A Letter From The Publisher, Nov. 20, 1978

For TIME correspondents covering the election across the country last week, the campaigns and the moments of victory or defeat produced some vivid impressions that will stay fresh years from now when they look back on Nov. 7, 1978. Midwest Bureau Chief Benjamin Gate, for example, followed Illinois Senator Charles Percy throughout his come-from-behind re-election battle, and witnessed an extraordinary victory speech. Reports Cate: "Wan and misty-eyed, Percy could not control the trembling of his hands as he read his statement. The tough race had humbled a normally proud man." After Philadelphians defeated a proposal that would have allowed Mayor Frank Rizzo to seek a third term, New York Correspondent Robert Parker visited the headquarters of the victors and watched "snake dances with revelers flashing signs, DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD." At Governor Jerry Brown's re-election party in Los Angeles, Correspondent Joe Kane observed while celebrants, dressed in costumes ranging from knickers to gold lamè, absorbed mariachi music. "To top it all off," says Kane, "an Arab sheik arrived in full native costume, including six rings. He easily fit into this curious, Bruegelian scene."

Perhaps the correspondents' most pleasant memories of the 1978 election are held by two men with greatly dissimilar experience. Senior Correspondent Jim Bell, who rode the Wendell Willkie presidential train in 1940, believes this year's Senate race in Massachusetts between Edward Brooke and Paul Tsongas was the fairest and most honorable campaign he has ever seen. "The two candidates," says Bell, "ended up the way they started: gentlemen."

Jeff Melvoin, covering his first campaign for TIME, recalls the sight of G. Carlton Snowe helping his daughter-in-law Olympia Snowe win a seat in Congress from Maine. Reports Melvoin: "A big, broad man with an easy outdoor manner, 'Carlie' greeted his neighbors as they came to vote. As I drove away in the bleak New England afternoon, his white hair made him easy to pick out: a large figure bundled up against the cold wind, with a warm word for each passerby, going the last mile for his daughter-in-law."