THE CAMPAIGN: Fork in the Road

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When the westbound pioneers crossed the Continental Divide on the Oregon Trail, according to a legend told in the State of Washington, they came upon a fork in the road. A blank signpost pointed south, another aimed west and bore the words: "This way to the Oregon Territory." Travelers who could read, says the legend, went on to the great Northwest; the illiterates veered south to California.

Today most literate Washingtonians know from billboards plastered from Seattle to Pysht, Humptulips, Fishtrap, Washougal, Tiger and Nooksack that the state is in the middle of a classic campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate—a kind of modern-day fork in the road. One direction leads to Democrat Warren Magnuson, who is staking his fight for re-election on a record of performance of over twelve years in the Senate, and promises a comfortable status quo, only more so. The other leads to Arthur Bernard Langlie, longtime governor of Washington, who promises to work in the Senate for a different kind of future, who looks down his sharp nose at federal aid to states, scorns huge Government-run public-power programs, and plasters the state with a simple but stern motto: "High Office Demands High Principle."

A New Senate. In the Washington senatorial campaign and in a dozen-odd of the 34 other current senatorial contests in the U.S. (see box) lie strong Republican hopes for recapturing control of the U.S. Senate in November. Last week in San Francisco, with the presidential and vice-presidential ticket duly nominated, the G.O.P. turned full attention to its allout drive to win the Senate. But along with the will to win, Dwight Eisenhower pledged himself to another kind of campaign: to fashion a new Republican Party that will bring into action the principles of Eisenhower Republicanism. To this end he has given his personal blessing to such new senatorial candidates as Kentucky's John Sherman Cooper, Kentucky's Thruston Morton, Oregon's Douglas McKay and Colorado's Dan Thornton. But in the dual battle for both principle and ballots, no senatorial hopeful personifies more clearly Ike's kind of candidate than Art Langlie, honored by the party as the keynoter of the 1956 convention.

Langlie is a medium-height (5 ft. 8 in.), grey-tonsured lawyer who has spent 16 years as a reform councilman, reform mayor of Seattle and governor. At 56, he is ending his third gubernatorial term, the longest any governor has served in the 67-year history of the Evergreen State. Like many Washingtonians, he is of Scandinavian descent, with the blue eyes and sharp nose of his ancestors. His manner is easy and sincere; his smile is warm. But the keystone of his character is a deep, uncompromising religious faith.