The Four-Party System

A politician once said that between elections Hoosiers firmly believe in a four-party system: two Republican and two Democratic. For the past 18 months Indiana's two Republican parties have been illustrating the proposition by engaging in a bitter political war. Last week, in the wake of primaries that shifted control of the party organization, there were few signs of a truce.

Ever since June 1952, when Lawyer George North Craig of Brazil, Ind. went after the nomination for governor, Indiana's two Senators, Bill Jenner and Homer Capehart, have opposed him. Craig, onetime national commander of the American Legion, won the nomination, and five months later was elected by the biggest landslide in Indiana history.

Craig, a blunt, direct-spoken politician who was governor at 43, did not bury the hatchet. In dispensing state patronage and favors, he ignored followers of Capehart and Jenner. In late December, before the governor had even taken office, Jenner warned: "George Craig will only push me so far." Soon, indeed. Craig encountered stronger resistance. A rebellious state senate, presided over by a Jenner man (and with a 4-to-i G.O.P. majority), took Craig's ambitious program and gave it a severe hacking.

Craig retaliated by using his patronage power, which was infinitely stronger than the federal patronage leverage available to Jenner and Capehart. Since practically no state employees enjoy job tenure in Indiana, the patronage-poor Senators were soon complaining that Craig was buying allegiance to his side with jobs.

Last January they counterattacked. In a swift and skillful political coup, while Craig was keeping a speaking engagement in Topeka, Kans.. they ousted Noland Wright, pro-Craig chairman of the Republican state committee, and installed 32-year-old Paul Cyr, an O.S.S. veteran of World War II, handpicked by Jenner and Capehart.

But Cyr could not run his machine without fuel--and the Senators could not supply him with enough jobs. In this month's party primaries Craig won control of the state committee and replaced Cyr with a Craig man, Alvin O. Cast.

Jenner and Capehart conceded defeat with as much bad grace as they could muster. Said the Senators: "We see no further good to be gained by having fine, loyal [Republicans] further threatened, coerced, browbeaten and tortured. Therefore, we are recommending to all our loyal friends that the Republican banner in Indiana fly under the leadership of George Craig . . . and men of [his] ilk."

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