POLITICAL NOTES: A Feud in the Desert

The political climate in Utah (pop. 860,000) rarely erupts in thunderstorms visible beyond the border. But for three years, chain lightning has crackled between snow-capped Senior Senator Arthur V. Watkins and volcanic ex-Governor J. (for Joseph) Bracken Lee. Watkins cannot forgive Lee a long record of sheer perversity—outspoken criticism of President Eisenhower, opposition to federal income tax, foreign aid, federal aid to education and Arthur V. Watkins. Lee cannot forgive Watkins for having openly supported a Republican candidate in 1956 who beat Lee out in his bid for an unprecedented third term. After his defeat Bracken Lee holed up in private life as national director of For America, an overstuffed lobby group as far to the right in its principles as Lee. This week, to the surprise of no one, Lee, 58, announced he is gunning for 71-year-old Arthur Watkins' seat.

With the inborn shrewdness of the feuder, Bracken Lee has carefully selected his ground. He will run as an Independent, out of reach of disapproving Republicans at the state convention and the primary election, but accessible to Democrats of a mind to stop Watkins by stepping across the party boundary at primary time to vote for Watkins' competition. Both parties, said Lee impartially in announcing his independent candidacy, "stand for and support the same policy of high tax, waste and giveaway programs."

To get an exact measure of the effect of Maverick Lee's intervention, Utahans will have to wait until the November general election. Even admirers of the Lee brand of political intransigence give him only an outside chance at best of beating Arthur Watkins.