Nation: Demise of Hubert's D.F.L.

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Attacking Anderson's frequent and unexplained absenteeism in the Senate, Boschwitz campaigned effectively, charging: "First Anderson appoints himself to the job and then he doesn't show up for work." Boschwitz won by more than 200,000 votes. Perpich ran a closer race but lost his Governor's office to veteran Republican Congressman Albert Quie, a moderate who earned a reputation as one of the G.O.P.'s most effective legislators in his ten terms in the House.

While justifiably proud of their victories, the Republican winners conceded that they had been helped by their opponents. "The D.F.L. didn't know how to act without Humphrey," observed Senator-elect Durenberger. But he predicted: "It's going to take a few years for the D.F.L. to react to the loss of Hubert, and then it will be back." Republicans nonetheless had reason to savor their good fortune. One of the cheeriest of all was former Governor Harold Stassen, the boy wonder of Minnesota politics in 1938, before his party was routed by Humphrey's D.F.I Vowed the never-give-up Stassen: "We are going to rebuild the Republican Party in Minnesota." Stassen, 71, was so buoyed by his old party's rebirth that he promptly announced he would run again for the presidency in 1980, his seventh such campaign.