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New Dealers All. Each of Georgia's three candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination swore that he and he alone was the one true friend of President Roosevelt and the New Deal. In spite of his parole profligacy and the fact that his State is one of the five in which the Federal Government administers its own work relief, Governor Eugene Talmadge apparently swore the most convincingly. He might wear outlandish cowboy clothes in public and his wife might hang the family wash in the front yard of the executive mansion, but the back-country farmers trooped to the polls to renominate him in a primary that was tantamount to election.
South Carolina Run-Off. Another Democratic primary which was as good as an election was South Carolina's run-off between Olin D. Johnston and Coleman Livingston Blease for the governorship. Candidate Blease, an oldtime, free-style rabble-rouser who has managed to keep himself on the public payroll pretty consistently since 1890, concludes his Who's Who biography: "The only South Carolinian who has been mayor of his city, senator from his county, speaker of the House, president of the State Senate, governor of the State 1911-15 and U. S. senator 1925-31. . . ."
South Carolina was evidently in no mood to extend the Blease record. Candidate Johnston, a 38-year-old Spartanburg lawyer who had worked his way through college in a cotton mill, won with a 33,000 majority. Each contestant dodged the Prohibition issue by declaring he would stand by the results of an advisory referendum which, held a fortnight before, turned out to be Wet by 23,000 votes in spite of the State's failure to ratify the 21st Amendment.
Lefter Than Left. In Washington, Lewis Baxter ("Lewie") Schwellenbach's strongest opponent for the Democratic Senatorial nomination ran on a "Left Wing" platform, advocating state owner ship of utilities. Lefter than left, Candidate Schwellenbach, Seattle attorney, borrowed Upton Sinclair's EPIC plan and campaigned for End Poverty In Washington. He and his EPIW won. A 40-year-old bachelor who lives with his mother, Nominee Schwellenbach has come by his Leftism lately. Two years ago he was inconspicuously defeated in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by Governor Clarence D. Martin. As soon as he was elected, Governor Martin made Mr. Schwellenbach a member of the board of regents of the University of Washington.
Banker Reno Odlin of Olympia, sleek and 37, was the Republican choice for Senator. Like his opponent, he is a U. of W. alumnus, a onetime State Commander of the American Legion. He drinks milk because a Wartime dose of mustard gas makes liquor unpalatable. A director of Puget Sound Power & Light Co., Nominee Odlin during the campaign called public attention to the fact that Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt owns private utility stock. Since he is as conservative as Herbert Hoover, Washington voters will have no complaint against obscurity of issues in the Senatorial race this autumn. And since Washington's registration is now 60%, Democratic, it is likely that there will be an EPIW Senator at Washington, if not an EPIC Governor in California.