A Glint in the Eye

Last week President Eisenhower gazed on the towering edifice of the McNary Dam, then pointed to a wispy, grey man on the speaker's platform. Said Ike: "My good friend, Senator Guy Cordon, for the past ten years has labored tirelessly to complete this project." Ike's words came as a sincere--and politically priceless--tribute to Oregon's Republican Cordon, who in his quiet way has made himself influential among G.O.P. Senators. This year Cordon is in a desperate fight for re-election against his Democratic opponent, Richard Neuberger, a state senator and free-lance writer.

Neuberger got off to a big head start. Last winter, while Cordon was tending to his senatorial business and Oregon's interests in Washington, Dick Neuberger underwent a startling experience that led him into the race for the Senate. Wrote he, recently: "My wife looked at me. She had the same resolute glint in her eye as when she swam across the inlet near Juneau while the water was full of drifting ice floes. 'You're going to run for the U.S. Senate, Richard Neuberger,' said Maurine, 'if you get only two votes --yours and mine. I've made up my mind that the man who beat the oil-foreducation bill isn't going back to Washington unchallenged.' "

Thus inspired, Neuberger began his campaign. As a worried Cordon aide put it last week: "That Dick Neuberger has been hopping about the state like a goddam flea."

In normally Republican Oregon, Guy Cordon should have a built-in advantage. But one of his biggest drawbacks can actually be attributed to past G.O.P. successes: the state Republican organization has become flabby through lack of competitive election year exercise. The issues of tidelands and public power, on which Neuberger has harped tirelessly, add to Cordon's problems. Ike's appearance last week gave impetus to the Cordon drive, but the Senator still had some lost ground to make up.

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