THE CONTESTED DELEGATIONS

With the race for the Republican nomination nose-and-nose, victory may well lie among the contested delegations. Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas will send two delegations each to Chicago. In each case, one delegation will be predominantly for Taft, the other mostly for Eisenhower. In all, 75 delegate votes will be involved. This is how the contests will be settled:

First, the National Committee will decide which delegation from each state should be temporarily recognized. Since a majority of the National Committee is pro-Taft, the Ohio Senator is certain to get the breaks in this first test. It does not necessarily follow, however, that all the Taft delegations will be seated by the committee. In Georgia the pro-Ike delegation comes from the Republican faction headed by Taftman Harry Sommers, Georgia's member of the National Committee. The committee is not likely to repudiate Sommers, who has conceded that the Ike forces legally won an overwhelming majority of the delegation.

Next, the convention Credentials Committee will hear appeals from the National Committee's decisions. TSe Credentials Committee is made up of one member from each delegation. In almost all cases, the Credentials Committee member will favor the same candidate that the majority of his delegation favors. (An exception is the pro-Taft North Carolina delegation which will have an Ikeman on the Credentials Committee.) There are 53 delegations, including the District of Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It now appears that at least 26 of these will be pro-Taft and at least 16 for Ike. It can be assumed that the three favorite-son states (McKeldin's Maryland, Stassen's Minnesota and Warren's California) will give their Credentials Committee votes to Ike, bringing his total to 19. If the National Committee seats Ike's Georgia delegation, he will have 20. If the National Committee seats Taft delegations from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, Taft will have 29 members of the Credentials Committee, a clear majority.

A Taft majority on the Credentials Committee could seat the Taft delegations from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas on the floor of the convention.

This action, again, is subject to reversal by a majority of the convention. Here, Taft's advantage lessens somewhat because on the floor the vote is by delegates, not by delegations.

This vote might be very close indeed. The contested delegations will be voted on in alphabetical order. Assuming that the Credentials Committee has seated Taft delegates from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, the latter two, with a total of 43 votes, can cast them to confirm the seating of the Taftmen from Louisiana. Then Louisiana (with 15) and Texas can help to vote in the Taft delegations from Mississippi. But when it comes to Texas, the vote may be much tighter for two reasons: i) the Taft machine's tactics in Texas were so flagrantly unfair that some independent Taftmen may vote against seating their delegation from Texas; 2) the 38 Taft votes of Texas will not be eligible to vote on the Texas contest. Instead of mustering 43 contested votes as they could in the Louisiana contest or 53 votes as they could in the Mississippi contest, in the case of Texas the Taft forces can get only 20 from the contested group. Conceivably, this could make all the difference; the Ike delegation from Texas might be seated.

The vote on Texas may well show, before the balloting for President starts, where the majority of the convention lies. If the Taft delegation from Texas is permanently seated, then Taft is a good bet to win the nomination. If the Texans-for-Ike win the floor fight, then it will be very hard to stop Ike.

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