Makings of the 72nd

Makings of the 72nd

The 72nd Congress is already in the making, though ten months must elapse before it comes into legislative being. Primaries to nominate candidates for the November elections have commenced, will continue until mid-September. In many a State last week could be seen the hustle and bustle of campaigning, could be heard the strident cry of the stumpster pleading for votes. Of prime importance to President Hoover were these makings of the new Congress. The voting would be the first widespread register of public opinion on his administration. Last week two primaries were held:

South Dakota. Since he entered the Senate in 1924, Senator William Henry McMaster has worked with the insurgent Republican faction. In his campaign to retain his seat, he frankly asked for renomination and re-election "as a vote of confidence in Northwest Progressive Republicans who voted with Democrats against Administration policies." Wisconsin's insurgent Senator LaFollette went into South Dakota to campaign for him. His opponent was George Jonathan Danforth, whose major appeal was that he was a "Hoover Republican." In last week's voting South Dakota Republicans went anti-Hoover by 13,000 votes, renominated Senator McMaster. In the November election his Democratic opponent for the Senate will be William John Bulow, twice Governor of South Dakota.

In South Dakota's Republican gubernatorial contest, Miss Gladys Pyle, now Secretary of State, led a field of four men by 3,000 votes. As she did not obtain the 35% of the total vote required for nomination, the choice will go to a State convention next week, where she is likely to be selected. Miss Pyle, 39, with brown curly hair, has a head full of reform ideas to be executed if she reaches the Governor's office at Pierre.

Indiana. All 13 sitting Congressmen (10 Republicans, 3 Democrats) were renominated in a sluggish contest.

Kentucky. At a party convention at Lexington, Republicans renominated Senator John Marshall Robsion without opposition.

Virginia. Senator Carter Glass became the Democratic nominee for the Senate when, at the expiration of the time for filing nominating petitions, no candidate appeared to oppose him in the August primary.

Last week primary campaigns were in full swing in these States:

Oregon. So sure felt Senator Charles McNary of renomination on May 16 that he did not bother to cross the continent to his State to make a direct appeal for votes.

Pennsylvania. In a climactic frenzy Secretary of Labor James John Davis and Senator Joseph Ridgway Grundy worked toward the May 20 primary which would give one of them the Republican senatorial nomination. Friends of Senator Grundy moved to have Secretary Davis' name stricken from the list of voters in Pittsburgh on the ground that he was appointed to the Cabinet in 1921 as a resident of Illinois; and that, since then, he has not lived one year in Pennsylvania as the law requires. Secretary Davis has been registering as a voter from the residence of one of his Loyal Order of Moose organizers on Hornaday Road, Pittsburgh.

In retaliation, union labor friends of Secretary Davis charged that Senator Grundy used British-made machinery in his big Bristol textile factory. Senator Grundy admitted he did, explained that the original machinery was imported 70 years ago with only replacements since then.

When hecklers at Sunbury tormented Secretary Davis with questions about his Prohibition stand, he yelled at them: "I'll bet 10-c- Joe Grundy paid you to ask those questions."

Iowa. Democratic Senator Daniel Frederic Steck who votes more like a regular Republican than any other member of his party, is seeking renomination in the June 2 primary. His nemesis: insurgent Republican Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart, his defeated rival in a 1924 Senate election contest, who has vowed that Senator Steck will not return to the Capitol if he (Brookhart) "has to turn Iowa upside down."

New Jersey. Dwight Whitney Morrow, Republican senatorial candidate against Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen in the June 17 primary, sat in his Englewood home pondering Prohibition, preparing his first campaign speech for delivery this week at Newark, in which he was expected to declare either Wet or Dry. Should Mr. Morrow go Wet like Mr. Frelinghuysen, Drys hoped they could obtain a candidate to their liking in the person of Representative Franklin Fort, good Hoover friend, onetime secretary of the Republican National Committee.

Arkansas. Though Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson, Democratic leader of the Senate, is allied with President Hoover on such international matters as the London Naval Treaty which he helped to draft, on domestic matters he is still an untrammeled political partisan seeking renomination in his State's primary Aug. 12. Less than a week back in the U. S. from London, Senator Robinson took a shot at President Hoover, as an opener to his own campaign, in these words through the Democratic National Committee:

"Since the panic last November conditions have grown steadily worse, despite the Pollyanna statements of the Administration and the misleading reports of its members. . . . However blameless the President may have been for the initial panic, it is most unfortunate that added disappointment should have come from his persistent coloring of real conditions. . . . Securities and commodities are lower than ever and the unemployment situation is steadily becoming worse. . . . The President issued no word of warning of the catastrophe, though after it he was glib in his explanation of the why and where fore. . . ."

Illinois Aftermath. Because to obtain the Republican senatorial nomination she had spent one-quarter of a million dollars, Illinois Democrats last week resolved that "whereas the alleged nominee, Ruth Hanna McCormick, cannot be seated in the U. S. Senate, she is now an illegal and ineligible nominee." Democrats charged that expenditures in her behalf were really closer to one million dollars, pointed with pride to the $35 reported as campaign expenses of their candidate, James Hamilton Lewis, "the only legal nominee for U. S. Senator."

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