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Across the rolling plains of Iowa last week in a Chevrolet station wagon cruised a trim, taut, fast-moving man with a bristling crew cut and a businesslike air. His days were an 18-hour succession of Republican breakfasts, Kiwanis Club luncheons, women's teas, greetings on Main Street, conversations in corn fields and gasoline-station stops. The gas stations were important. There he would shake hands with the man at the pump, greet the mechanic, stride into the diner for a word with the fry cook and a cup of coffee with the customers. The Iowa traveler was Leo Hoegh (pronounced hoig), and he was engaged in one of the most complex processes in American politics: running for governor.
In all the 29 states that will elect governors during the national elections next month, a myriad of little grouches and grievances and impressions form an important part of the political picture. This is particularly true when an incumbent governor such as Leo Hoegh is seeking reelection. National, state and local issues intertwine and conflict and complicate one another (last week staunch Eisenhower Republican Hoegh. convinced that Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson is a local political liability, kept far away when Benson visited Iowa). At times, issues that logically should help the candidate are fatal. In some cases a whole collection of political anthills pile together to form a mountain of opposition.
In the case of Iowa's Leo Hoegh, the combination of national and local factors is as complex and complete as if some diabolical political chemist had poured together strains of virus out of every test tube in the laboratory. An honest, able governor, he has improved roads, schools and state institutions, has worked tirelessly and successfully to increase his state's industrial potential and to ease its agricultural woe. But he is in trouble.
The factors in Hoegh's situation range all the way from the ridiculous to the fundamental. Some lowans are against Hoegh because a bumptious, publicity-seeking television performer named Dagmar once bulged through his outer office, bussed the governor and then loped on up to the legislature, where she darned near kissed a quorum. Others are against him on the basic issue that he has raised taxes. Some farmers oppose him because they do not like the Eisenhower Administration's farm program; some Republicans are displeased because of his feelings toward Secretary Benson. And some of the plain, quiet, steady people of Iowa, who like their public officials plain, quiet and steady, are against him simply because he has moved so fast and has done so much. Said one Indianola house wife last week: "That 'Hoag' should stay around Iowa instead of gallivanting off every which way on this and that. I think he's stuck on himself."
As Goes the Farmer. Leo Hoegh's political problems are all bound up in the character of his state. Iowa is farming. The state's official pamphlet points out with rural pride that it has no large city (Des Moines, the largest, has a population of 185,000). Iowa produces more hogs, poultry, eggs and timothy seed than any other state, and is stung by the fact that in 1955, largely because of drought, it lost first rank as a corn producer to neighboring Illinois.