Nation: Down with Corruption

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Even though Carey was perceived by many voters as remote and cranky, he piled up a quarter-million vote plurality over Duryea. After the results were in, Carey vowed to do something about his personality problem: "I announce that I will not be aloof, alone, remote, inaccessible and grouchy, or any of those things. Tonight I shall embark on a new campaign." He quickly left for a vacation in the Bahamas with Anne Ford Uzielli, the 35-year-old daughter of Henry Ford II, amid speculation the two would marry.

Ella Grasso, 59, also had some problems with her prickly personality. But her record of fiscal austerity prevented Republican Congressman Ronald Sarasin from making a believable antispending pitch to Connecticut voters. She defeated Sarasin easily and will remain one of the country's two women Governors. (The other is Washington's Dixy Lee Ray.)

While Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke's personal and legal problems were dooming him to defeat, voters installed another new face, Democrat Edward J. King, 53, as Governor. One of the most conservative Democrats elected anywhere outside the South, King had trouble getting support from Bay State liberals, and received only the most lukewarm endorsements from Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. But King had the advantage of running with Thomas P. O'Neill III, 34, who was seeking the lieutenant governorship and who happens to be the son of Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. With the Speaker's help and with heavy support from blue-collar voters, King beat Republican blueblood Francis W. Hatch Jr., by more than 100,000 votes.

Ultraconservative Governor Meldrim Thomson Jr., 66, has dominated New Hampshire politics for three successive terms. In league with powerful right-wing Publisher William Loeb, Thomson has kept the Granite State free of both a sales tax and a personal income tax, the only place in the nation where neither levy is imposed. But this year, shortly before the election, 80,000 utility bills were mailed out across the state with a special surtax to pay for the controversial Seabrook nuclear power plant. Thomson had refused to veto a bill prohibiting that special charge and was suddenly cast as a less vigilant opponent of added taxation than his opponent, Democrat Hugh Gallen. An independent candidate, former Republican Governor Wesley Powell, drained some 12,000 Republican votes away from the Governor, contributing to Gallen's 10,400-vote victory margin and helping to end Thomson's rule.