Return of the Old Tiger

The mustache and trademark eyebrows are snow white, and Wayne Morse looks his 73 years. But he refuses to act the senior citizen. At a Memorial Day picnic, Oregonians, who call him the Old Tiger, watched him sprint across the grass after a sign that had been blown from a tree. Next day Democrats showed confidence in his wind by nominating him for his old seat in the U.S. Senate.

Morse has been a long time in coming back from his 1968 defeat--an attempt two years ago failed--but this time he might just make it. His victory in last week's primary over State Senate President Jason Boe, 45, and two other candidates was a shrewdly wrought upset. Boe is a popular liberal with whom Morse has no policy quarrel. So Morse focused on his own record during his long (1944-68), colorful Senate career. He constantly reminded voters that he was an enemy of excessive presidential power long before President Nixon unintentionally made that a popular issue. At every opportunity he campaigned against Nixon, recalling that they were foes even in the days when they were both Republicans.* "If I'm sent back to the Senate," he promised, "I'm going to pick up where I left off, and that's the worst news for President Nixon that anyone could send to him."

While Boe ran a vigorous and highly visible fight that took him to each part of the state three times, Morse did little more than nudge the populace with a carefully paced effort. He appeared mostly before little groups of people in the state's many small communities. His press interviews were generally limited to local television and radio stations and weekly newspapers. His only major speech was at the commencement exercises at the University of Oregon School of Law, where he once was dean for 13 years.

The understated effort was enough for Oregon's unpredictable voters, who appeared to be in a particularly ornery mood this spring. In a state known for its enthusiastic acceptance of progressive politics, the primary produced a number of unexpected results. They suggested that Morse was aided by a feeling of distrust and antipathy toward government--attitudes he has long expressed. He won 153,176 votes, compared with Boe's 123,393. (Two minor candidates together polled fewer than 36,000.)

In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, former State Treasurer Bob Straub, 54, unexpectedly nosed out both liberal State Senator Betty Roberts and Incumbent Treasurer James Redden, who had broad support from organized labor and the press. On the Republican side, voters rejected Clay Myers, the secretary of state whom Governor Tom McCall had strongly backed to succeed him. Instead, they chose conservative State Senator Victor Atiyeh. Finally, voters of both parties joined to defeat five of six statewide ballot measures, including a bond issue for water projects, proposals to use some gasoline-tax funds for mass transit, and a school-tax measure that would have shifted some of the burden from property taxes to income and corporate levies.

Bloody Hands. In that kind of atmosphere, anything can happen in November--including the defeat of Republican Incumbent Senator Bob Packwood, the man who beat Morse six years ago. Morse has begun to make an issue of Packwood's former support of Nixon and says that he intends to tar the Senator in a general condemnation of Republican politics. "How can Packwood explain his guilt in permitting the illegal bombing of Cambodia?" Morse demands with his old flair for rhetorical knife work. "He has blood all over his hands. There is no blood on Wayne Morse's hands."

At the moment, Packwood, 41, seems ahead. He has been a popular and progressive legislator. He has also attempted to put a good deal of distance between himself and Nixon concerning Watergate (he found the transcripts "rather frightening"). But Morse overcame the youth v. age issue in the primary and seems in good shape for what he promises will be his last campaign.

* Morse quit the G.O.P. in 1952 and was an Independent for two years before he finally settled down as a Democrat.

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