MIDWEST: Congressional Fights Tax the G.O.P.

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BADGERED and beset in the industrial states of both U.S. seaboards, Republicans these days look longingly toward their longtime Midwestern heartland to help them recoup expected losses in the 1958 congressional elections. It was in the Midwest, then a land of drought and depressed prices, that Republicans suffered their most painful 1956 House losses. It is in the Midwest, now a land of grains and gains, that the G.O.P. must recover if it is, at best, to close up the House gap on Democrats or, at worst, to forestall a Democratic landslide. Last week TIME correspondents traveled through the Midwest, reported on issues and outlook. Their major conclusion: far from booming back in their traditional bastion, Republicans are fighting desperately to hold their own on a bloody political battleground. The facts behind the findings:

¶ The Midwest is plainly prosperous, but farmers have not yet come to thank the policies of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson; in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa especially, Benson remains a political cussword.

¶Republicans have long depended on the small farming town as the center of their Midwestern strength. But recent years have seen a population trend away from the farm town to the cities. Indeed, with U.S. industry growing rapidly in the farm states, the importance of the farm vote itself has diminished. As a dramatic example, in Kansas, for years an absolute citadel of Republican-voting farmers, agriculture now ranks as seventh among the state's sources of personal income. ¶Farmers are especially sensitive to the inflationary effects of big-labor wage boosts and to Senate revelations of union corruption, and this may well be a sleeper issue working in the Republicans' favor. Yet in Kansas, Ohio and Colorado, the labor issue has been somewhat offset because right-to-work proposals appear on the ballot—to the distress of Republican candidates and the delight of Democrats, because right-to-work prompts organized labor to spend vast amounts of money in registration drives that usually work to Democratic advantage.

Such overall issues, when boiled down to specific congressional district campaigns, are often less important than personalities or local problems. But the issues have shaped a general Midwestern pattern that finds a score of Republican incumbents and only a few Democratic officeholders being seriously challenged. Some key races in key Midwestern states:

Indiana

Indiana has nine Republican incumbents, only two Democrats. The two Democrats, Gary's eight-term Ray Madden, 66, and Evansville's four-term Winfield

Denton, 61, appear safe. Four Republicans are in perilously close races. In the Eleventh (Indianapolis) District, polls show four-term Eisenhower Republican Charles Brownson, 44, slightly behind Democratic Theater Owner Joseph Barr, 40, who is helped by an unusually strong Marion County Democratic ticket. In the Ninth (Aurora) District, lone-wolf Republican Earl Wilson, 52, running as usual without help from the state G.O.P. organization, needs a good rural turnout to hold his seat against Bartholomew County Sheriff Earl Hogan, 38-In the Fifth (Kokomo) District, archconservative, teetotaling Republican John Beamer, 61, is fighting for his life against vigorous, teetotaling Huntington County Lawyer J. Edward Roush, 38.