The Nome Nugget

Alaska GOP's Patch Up Their Differences

JUNEAU, (AP) - An announcement indicated that the long-standing breach in Alaska Republican party ranks is on the way to being healed.

Lending strength to that belief was the word that Capt. Austin E. Lathrop, wealthy Fairbanks publisher, will have the voting proxy of Mrs. Margaret E. White at the Republican national and policy committee meetings in Washington, D.C., today.

Mrs. White, Republican national committeewoman for Alaska, is the wife of Albert White of Juneau, titular head of Alaska Republicanism. (Continued on Page Four)

Alaska GOP's Patch Up Their Differences

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Differences of opinion over White's policies have split the party in Alaska for a decade or more. Opposing factors have been known as the "whites" and the "blacks."

Mrs. White said here she had offered her proxy to Lathrop "to unify the Republican party in Alaska and bring harmony," and Lathrop accepted.

She said further the Territory is in a "pitiful condition, with a multitude of lawsuits, corruption, unjust taxes and debts, and the time has come for all to disregard political misunderstandings and try to save Alaska from traveling down the road to the welfare state."

The Republican schism widened in 1948 when White called a convention at Sitka to name delegates to the Philadelphia national convention.

Opponents charged White did not give adequate notice, and no boats were sailing for Sitka in time to get them there. The Sitka session named a delegate slate.

The "blacks" held a convention of their own at Mt. McKinley and selected a rival slate. Both factions went to Philadelphia, where the "whites" won the seats.

For the past several years the Territory has been under Democratic administration. At the 1949 legislature, a bill was introduced in the Senate by White's critics but failed to reach the House during the final week's maneuvering.

The bill would have required two weeks notice for GOP meetings and conventions, and generally followed the same party procedure as the Democrats.

Observers here said the new White-Lathrop "Axis" presaged a move to eliminate political differences between the two GOP factions. It heightened hitherto lackadaisical interest in a Territory-wide Republican meeting to be held here soon.