Buffalo Bill Rides Again

Republican prospects in Wyoming, which looked bright after the suicide of Democratic Senator Lester C. Hunt (TIME. June 28), seem to have faded away like the mountain summer. G.O.P. Congressman William Henry Harrison, grandson and great-great-grandson of Presidents Benjamin and William Henry Harrison, won the Republican nomination, but only after a bitter primary fight with former G.O.P. State Chairman Ewing T. Kerr. Wyoming's tourist business is down about 15% and retail business is off about 10%. A drought has grown worse, and Democratic Candidate Joseph O'Mahoney, a veteran of 10 years in the Senate who was swept out of office by the Eisenhower landslide, is finding the parched grazing lands a fertile political asset.

O'Mahoney has found other potent issues in an appropriations cutback for Glendo Dam and in an Interior Department decision to sell North Platte River water stored in Kendrick project to downstream users in Nebraska (he took credit for getting the latter decision modified). Campaigning last week at Powell,, Wyo.,near the Shoshone Reservoir and Heart Mountain Reclamation Project, O'Mahoney invoked two national heroes in attacking Republican power policies. Said he: "The Shoshone project was conceived by Buffalo Bill . . . who organized a company to distribute the water. It soon became apparent, however, that private capital was inadequate to do the job. Finally, he turned the water rights over to the Federal Government under Teddy Roosevelt. This was not called creeping socialism in those days . . . We are only following in the steps of Theodore Roosevelt when the Government undertakes to build these dams."

O'Mahoney seemed to be having more effect on the voters than Harrison with his down-the-line defense of the Eisenhower program. G.O.P. Chairman Ralph Linn insisted that "people aren't dissatisfied." They are, he said, merely "disappointed and discouraged."

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