"Back to Normalcy"

In spite of the old adage about Maine, Ohio is a better U. S. political microcosm. A microcosm of Ohio is the six-county 17th District. In every Presidential election since 1912, the six counties now composing the 17th District have gone with the winning wind. Divided 75% rural, 25% industrial, the 17th has never been stampeded. Small shifts in its votes are portentous.

In the moderate Republican swing in 1938, Ohio's 17th stayed with the New Deal and Representative William A. Ashbrook by about 5,000 votes. Last January, Congressman Ashbrook died. Last week his nephew, Byron Baldwin Ashbrook, Democrat, lost a special election to J. (for nothing) Harry McGregor, Republican, by 4,500 votes. The shift: 7%.

Republicans everywhere, scanning the Roosevelt drought, went crazy over this sign of rain. They were comparatively unexcited by another Ohio G. O. P. victory, the expected 2-to-1 election of plutocratic Frances Payne Bingham Bolton* of Cleveland to succeed her late husband, Chester C. Bolton. Sharp-witted Mrs. Bolton was a gilt-edged financial asset, but Coshocton Contractor McGregor was a real homespun portent.

". . . First blood!" screamed Republican National Chairman John Hamilton. "Back to normalcy," piped Congressman George Bender, unfortunately reviving a word which many a G. O. Politico had hoped was forever buried with its begetter, Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio.

More practically, Representative J. William Ditter of Pennsylvania, Republican Congressional campaign chief, pointed out that the G. O. P. had lost 43 districts in 1938 by less than 3%. The 7% in Ohio's 17th looked as lovely as the first daffodil to Massachusetts' wily Representative Joe Martin, G. O. P. pilot in the House. A shift of 47 seats would place Mr. Martin's plump little frame under the great crystal chandelier/- that hangs in the Speaker's office.

Next came a bigger portent--to Republican ears, a first toot on a 1940 trump of doom for the Democrats. Alvin Vinton ("Honest Vic") Donahey, Democratic Senator from Ohio since 1934, announced his retirement.

Bar Franklin Roosevelt, "Honest Vic" has been for much of his 40-year official life the best all-around Democratic vote-getter. A ball of fire on the stump, old-timer Donahey has not once opened his jaws oratorically in the Senate since he was sworn in. A great believer in laissez-faire, a fanatic devotee of fishing in times of legislative crisis, "Honest Vic" thinks everybody talks too much. If Senators were graded like schoolboys, he would rate: diligence, fair; deportment, awful; attendance, terrible; common sense, 100%.

Gum-chewing Senator Donahey took on only one Senate chore. After a squad of Senators had turned down the chairmanship of the TVA investigation, he took it, kept order with a Boy Scout knife which he used alternately as a toothpick, nail-clipper, and gavel.

One quality Vic Donahey has in fullest measure: political sensitivity. He always ran to win. Thus when he retired from public life "for a much-needed rest and the preservation of my health," every political cynic in the U. S. recalled his perfect health, unkindly footnoted: "Rest from what?" Consensus was: "Honest Vic" thinks Ohio is lost to the Democrats this fall, whether or not Franklin Roosevelt runs.

* Mrs. Bolton, who has three homes, three sons, many millions, last week declined with thanks the usual $10,000 payment to Congressional widows.

/-Under this chandelier, then in the White House, Grover Cleveland and Frances Folsom were married in 1886.

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