Red-baiting in New Jersey•

New Jersey is a state somewhat larger than Wales with a population of over six million. It has all Wales! variety from the depression, slum-ridden industrial cities which border on New York City to the beautiful, rolling green hills of the west-centre (the home of wealthy New York ex-urbanites) to the flat, sandy Atlantic Coast, rimmed with garish resorts, The state was the site of a gubernatorial election this November which may be of interest to the British left, The principals were incumbent liberal Democrat, Richard Hughes,and the Republican nominee, Wayne Dumont. Dumont, a personally unpleasant hatchet man after the manner of your Tory leader, Heath, only without a sense of humour, panicked in the face of almost certain defeat and turned his campaign into a McCarthyite smear, Early this year at a Vietnam Teach-In at state-supported Rutgers University, Professor of History Eugene Genovese stated that as a Marxist he did not fear an NLF victory in Vietnam; he welcomed it. Genovese's statement was received enthusiastically by his large stu ent audience but, not surprisingly, he was pilloried outside the University. Largely because of Dumont, the furere did not die out. After the Rutgers Board of Trustees defended Genovese against rightist demands for his dismissal on the basis of academic freedom, Dumont demanded that Hughes pressure the Board into reversing the decision, Hughes refused and endorsed the Trustees, carefully assuring everyone that he deplored Genovese's viewpoint as much as Dumont, Dumont pressed the matters Hughes was not a Commie, himself, mind you, but was suspiciously naive on the subject; Genovese was a traitor and should be prosecuted under the 1918 Sedition Act, Rightist organisations such as the American Legion threw in behind Dumont and kept the state jumping A little red scare in Trenton, the capital,saw a few political hacks calling for the head of an official in the Johnson anti-poverty programme who participated in an anti-war demonstration. A Catholic College, Ste Peter's in Newark, felt constrained to absolve itself publically from the action of a faculty member who put up bail for a Catholic anarchist who burned his draft card. All of which looked like the early fifties all over agains Hughes remained favourite to the ends; he had been a competent enough governor in the Americm political context. But, much to everyone's surprise (Hughes was rhapSodic and Dumont, despite his offensiveness, almost pitiable), the vote was a landslide, a 350,000 plurality, twice the most sanguine predict= ions. The Democrats swept both houses of the legislature for the first time since 1913, It was no victory for libertarianism, A poll of New Jerseymen on the Genovese question showed 51% agreeing with Dumont's point of view and the remainder divided between supporting Hughes or uncoreereced. But at the same time, it was a defeat for McCarthyism. Red-baiting did not win for a change although even the old smear master, Dick Nixon, showed up late in the campaign to esnoint Dumont with his brand of chrism. Dumont'ts repudiation hints that the old bogey-man of American politics may not be so effective in keeping the American left from reaching the public in © future, lest British friends pooh=pooh the development, they should recall how effective red-bdting has been in paralysing the American left in the paste