MAINE: What-Is-It?

As Maine went in 1936, so did the nation not go. In this week's "barometer" election, her three incumbent representatives*—Republicans all (Messrs, Oliver, Smith, Brewster)—confused their New Deal issue by all plumping for the vote-catching Townsend Plan of old-age pensions. Republican Governor Lewis O. Barrows had the benefit of an anti-third-term tradition against former Governor Louis J. Brann, for whom Crooner Rudy Vallée stumped at the last moment. That all four Republicans won was less of a weather vane than a what-is-it, unless significance lay in the vote ratios—5 to 4 Republican this year (gubernatorial) as against 4 to...