The Primaries

The primaries were nearly over; in most States the successful candidates had already begun to stump for the November elections. In the last remaining primaries, voters cast their party ballots, drew up November's battle lines.

Teetering Colorado, which voted for Republican Governor Ralph L. Carr in 1938 and 1940 after 14 years in the Democratic column, set the stage for a bang-up struggle. Whichever party carries Colorado in November should get two Senate seats: the one now held by Democrat Edwin C. Johnson and one left vacant by the death of Democrat Alva B. Adams.

The real tussle will be between homespun Senator Johnson, who survived an attempt by Colorado New Dealers to oust him in last week's primary, and Governor Carr, who won the Republican nomination without opposition. Self-educated Ed Johnson, 58, who would have none of the Administration before Pearl Harbor, is dear to the hearts of Colorado's conservative Democrats and has a simple, plain-spoken genius for winning elections.

But Governor Carr, 54, is a bright new phenomenon in Rocky Mountain politics. Able, courageous, independent, he was a pre-Philadelphia booster for Wendell Willkie, supported President Roosevelt's foreign policy while thwacking the New Deal on domestic issues, proved his statesmanship and urbanity by his handling of the vexatious Japanese evacuation problem. Since he had to step out of the Governorship to run against Johnson, November's election will either raise Ralph Carr to new national prominence or throw him into temporary eclipse.

Minnesota Republicans firmly beat down the bustling attempt by tall, mellow Senator Henrik Shipstead, who moved into their house two years ago from the old Farmer-Labor Party, to set himself up as head man in place of able young Governor Harold E. Stassen. Last week's primary was a whopping defeat for Senator Shipstead's men: renominated by big margins were both Governor Stassen and his close friend, Joseph Hurst Ball, the ex-newspaperman whom Stassen appointed to the Senate in 1940. With the Farmer-Labor Party on the skids and the Democrats scarcely heard from, Stassen & Ball had nothing further to fear in November.

The Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor went to rugged, hardworking Ed Thye, Northfield farmer whom Stassen made deputy State Agriculture Commissioner. Thus Stassen, who plans to give up office in April for active duty in the Navy, named his own successor.

Significant new face in Minnesota politics: eloquent, statesmanlike Dr. Walter H. Judd, 44, who spent the better part of a decade in China as a medical missionary, watched the war in the Far East, returned to the U.S. in 1938 to stump for a boycott and embargo against Japan. In Minnesota's Fifth District last week, Newcomer Judd won the Republican nomination for Congress nearly 3-to-2 over excitable, table-pounding incumbent Oscar Youngdahl, who did not recognize the Japanese menace until last Dec. 7.

Louisiana's reform wave, which reached its crest in 1940 when Governor Samuel Houston Jones swept the old Huey Long machine high & dry on the political rocks, subsided again. "Sweet-Smellin' Sam," whose reform candidates were crushed by the New Orleans machine in last January's local elections, did not even try to influence last week's primary. Senator Allen J. Ellender, a hangover from the Huey Long days, won renomination easily. So did other machine candidates.

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