The Bismarck Tribune

A Thankless Senator
(New York Times)

When Senator Shipstead of Minnesota,
Farmer-Labor insurrecto, was taken into the
Republican fold and given a Senate chairman-
ship, it was predicted that he would file for re-
election under the old party banner. But the
winds from the prairies bring the blighting
news that he will run as a Farmer-Laborite
again. As the radical spirits in Minnesota
rise, and such objurgations as "turn-coat" are
joyfully withdrawn, so do conservative spirits
in Washington sink. The Democratic shadow
falls again across Minnesota, Woodrow Wilson
came within less than 400 votes of carrying
the state in 1916; Governor Smith has power-
ful bipartisan support there; and the failure of
the Minnesota Republicans to lure back Ship-
stead will mark Minnesota in red on the cam-
paign maps this fall.

Locally, Mr. Shipstead's decision saves the
Farmer-Labor party as a state entity. While
the required affidavit for filing in the Repub-
lican primaries would apparently have prevent-
ed the senator from entering them under any
circumstances, he had the choice of standing as
an independent after the primary and letting
the Farmer-Laborites sink like a plummet in
the blue waters of Lake Superior. That he did
not do this keeps alive the only definite symbol
of radicalism in the Northwest, for it is with-
in the Republican ranks that the Wisconsin
factions are fighting. From the Times Watch-
tower at St. Paul the statement comes that
Mr. Shipstead would have preferred to run as
a Republican because of its effect upon his
status in Washington. But the Gordian knot
lay before him, and he had-however reluct-
antly-to use a sword.

Not since the 1916 campaign will the upper
Mississippi Valley be so hard fought as this
year, if the advance of Hoover continues and
he is nominated at Kansas City. Observers
agree, with more to support their view than is
usual in long-distance guessing, that Lowden
would have a preponderant chance to carry
Minnesota and Iowa against any Democrat.
But a Smith-Hoover contest would make a bat-
tlefield of these states, and also of Wisconsin.
The corn and wheat would bend before the
breaths of the orators, and the prairie tremble
with the tread of their feet before the snows
of November fall.