ELECTIONS: Alaskan Tea Party

The Territory of Alaska this year was probably the only place on earth where a platform orator could get a laugh with the well-worn opening: "Ladies and Gentlemen.'' On Alaska's election day last week, this local joke proved to be on the Republican Party, which was turned out of power by a Democratic landslide.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay was responsible for the joke. On an Alaskan inspection trip last summer, he found voters bitter about the Republican decision to press for Hawaiian but not for Alaskan statehood. Instead of mum bling weasel words, McKay publicly told statehood advocates that they were too belligerent in their approach to Congress and suggested that they "start acting like ladies and gentlemen." He resented charges that his department was trying to hold on to Alaska as an "empire." "I get sick and tired," he told an Anchorage audience, "of being kicked around the way I've been kicked around by the people of Alaska."

McKay's remarks and the. decision on statehood that preceded them indicated that the Republicans in Washington had given up hope of carrying Alaska, which had gone Democratic in the last eleven biennial elections, except in 1946 and 1952 (the only times the Republicans won nationally).

When the returns came in the Demo crats won 21 of 24 seats in the Territorial House, where they had only four before, and eight of the nine Senate seats at stake. Said the Anchorage Times: "A Boston Tea Party in Alaska fashion."