MASSACHUSETTS: Second Chance

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Amid the cheers of Democrats, many of whom took a dim view of him two years ago because he seemed overambitious, fiery Foster Furcolo, 45, stormed back to center stage in Massachusetts politics last week. Everybody had expected Ex-Congressman (1949-52) Furcolo to win nomination as the party's candidate for governor, but nobody had expected a landslide. Furcolo, running strongly in nearly every precinct in the state, won going away with 357,409 votes, to only 131,875 for his primary opponent, able former State Auditor Thomas H. Buckley. In a comparatively light vote, Furcolo's plurality was the biggest a Democrat ever received in a contested gubernatorial primary in Massachusetts.

Son of an Italian father and Irish mother, Furcolo came within 29,000 votes of upsetting the G.O.P.'s blueblooded Senator Leverett Saltonstall in 1954, despite the fact that influential Democratic Senator John Kennedy refused to take a stand against Saltonstall. This year, promised campaign support by the ever more powerful Kennedy, Furcolo is given a fighting chance to beat the Republican nominee for governor, smart, aggressive Lieut. Governor Sumner Whittier.

But in their elation over Furcolo's prospects, Massachusetts Democrats shifted uneasily over another primary result: Congressman Tom Lane, only two weeks out of a federal prison, where he served a four-month term for income-tax evasion (TIME, Sept. 17), easily won renomination over four opponents in the Seventh Congressional District. The Democratic fear: Lane's name on the ticket may drain votes away from an otherwise strong slate.