Nation: Sitting Pretty?

Pennsylvania's Hugh Scott, 63, ought to be sitting pretty. A veteran Congressman and a former G.O.P. National Committee chairman (1948-49) with a gift for the quick quip, Scott was elected to the Senate in 1958 with an impressive upset victory over then Governor George Leader. This year his Democratic opposition is much less formidable: Scott is running against Genevieve Blatt, a 51 -year-old spinster whose trademark is an assortment of high-crowned, beflowered hats. Miss Blatt won by a mere 491 votes, out of more than 1,000,000 cast, in an April primary that left Pennsylvania's Democratic Party bitterly divided. Her nomination is still being contested in court.

Scott has little political use for Goldwater, is an outspoken moderate Republican. "I was born a conservative," he says, "and have become increasingly liberal. Most of my friends started out as liberals and became conservative." At the Republican Convention, he was floor manager for Bill Scranton and, after Goldwater's nomination, made some sounds about refusing to support Barry.

But he changed his mind, partly under persuasion from Scranton, partly because conservative businessmen, among them some of the Pennsylvania G.O.P.'s biggest financial benefactors, threatened to withhold their contributions unless he endorsed Goldwater. Since then, Scott has lukewarmly backed Barry in conservative western Pennsylvania, avoided all mention of Goldwater in urban areas.

All this delights "Gen" Blatt, who currently holds elective office as Pennsylvania's state secretary of internal affairs. She seems to be running more against Goldwater than against Scott. She has been particularly effective in tarring Goldwater with a trigger-happy nuclear image. Noting that she has never married and is therefore childless, she says of Goldwater: "I don't want to trust the safety of my nieces and nephews or your sons and daughters and husbands to a man like that."

Most Pennsylvania observers rate Scott and Blatt dead even—in a race that Scott would win hands down if it weren't for Barry.