National Affairs: Handicaps Overcome

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After a record twelve years as Governor—six two-year terms— Michigan's green-bow-tied G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams had enough, and felt that voters might feel the same way. Last week Michigan's voters, in primary elections, chose a Republican and Democratic' candidate for Soapy's well-warmed chair.

Democrats nominated a protégé of Soapy's who was not the betting favorite. Lieutenant Governor John Burley Swainson, a boyish-looking 35, lost both legs below the knees on an Army night patrol in France during World War II when a land mine blew up under him. The victory of another legless veteran, Republican Charles Potter, who got elected to the U.S. Senate from Michigan in 1952, encouraged Swainson to enter politics despite his handicap. He beat out favored Secretary of State James Hare by a decisive 70,000 votes.

The G.O.P. gubernatorial primary was uncontested: Michigan's often split Republicans united behind a single candidate, articulate Michigan State University Professor Paul Bagwell, 46. Overcoming a severe attack of paralytic polio, Bagwell became, at 29, Michigan State's youngest professor and, simultaneously, its youngest department head (speech, radio and dramatics). He ran for Governor against Soapy Williams in 1958 and, though it was a Democratic year almost everywhere else, polled a surprisingly strong 1,073,000 votes to Williams' 1,212,000. His showing helped convince Soapy that six terms was enough.

Health seemed to be a big issue in last week's primary. In the Senate race, labor-backed Democratic Incumbent Pat McNamara, 65, kept busy denying that his recent prostate operation was for cancer. The Republican who was nominated to run against him is also no stranger to physical infirmity: Congressman Alvin Bentley, 41, a multimillionaire by inheritance and an early backer of the late Senator Joe McCarthy, was almost killed on the floor of the House in March 1954 when three armed Puerto Rican nationalists in the gallery began spraying the House floor with bullets. The most seriously wounded of five Congressmen was Bentley: a bullet pierced his liver and stomach and a lung. Minnesota's Congressman Walter Judd, M.D. (who fortnight ago keynoted the 1960 Republican Convention), administered first aid to Bentley, probably saved his life. Eight weeks after the shooting, Bentley returned to a standing ovation from his House colleagues.