Prof. v. Prof.

For their next Governor, Virginians will choose in November between a professor of constitutional law at William & Mary and a professor of psychology at Washington & Lee. Anything but academic will be the campaign because each of these schoolmen will personify a side of a question as large as the political South: Can the Republican party hold or extend locally the gains it made nationally last year when Democrats deserted their ticket?

Last week regular Virginia Democrats--i.e., those who supported their presidential ticket and lost the State to the G. O. P.--held their primary, chose as their candidate Prof. John Garland Pollard of William & Mary. Polling five-sevenths of the 140,000 votes cast, he far outran two rivals, who, for a united Democracy, immediately pledged him their support. The primary campaign had been mild and lulling. No bad feeling was permitted to creep in. Democratic ranks were closed simultaneously with the polls.

Nominee Pollard, of the ninth generation of Virginia Pollards, is a quiet, meditative man of 58. His eyes twinkle, his lips smile with scholastic humor. At Williamsburg he dwells in a middle-class wooden house in the faculty group, tends a flower garden in the rear, forgets to answer the supper bell. He served his State one term as Attorney-General.

Against him in the November election will run Prof. William Moseley Brown, 35, of Washington & Lee, nominated by a fusion of Republicans under C. Bascom Slemp and anti-Smith Democrats led by Bishop James Cannon Jr. (TIME, July 8). Bishop Cannon has attempted to make the campaign issue: "Wet-Raskobism." Facts to point the Cannon issue: Prof. Pollard was supported by Governor Harry Flood Byrd, Brown Derby advocate, and had himself stumped for Governor Smith. Facts to blunt the Cannon issue: Both candidates are Dry; both candidates are Protestant.

From Washington spread reports that the national organizations of both parties were preparing to make covert entry into the Virginia campaign in support of their respective Professors.