Pennsylvania's Primary

One million and 500,000 Republican voters in Pennsylvania went to the primary polls last week to deal a new hand all around in State politics. Within twelve hours they had retired Senator Joseph Ridgway ("Old Joe") Grundy to his Bristol yarn mills, created a vacancy in President Hoover's Cabinet, smashed the hopes of Senator-reject William Scott Vare of becoming G. O. P. boss of the State, registered their opinion on Prohibition, recalled to high office one of their ablest and most distinguished citizens.

Confused and tumultuous was the campaign preceding the vote (TIME, April 7). For purposes of practical politics a Governor of Pennsylvania outranks a Senator from Pennsylvania, because a Governor controls State patronage on which political machines subsist, whereas a Senator only ornaments and dignifies the group that puts him into office. No man may call himself State Boss unless he has the No. 1 official at Harrisburg under his thumb. In an attempt to become Boss, Mr. Vare, overlord of Philadelphia, put up Francis Shunk Brown for Governor, his chief attorney in his futile fight for a Senate seat (TIME, Dec. 16). As a matter of political convenience, Secretary of Labor James John ("Puddler Jim") Davis was added to the Vare ticket as the senatorial candidate.

Opposed to Secretary Davis was Senator Grundy, high tariff advocate, seeking to retain the seat to which Governor Fisher had appointed him after the Vare rejection. Gifford Pinchot, onetime (1923-27) Governor, crusading Dry, ran as a rural independent against Mr. Brown for the gubernatorial nomination. The Mellon faction in Pittsburgh supported Messrs. Brown and Grundy. An informal Pinchot-Grundy alliance existed to combat the Vare ticket.

Prohibition injected itself into the campaign in the form of independent Wet candidacies after Mr. Brown had weasled on this issue with a declaration for a referendum and Messrs. Grundy and Davis had mumbled the old formula about "law enforcement." The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment supported Thomas Wharton Phillips Jr. for Governor and Francis Hermann Bohlen for Senator on a Dry-law repeal platform.

Results: Secretary Davis beat Senator Grundy by 200,000 votes, for the Republican senatorial nomination. Between them the Tariff was no issue. Secretary Davis had the advantage of a large labor vote.

Mr. Pinchot, to the surprise of all, pulled up from behind to beat Mr. Brown for the gubernatorial nomination by some 17,000 votes. At midnight Mr. Brown saw his lead wilting as the rural vote for Mr. Pinchot piled up. Depressed, he went home to bed, remarked: "When I get up in the morning, I'll feel better." But in the morning he felt worse. Mr. Pinchot's vote had passed his while he slept. Heartbroken, he refused to concede defeat even when the Pinchot forces were celebrating their victory.

Weasling on Prohibition cost Mr. Brown the nomination. Mr. Phillips of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment rolled up 275,000 votes (as a Wet candidate four years ago he got 72,000 votes). Hoping to win both Wets and Drys, Mr. Brown straddled. Partisan Drys voted for Mr. Pinchot, partisan Wets for Mr. Phillips.

Many Things to Many Men meant the results of the election: 1) a triumph for the Hoover administration in the nomination of its Secretary of Labor for the Senate; 2) a victory for the Anti-Saloon League because Pennsylvania had nominated Prohibitor Pinchot, defeated Wet candidates; 3) a victory for the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment because its candidates almost quadrupled their vote after four years; 4) the loss to Senate Democrats of "Grundyism" as a Tariff issue in the November election; 5) a "vindication" for Boss Vare who had sent his candidate to the Senate; 6) a "personal triumph" for Secretary Davis who quickly forgot the Vare machine votes that helped him win; 7) diminution of the political influence of Secretary of the Treasury Mellon whose Pittsburgh faction of the party lost on both candidates it backed.

The return of Mr. Pinchot to State office promised to give fresh color and vitality to the Pennsylvania political scene. Aged 65, wealthy, cultured, he began his public career as a professional forester. His first big job came in 1892 when he surveyed the estate of George Washington Vanderbilt at Biltmore, N. C. He served as chief of the Division of Forestry in the U. S. Department of Agriculture from 1898 to 1910. President Theodore Roosevelt put him in charge of forest conservation.

A 1912 Roosevelt Progressive, Mr. Pinchot has battled spectacularly against G. O. P. machines of Pennsylvania, has fought the "Philadelphia Gang'' to the point of refusing, as Governor, to give Boss Vare an authentic certificate of election to the Senate in 1926. A liberal in politics and policies, he has won the favor of Labor, the animosity of great industrial interests in his State. He consorts with Nebraska's insurgent Senator Norris on the power issue. He made his campaign last month on a platform "to help break the stranglehold of the electric, gas, water, trolley, bus and other monopolies on the cost of living and the government of the State." A Dry, he made no issue of Prohibition.

"A 100-to-1 Shot" was what the Vare machine called the Pinchot victory. Nevertheless it swung its support to the party nominee for the election because "he has won a clean hard fight . . . and breasted the tape a fair winner." Nominee Pinchot called his success "a victory for the forces of clean government."

"Reasonably clean" was the Republican primary in Pennsylvania in the opinion of North Dakota's Senator Nye, chairman of the Senate Campaign Expenditure Committee. Secret agents for the committee observed the voting, reported to Chairman Nye. All the chief participants in the primary were called before his committee to tell of their campaign spendings.

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