaigning furiously to become Idaho's first Democratic Governor in 20 years, Andrus has grudgingly come out for the sales tax as essential to education and to other state programs. Samuelson, like conservative candidates in other mountain-state races, seems more concerned over price tags than principles, argues that state spending "has to be held down to what Dad's pocketbook can stand."

Indeed, all three races hinge on the increasingly pervasive participation of government in the everyday lives of all Americans. When it comes to federal involvement, the Rockies may still have no overwhelming desire for the entire L.B.J. program. Still, the question before mountain-state voters is not one of feast or famine, but how much the Great Society meal should cost.

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