Friday, Sep. 18, 1964

So Long, Chub

It was a political upset two years ago when everybody's 1941 All-America guard from Harvard, Endicott ("Chub") Peabody, was elected Governor of Massachusetts by a skin-thin margin over Republican Incumbent John Volpe. But there he was--tall, seedily handsome, fumbling through his prepared speeches as if he had just caught a linebacker's elbow between the eyes.

He bounced into the Statehouse full of zeal, immediately made a bad mistake by trying, and failing, to purge powerful House Speaker John ("Iron Duke") Thompson. He also lost political points by urging that Massachusetts should abolish the death penalty--at a time when several policemen had been shot to death and the Boston strangler continued his murder spree.

Still, Peabody was easily renominated at the state Democratic convention in July, beating out his own rebellious lieutenant governor, Francis Xavier Bellotti. But Bellotti, 41, a scrappy Quincy lawyer with twelve children, ignored his convention defeat, entered the Democratic primary against Chub, scrambled energetically over the state tightening ties with local Democratic organizations --something Peabody had ignored. On the stump, Bellotti boasted of his impoverished boyhood, proudly told Democrats: "My college education, my house, my car, everything that I am and have, came as a result of Democratic-sponsored social legislation."

Ivy Leaguer Peabody could not match that, instead countered with a strong public endorsement from Senator Teddy Kennedy, hospitalized in Boston with a broken back. Even the Kennedy magic didn't help. When the votes were counted last week, Bellotti had won--363,243 to 335,620. He will run against John Volpe, who got the Republican nomination without opposition.

To add irony to Chub Peabody's humiliation, the unpurgeable Speaker John Thompson was renominated for his legislative seat--despite the fact that he was indicted in May on 70 counts of conspiracy and bribery.

In other primary results last week:

>> New Hampshire. Former State Representative John Pillsbury, 46, was nominated by Republicans to oppose Democrat John King, 47, in a rematch of the 1962 election. Supremely confident Democrats urged Republicans to write in King's name on their primary ballot since he was unopposed within his own party. King wound up third in a field of seven Republicans, trailing only Pillsbury and temperamental former Governor Wesley Powell, who announced he would now go into "forced retirement" from politics.

>> Arizona. Republicans nominated former Goldwater Campaign Field Director Richard Kleindienst, 41, for Governor, and three-term Governor Paul Fannin, 57, to run for Goldwater's U.S. Senate seat. Both could have tough going in November. Kleindienst faces Democrat Sam Goddard, a Tucson lawyer who lost narrowly to Fannin in 1962. Fannin must run against a bright newcomer, Democrat Roy L. Elson, 33, a former aide to Arizona Senator Carl Hayden who won handily over six other Democrats with Hayden's powerful machine in support.

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