The Rockies: ThePrice of The Meal

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THE ROCKIES

While the Johnsonian consensus shows signs of nationwide strain, nowhere is the return to partisan normalcy more noisily evident than in the Rockies. In the leading electoral contests in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, Republican candidates are keying their campaigns to a shared sense of resurgent conservatism. Democrats, for their part, are going somewhat less than all the way with L.B.J. The three races, all pretty much neck and neck, are made all the more uncertain by the frontier-style independence—economic as well as political—that still characterizes Rocky Mountain voting patterns.

Montana. Republican Governor Tim Babcock, 47, running for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by liberal Democrat Lee Metcalf, 55, maintains stoutly that "the rights of the people are being taken away" by Washington. Though Montana has elected only one Republican Senator in 60 years, the Governor strikes a responsive chord among the state's inflation-conscious cattlemen and lumbermen by demanding cutbacks in federal spending. Potentially, however, the most profitable issue for Babcock is the junior Senator's disagreement with the Johnson Administration's Viet Nam policy. While Metcalf advocates that the U.S. "pull out of the jungles and hold the enclaves we have in hand," Babcock attacks what he calls a "no-win" policy, urges intensified bombing in the North.

A high school graduate who built a successful trucking business, Babcock was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1960, acceded to the governorship two years later when Republican Incumbent Donald Nutter was killed in an airplane crash. Since barely winning election in his own right in 1964, Babcock has become a cocky, polished political performer. The G.O.P. has plastered the state with "Win with Tim" billboards and issued 30,000 bumper stickers proclaiming WE EAT MONTANA BEEF, NOT L.B.J. BALONEY.

Metcalf has little money for advertising. A burly onetime varsity boxer at Stanford University, he was a four-term Congressman when he won his Senate seat in 1960. Though a somewhat listless campaigner, Metcalf stands to benefit from the fact that Babcock, who has two years to go in his four-year term as Governor, promised in 1964 to serve it out. The Senator also invokes his congressional experience, while tagging Babcock as a political novice beholden to business interests—though Metcalf himself relies heavily on Big Labor's support. Above all, Metcalf is counting on help from Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield, the mahatma of Montana politics.

Wyoming. Like Babcock, Wyoming's G.O.P. Governor Clifford Hansen, 54, hopes to move from the statehouse to the U.S. Senate, is running hard for the seat of retiring Republican Milward Simpson, 68. Though Rancher-Banker Hansen can point to a fairly progressive record as Governor—including an increase in the state's minimum hourly wage from 75¢ to $1—he is unmistakably conservative. Stumping the state, he blames inflation on needless Government spending, advocates that U.S. military commanders be allowed to go all out in Viet Nam.