Political Notes: Ins & Outs, 1968

In 1968's political poker game, some men who appeared undefeatable were cashing in their chips. Others, who earlier might have seemed unelectable, were drawing cards—and sometimes holding them close to the vest. Among them:

>Negro Leader Charles Evers, 44, who took over as Mississippi's N.A.A.C.P. field secretary when his brother Medgar was assassinated in 1963, announced he would run in the Feb. 27 open primary for the seat vacated last month by the state's racist Governor John Bell Williams. Evers has five white opponents, and to become the first Negro to represent Mississippi in Congress since Reconstruction, he must buck odds of 135,057 white voters v. 60,881 registered Negroes. Thus he appealed for white support, arguing that "Mississippi is getting tired of racism—black or white."

> Sargent Shriver, 52, was urged by an associate of Chicago's Democratic Mayor Richard J. Daley to give up his job fighting poverty and run against Republican Everett Dirksen in next fall's Illinois Senate race. The Daley aide, U.S. Representative Danny Rostenkowski, is chairman of the Democratic nominating committee, but whether his constant mention of Shriver as a potential candidate is a trial balloon or a bit of Daley deception, Shriver himself remains noncommittal. He will probably remain so until the Democratic nation al high command resolves a dilemma: whether to field a strong Dirksen foe to help carry Illinois for Lyndon Johnson, or offer a sacrificial scapegoat to the Republican who most powerfully supports L.B.J. on the Viet Nam war.

>Former Florida Governor LeRoy Collins, 58, has not lost an election since he was a stripling lawyer seeking a county prosecutor's job. Since then he has been director of the Community Relations Service for President Johnson and Under Secretary of Commerce. But when the courtly, white-maned Democrat opened a carefully plotted campaign to succeed retiring Senator George Smathers, Collins ran head-on into a primary challenge from State Attorney General Earl Faircloth, 47, who offered a blunt "conservative alternative" to Collins' record as a racial moderate. Already, foes are preparing to circulate photographs of Collins outside Selma, Ala., beside Martin Luther King during a civil rights march.

> The Republican Governor of Oregon, Thomas L. McCall, 54, temporarily dashed G.O.P. hopes of capturing the Senate seat of Democratic Maverick Wayne Morse, 67. "I like living in Oregon," the first-term Governor said in his refusal to run against Morse. But four-term Veteran Morse is far from a shoo-in; his assaults on the Administration's Viet Nam policy have cost him the backing of many longtime supporters in labor and elsewhere.

>Indiana's Republican Representative Charles Halleck, 67, announced his impending retirement after 34 years on Capitol Hill—even though he was certain of re-election this fall. A self-proclaimed "gut fighter" for conservative Republican measures, Halleck lost his post as House G.O.P. leader to Michigan's Gerald Ford after the 1964 Goldwater debacle, and never recovered his old stride. "I'm going to start spending more time doing things I like," said Hoosier Halleck, "like fishing, hunting and golfing."