A Traveler's Perils

Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, the scholarly chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is seeking his sixth term, this year faces the political scrap of his career. His opponent: popular Governor Dale Bumpers. The governor announced last week that he would challenge Fulbright in the Democratic primary in May.

Bumpers, 48, scarcely represents a radical alternative to 68-year-old Fulbright. Both are moderate progressives in a Southern context. An adroit, crowd-pleasing campaigner, Bumpers exploed into Arkansas politics by running against Republican Governor Winthrop Rockefeller in 1970 and burying him in a landslide. In the statehouse, the former small-town lawyer proved to be an adept administrator. He reorganized the government, improved educational and medical facilities, and lured more industry into the state. But after two terms as the nation's lowest paid Governor ($10,000 a year), he became bored with the job and anxious to move up the political ladder.

An early poll gives Bumpers a commanding two-to-one lead. But then Bill Fulbright usually starts from behind because he is too much of an Arkansas traveler; he does not come home enough to suit the voters. Once he does, however, he knows how to please. Shedding his scholarship, he becomes downright folksy as he reminds his constituents how he has looked after them in Washington--and indeed he has. While fretting over international problems, he has always found time to promote such Arkansas products as soybeans and poultry. His constituents, moreover, take pride in his international reputation even if they do not share his views. Local buttons popped when Henry Kissinger visited Little Rock last month to confer with Fulbright on the Middle East oil talks.

Voters who admire both men are in a quandary. Says J. Bill Becker, president of the state AFL-CIO: "At least we won't be choosing between the lesser of two evils, but rather choosing the better of the best."

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