Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, the scholarly chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is seeking his sixth term, this year faces the political scrap of his career. His opponent: popular Governor Dale Bumpers. The governor announced last week that he would challenge Fulbright in the Democratic primary in May.
Bumpers, 48, scarcely represents a radical alternative to 68-year-old Fulbright. Both are moderate progressives in a Southern context. An adroit, crowd-pleasing campaigner, Bumpers exploed into Arkansas politics by running against Republican Governor Winthrop Rockefeller in 1970 and burying him in a landslide. In the...