One for the Republicans?

In tiny Delaware, where Vice President Nixon did some politicking last week. Republicans have one of their best chances to take a U.S. Senate seat away from the Democrats. The candidates: reedy-voiced incumbent Senator J. (for Joseph) Allen Frear Jr., 51, a sometime farmer, banker and small businessman, and hefty G.O.P. Representative Herbert B. (for Birchby) Warburton, 38, a Wilmington lawyer.

Conservative Democrat Frear has estranged many of Delaware's liberals—:this year his voting record showed 67% agreement with Delaware's Republican Senator John Williams. His best hope lies in the state's spotty employment situation and in the fact that farm prices are off.

Candidate Warburton has made his campaign along Eisenhower Republican lines. He points out that the Eisenhower Administration has lived up to its mandate by ending the Korean war and averting a peacetime depression. He argues that employment is up 4% over 1949, the last peacetime year of the Truman Administration. Warburton's Eisenhower pitch is solid; he had an excellent pro-Ike voting record in the House.

Last week's best estimate of the Delaware contest: close, with an edge to Warburton.