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West Virginia: Republicans, who took over the state government in 1956 for the first time since 1933, have the distinction of trying to defend two Senate seats. Incumbent G.O.P. Senator Chapman ("Chappy") Revercomb, 63, who served one Senate term (1943-48) before he was elected in 1956 to fill out the term of the late Harley Kilgore, is a handsome grandfather, a tireless, bassoon-throated campaigner, a conservative flailing at apathetic Republican voters. His opponent is conservative, too, but fast-moving, breezy Robert C. Byrd, 40, father of two girls (aged 21 and 17), is hard to beat. A former grocer and three-term Congressman, he shrewdly turns on the corn at country meetings, singing and playing the fiddle (Bile Them Cabbages Down), recites inspirational poetry (God Give Us Men), advocates old-age pensions for 60-year-olds. Republicans are circulating a letter written by Byrd in 1946 in which he mentioned membership in—and praise for—the Ku Klux Klan, and Byrd neither denies it nor apologizes for it.
The other Republican incumbent: Banker John Hoblitzell, 45, 1956 campaign manager for popular young (35) Republican Governor Cecil Underwood, who was appointed by Underwood to the seat left vacant early this year by the death of Democrat Matt Neely. Hoblitzell is energetic and friendly, but he is also blunt and only a so-so campaigner, admits that he has not cracked the barrier laid out by his Democratic opponent, Glad-Hander Jennings Randolph. At 56, Randolph has served seven terms in Congress, is now a public-relations man for Capital Airlines, rates as one of the state's most effective speakers, has conservative Democratic backing. The Hoblitzell forces are despondent, and private polls agree that they should be. Republican Revercomb is hard pressed by Byrd.
Wisconsin: The G.O.P. rates Democratic Senator Bill Proxmire's seat as one it could grab away from the Democrats. Reason No. 1: Tireless Bill Proxmire, 42, elected to Joe McCarthy's seat last year, has turned out to be an inept Senator. His proposed measures for licking the recession would have cost the country $23 billion by G.O.P. estimate and $8.7 billion by his own (he says his other waste-cutting, tax-loophole-plugging bills would more than make up the deficit). Reason No. 2: The G.O.P. managed at its state convention last May to paper over the long, debilitating feud between Taft and Eisenhower factions, settled on a compromise candidate named Roland J. Steinle. 62, a former state supreme court justice who had been out of politics for years and had few enemies. But in the campaign's heat Steinle turned out to be 1) ineffective on the stump; 2) too conservative for some Ikemen; 3) too little known statewide, even though his Catholicism might pick up votes in Polish wards of Milwaukee. Prognosis: hardworking, handshaking Proxmire should hold off the G.O.P. challenge on a reduced majority.
Wyoming: New York Liberal Eleanor Roosevelt has conducted a national fund-raising drive for Wyoming University History Professor Gale McGee, 43, against Republican Senator Frank Barrett, 65, but the odds are that Barrett, backed by Wyoming's conservative oil, cattle and sheep men, will be winner.