National Affairs: Little Win

The Republican Governor of Ohio, backed with the full force of his party's state machinery, last week won renomination—but only by 346,554 votes to 198,599 for an opponent who had pledged "not to lift a finger" in active candidacy. The lackluster winner: 42-year-old Governor C. (for nothing) William O'Neill; the loser: former Cincinnati Mayor Charles P. Taft, who had filed only as a "standby" after O'Neill suffered a mild heart attack (TIME, Feb. 10).

Part of the sizable Taft vote undoubtedly came from his membership in Ohio's first political family. But another part came as voter reaction against the unimpressive, do-nothing O'Neill administration. The results meant trouble for Republicans in November, when O'Neill must face the man he defeated in 1956: hard-running, fast-quipping Democrat Michael V. Di Salle, who easily won his party's nomination in an election where, for the first time since 1948, more Ohioans voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican.