Nation: Back to Business

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They really like Abraham Ribicoff back home in Connecticut. They sent him to Congress for two terms, elected him Governor in 1954, and re-elected him by a record 246,368 plurality in 1958. Last year Ribicoff, as President Kennedy's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, hardly had time to breathe Washington's miasmic air before Connecticut Democrats were begging him to come home to run this year against Republican Senator Prescott Bush. As of last week, Ribicoff had agreed to just that.

By present plans, Ribicoff will not make a formal announcement of candidacy; he will simply wait for his party's state convention to "draft" him in July. That draft is all but a foregone conclusion, particularly since Ribicoff's campaign manager will be Democratic National Committee Chairman John Bailey, who doubles as Connecticut's Democratic state chairman.

For the public record, Ribicoff insists that he has had the happiest time of his life as a member of the Kennedy Cabinet. "I find my job extremely exciting," he says. "The President has given me complete freedom in running the department. In the next year, more than half of the President's program will be in health, education and welfare—just about the entire domestic program except for the tariff question." But in fact Vote Getter Ribicoff can hardly wait to return to the business of getting votes.