POLITICS: The Minnesota Explosion

The Eisenhower organization in Minnesota was a scale model of what a political machine should not be. Head of Minnesotans for Eisenhower was white-haired Bradshaw Mintener, 49-year-old vice president and general counsel of Pillsbury Mills. Amateur Mintener and most of his workers were ready & willing, but inexperienced. "Headquarters" was an ill-furnished, dingy, rent-free storeroom in downtown Minneapolis. For a while there were three telephones, but two were disconnected to save on the bill.

"Drive for Five." When Mintener wanted to enter Ike in the Minnesota primary, the headmen of the Eisenhower-for-President movement in Washington said no. That was Friend Harold Stassen's territory, they said, and should not be violated. But the Minnesotans entered a slate of delegates for Ike, anyway. Some legal technicalities weren't complied with, and the State Supreme Court threw the slate off the ballot. When that happened, 13,000 undistributed "I Like Ike" buttons were shipped on for use in South Dakota.

After Ike's victory in New Hampshire, one of the Minnesota eager beavers had an idea. Maybe they could get some write-in votes for Ike, thought young (32) Forst Lowery, Minneapolis Safety Council manager. He asked for a state ruling on whether write-ins would be counted. Just four days before the primary the answer came from the statehouse: yes.

The Mintener machine wheezed into action. Zealous crusaders began a "drive for five" telephone-call campaign: everyone called five friends, urged a write-in for Ike and asked each friend to call five more. On primary eve, Mintener figured his organization had spent just $600 on the write-in campaign. Said he: "If we get as many as 10,000 or 15,000 write-ins for Ike, I'll be thrilled."

"On Their Heads." Primary day—the first presidential primary in Minnesota since 1916—brought rain, snow and mud. A light vote was expected. But not long after the polls opened, election workers knew something strange was happening. Voters were sloshing through the weather in unexpected numbers. In St. Paul, Duluth, Austin and St. Louis Park (a Minneapolis suburb), where voting machines are used, an astonishing number of voters were going through a tedious process. They had to push aside a metal cover on a vertical write-in slot 1½ in. long, reach up (the slot was 5 ft. 9 in. from the floor) to write a name vertically, from the bottom of the slot to the top. "Damn near had to stand on their heads, I guess," said Ramsey County (St. Paul) Auditor Eugene A. Monick. At many polling places where machines were not used, the supply of ballots ran out. Some voters stood in line for hours, finally wrote their choice on scratch paper initialed by the election judges.