National Affairs: Pennsylvania Primaries

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A brown horse and a red-haired woman caused commotion in the streets of Philadelphia last week. Beauteous, impulsive Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, wife of Pennsylvania's Governor, gayly trotted through City Hall Plaza traffic in a jingling silvery sleigh on rollers. Mounted on the shafts were signs urging PINCHOT FOR SENATOR. Overhead fluttered a banner with this strange device: VOTERS—DON'T LET REED TAKE YOU FOR ANOTHER SLEIGH RIDE—VOTE FOR PINCHOT. "It's awfully silly," the Governor's ebullient lady confided, "but it makes a good picture." Political tricks and stratagems far craftier than this were going on all over the Keystone State where Democrats and Republicans were winding up their hottest primary campaigns in years. Having tasted blood in 1932, the Democrats were out to mass a thumping vote and carry the state for the first time in half a century. Badly demoralized by local defeats, the Republicans sensed their peril. Pennsylvania's voters prepared to go to the polls this week and select their party candidates for the November elections. For Governor— The regular Democratic State Committee backed George Hansell Earle 3rd's gubernatorial candidacy. Candidate Earle, 43, is vice president of Pennsylvania Sugar Co. For 20 years he was one of the best polo players on Philadelphia's sporting Main Line. His grandfather presided at the first Republican National Convention, but Mr. Earle was early on the Roosevelt Bandwagon. For his campaign efforts the President made him Minister to Austria, a post he resigned last March to run for Governor of Pennsylvania. Last week he promised, if elected, to "go to Washington and borrow the well-known Roosevelt big stick" and crush "invisible government by lobbies" at Harrisburg. Mr. Earle's chief Democratic opponent is Charles D. Copeland, a Westmoreland County Judge. The Philadelphia Record, party organ in Eastern Pennsylvania, has damned Candidate Copeland as an anti-Rooseveltman and "Mellon's messenger boy." A Democratic ticket more comic than formidable is: William McNair, Mayor of Pittsburgh, for Governor; pugilistic Eddie McCloskey, Mayor of Johnstown, for Secretary of Internal Affairs. So badly disorganized was the Republican State Committee that it failed to back anyone's candidacy for the governorship. Chief contender appeared to be Attorney General William A. Schnader, endorsed by the Mellon-Vare machine. His motto: "I refuse to sell you a gold brick." Among the rash of twelve other Republican candidates, most promising was Lieut. Governor Edward C. Shannon, a conservative out-state farmer with veteran backing. For Senator, Joseph Guffey, Democratic boss of the state, was whooping up his own candidacy. In 1890 he went to Princeton, met and admired Woodrow Wilson, made money in oil in Pittsburgh. He persuaded John Jacob Raskob that he could carry his state for Smith in 1928 with half a million dollars. He lost the state by a million votes, but was left with an effective party machine. Although traditionally Republican, Pennsylvania's votes in the Democratic National Convention are surpassed only by New York's. This bloc was Franklin Roosevelt's nucleus when he went after the presidential nomination in 1932. Boss Guffey lost Pennsylvania for Roosevelt by only 157,000 votes. If he did not think there was an exceptionally