The Election: WHO’S WHO IN THE STATEHOUSE

Promising Winners in Ten Key Races

Arizona. The state’s powerful legislature seldom allows any Governor to run up an impressive record, but the score card of Paul Fannin looks surprisingly good. Conservative Republican Fannin, a gas distributor from Phoenix, had never run for office when he was elected Governor two years ago, but since then he has acted like a political veteran. He pushed through a much needed sales tax earmarked for educational funds, revived a Good Neighbor policy toward the Mexican state of Sonora. His pet highway-safety program ranks among the nation’s best.

Maine. Lanky, moderately liberal Republican John Hathaway Reed, 39, is as typical a “Down East” product as the Cobbler potatoes he grows. He talks with a twang, was a first-rate harness racer until his wife made him quit after he had a bad spill; now he drives a collection of antique Packards. Reed entered the state senate in 1957, and as senate president succeeded automatically to the governorship on the death of Democrat Clinton Clauson. His ten-month first term was lacklustre; in his second he promises to improve state schools.

Montana. In Montana, where Senators are usually liberal Democrats, the Governor as often as not is a middle-of-the-road Republican. Plodding, unspectacular Donald Nutter, 44, seems to be a typical G.O.P. statehouse product. A war hero (B24 piloting in the China theater) turned small-town tractor salesman, stocky, cigar-smoking Don Nutter served two workhorse terms in the state senate, in the process developed from a cautious reactionary to a conscientious, business-minded liberal with a host of friends and supporters throughout the state.

Illinois. Handsomely greying Democrat Otto Kerner, 52, whose father was once a popular state attorney general, is married to the daughter of Chicago’s Mayor Anton Cermak (killed in Miami in 1933 by an assassin’s bullet intended for Franklin Roosevelt). Kerner has an impressive six-year record of his own as a reform-minded Cook County (Chicago) judge who helped revamp local judicial procedures, led a successful fight to modernize state election statutes. His key campaign promises: more aid for schools, hospitals and depressed areas downstate.

Kansas. Shy, personable Republican John Anderson Jr., 43, prefers raising Shetland ponies to playing politics but has never lost an election. Anderson has been a topflight county attorney and state senator, has served for the past four years as attorney general under his election victim, Democratic Governor George Docking. Liberal by Kansas G.O.P. standards (he favors repeal of the state’s right-to-work laws), Anderson had to beat out his party’s choice for the nomination in a primary. Major campaign promise: more cash for state schools.

Delaware. As board chairman of a prosperous Maryland fertilizer company, conservative Democrat Elbert Nostrand Carvel, 50, has inevitably been the butt of some unprintable political jokes. As a campaigner. Republicans have learned, he is no laughing matter. Elected lieutenant governor in 1944, he won the state’s top job four years later, and was best known for his school-building program. Farm-fancying Bert Carvel is a bland, high-pitched orator, but he is widely credited with having the shrewdest political brain among top Delaware Democrats.

Iowa. Norman Arthur Erbe, 41, is, by local reckoning, “a good old Iowa stubborn conservative.” As state attorney general he has become well known as a corn-belt Comstock through his war against pornographic magazines. A massive (6 ft. 1 in., 215 Ibs.) lawyer and an impressive speaker, Republican Erbe is the son of a Lutheran minister, a war hero (D.F.C., 35 combat missions over Europe as a B-17 pilot). He advocates a cut in property taxes, more state aid to schools (to be paid for out of the huge surplus), revival of the state highway program.

Rhode Island. The son of an Italian immigrant who operated a popular eatery in Lakewood, John Anthony Notte Jr., 51, was a college baseball star, a World War II naval officer in the Mediterranean and an up-from-the-wards politician who made good. A dapper, well-tailored gladhander, Democrat Notte has been so busy with his own long-range campaign for the governorship that his primary opponent accused him of neglecting his duties as lieutenant governor. A run-of-the-mill liberal, Notte is rated as a political bantamweight by neutrals and many Democrats.

Florida. Conservative Democrat C. (for Cecil) Farris Bryant, 46, is a prosperous Ocala lawyer who was twice voted the state’s most valuable man by Florida’s Junior Chamber of Commerce, was judged by reporters to be the state’s best legislator during his five terms in the house of representatives (his fourth, as speaker). Prim and bookish, Bryant is a Harvard Law School graduate, won both this year’s run-off primary and the election with a surefire (in the redneck counties where he ran best) campaign pledge: No integration in Florida schools.

Wisconsin. One of the disappointed hopefuls in the vice-presidential bingo game at the Democratic Convention, Governor Gaylord Anton Nelson, 44, may still look forward to a political future beyond the shores of Lake Michigan. A smooth public speaker (and a smoother raconteur in informal moments), the darling of organized labor and an unabashed liberal, he brought a program of sweeping social reforms and a crew-cut crew of intellectuals to Madison in 1958, will give Wisconsin a second chorus of the same music in his second term.