Of the 33 U.S. Senate seats up for election on Nov. 4, 19 are now held by Republicans, 14 by Democrats. Of the Democratic seats, these eleven seem safe: Florida, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington (Democrat Edmund Muskie unseated Republican Senator Fred Payne in Maine's September election). But Republican incumbents are breathing fairly easy only in four states: Delaware, Nebraska, North Dakota and Ohio. The tough Senate scraps:
Arizona: In the campaign most like a personal grudge fight, Democratic Governor Ernest McFarland, 64, runs a fifty-fifty chance of getting revenge upon dashing, right-wing Republican Barry Goldwater, 49 (TIME, Sept. 29), who upset Senator McFarland in 1952 and thus ended his career as Senate majority leader.
California: The G.O.P. civil war promises Democratic victory: latest polls show once-popular liberal Republican Governor Goodwin J. Knight, 61, trailing considerably behind his Senate opponent, lesser-known northern California Congressman Clair Engle, 47, right-wing Democrat.
Connecticut: Incumbent Republican William Purtell, 61, full-voiced, energetic, up-from-the-tenements screw manufacturer, and Democrat Thomas J. Dodd, 51, suave, quick-witted ex-FBI man, lawyer and wheelhorse Democrat, have hit nearly all of Connecticut's 169 cities and towns in handshaking campaigns. Eisenhower Republican Purtell points to his voting record, hits hard at union bossism. Middle-Road Democrat Dodd criticizes Republican foreign policy, has strong support from labor's Committee on Political Education. The outcome may hinge on the size of Democratic Governor Abraham Ribicoff's re-election victory.
Indiana: Running for the seat of retiring William Jenner, Republican Governor Harold Handley, 48, onetime coal shoveler (at 25¢ an hour) and former (1953-56) lieutenant governor, is in the hot seat. Issues: unemployment (mostly around South Bend), high taxes (raised in 1957), highway scandals (during the administration of Handley's predecessor, George Craig), right-to-work (last fortnight Handley went all out for right-to-work). Handley is throwing the book at his opponent, Evansville Mayor R. (for Rupert) Vance Hartke, 39, accusing him of running a corrupt administration in his home town and of being a tool of U.A.W.'s Walter Reuther. Newspaper polls show Hartke ahead, but Handley gaining fast and within overtaking distance.
Maryland: Against a Democratic Party unified and ostentatiously campaigning as a single slate for the first time in twelve years, nice but lackluster Republican Incumbent J. Glenn Beall, 64, is hard pressed. Beall has the support of Baltimore's powerful Sun newspapers, has a quiet person-to-person effectiveness among Maryland's Baltimore-suspicious rural voters. His Democratic opponent, Baltimore's eleven-year Mayor Tommy D'Alesandro, 55, has weathered scandal and long odds to win every one of his 23 campaigns in 32 years of professional politics, has strong city strength and is hanging on the coattails of popular Democratic candidate for Governor Millard Tawes to pull up his back-country margins. Only ticket-splitters can save Beall.