THE CAMPAIGN: Fork in the Road

(2 of 6)

A Presbyterian, he attends weekly services, teaches a ninth-grade Sunday-school class, has a picture of Jesus on his office wall. He worries lest his religious zeal be taken for political haymaking, guards against that possibility by extreme measures; e.g., he slips out of a service during the benediction to avoid church-step handshaking, insists that he be known to his Sunday-school class as Mr. (not Governor) Langlie. He neither smokes nor drinks, but is undisturbed if others do. In his eyes the ultimate evil is immorality, especially in politics. Says a longtime friend: "If there is an unavoidable choice in making an appointment between immorality and mediocrity, he will even settle for mediocrity."

But religion has made Arthur Langlie into no holier-than-thou. He socializes easily, goes to parties, can stand glassless and gay at a cocktail party without making drinkers feel awkward. His conversation is punctuated occasionally by a "damn" or "hell." But religion has shaped a fierce, almost fanatic zeal for honest government, coupled with a conviction that all responsible citizens should participate. A political reporter once listened to a minor Langlie speech, reported later: "There was nothing new in what the governor said. But every voter who heard him was made to feel that the future of the republic depended upon his participation in government."

Good-Time Maggie. Heavyset, handsome Warren Grant Magnuson, 51, is in many ways Langlie's exact opposite. Maggie Magnuson (who says privately of Langlie's piety: "We better watch that guy at Easter time") is a cigar-puffing, Cadillackadaisical, free-roaming bachelor. Like Langlie, he has a Scandinavian background. But there the similarity ceases. A Washingtonian who knows both sums up the difference: "Art Langlie is the right-living, stern-conscienced, Sunday-go-to-meeting Scandinavian. Maggie is the ever-loving, good-time-Charlie Scandinavian come out of the woods on Saturday night for fun and sociability and a yearning to spread joy. Langlie is the voice of political conscience. Maggie is the voice of political service."

Service, during four House terms and two in the Senate, has been Maggie's byword. He has never lost a campaign (and is today the 14th-ranking member of the Senate). Representing a state whose 1,134 miles of shoreline and harbors make him sensitive to the merchant marine, he sponsored the bill providing that 50% of postwar EGA foreign aid be carried abroad in U.S. ships. He has worked ably to improve air service to the Northwest, business opportunities for Washington pulp mills, the catch for the salmon fishermen. Warren Magnuson's name is on no momentous legislation of the last twelve years, but this omission does not bother him. As Maggie sees it, one of his values is this: "The State of Washington would have to wait about twelve years to get themselves in the same position of seniority with a new man."

Back home, regardless of party, many Washingtonians feel the same way. Magnuson has friends and supporters not only in nominally Democratic circles, e.g., in the labor movement, but in nominally Republican circles as well. To a reception recently at Seattle's exclusive Rainier Club came 125 Seattle businessmen to thank him for work well done and wish him well in the future.