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"Into Everything." Hoegh's administration produced results that nearly every lowan can see and feel as he drives the highways and country roads, picks up his youngsters at the newly consolidated schools, or profits from the paychecks of new industry. But nonetheless many an lowan is irked because he sees and hears too much of the governor who, as one Statehouse staffer put it, has been "into everything."
Some protest that Hoegh's calling out of the National Guard to enforce a highway safety program was a "grandstand" play. Others believe that Hoegh's flying over the state to survey drought areas in a National Guard plane was a waste of public funds (though they were federal funds). There was an uproar when the state purchasing agent made a special trade-in deal, avoiding the $2,000 limit on the prices for a state auto, to get the governor an air-conditioned Oldsmobile sedan. Another outcry came when he flew to a former lowans' picnic in Long Beach, Calif, in a National Guard plane, and went from there to the Republican National Convention at his own expense. The Des Moines Ministerial Association was apoplectic when he accepted as a gift to the state the grand champion calf of the 1955 State Fair, only to discover later that the bearer of the gift was Omaha's Storz Brewing Co.
Next to these anthills are bigger mounds of grievance. Hoegh lost the active support of the leaders of the Iowa Manufacturers Association when he maintained his stand for the union shop. Said one I.M.A. leader: "Hoegh is too unreliable, too liberal for the I.M.A. These small factory owners in the small towns—the nurserymen and the guys with 100-worker factories—are scared to death of unions. Most of them don't even want new industry in town because it might bring in labor unions." On the other side of the coin, Hoegh's stand has not been enough to win the support of organized labor. Says he ruefully: "The I.M.A. has dried up on me, and labor is supporting my opponent, and I'm left holding the bag."
Because he has opposed Secretary Benson, Hoegh has lost the active support of the pro-Benson Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, but has not won the backing of anti-Benson farm organizations. He does not object to Benson's policy (he has urged "flexible supports or some other means to get the farmer full parity in the marketplace") as much as he does to Benson's attitude, which he considers anything but flexible.
"Democrats Have Did." Playing all the factors against Hoegh is the Democratic candidate for governor, 45-year-old Herschel C. Loveless, former mayor of Ottumwa (pop. 33,000). A onetime railroad-bridge-building foreman whose education was limited to high school, Loveless speaks to the voters in shop English ("Hoegh has went"; "Democrats have did"), but he speaks a language that opens the ears. "The cost of state government when income is on the decline is the No. 1 problem in Iowa," he tells his campaign audiences. "Do you want 'High-Tax Hoegh' back in the State Capitol?"