Political lightning struck Iowa when Harry Hopkins, boss of WPA and a sitter on the New Deal Olympus, flatly plumped for Representative Otha Donner Wearin in this week's Democratic Senatorial primary (TIME, June 6). What would otherwise have been a routine performance amid the fields of waving corn, with Senator Guy Mark Gillette walking sedately off renominated, was instantly transformed into a microcosm of the national political situation, a furious hurly-burly involving scores of participants far beyond Iowa's borders.
Senator Gillette, backed by the State machine of his colleague Senator Clyde...