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Show Under The Capitol Dome ; By Harry Marlowe 1 i' While the politicos back in Washington are playing guessing games about what President Eisenhower Eisen-hower is going to do, come 1956, the same procedure, with just as much intensity,, is going on in Utah. There are a great number of people who . will lay bets that Gov. j Bracken Lee is "through pol-i pol-i itically" after his recent, widely f publicized statements back East. But this "firm conviction" isn't stopping those people from worrying worry-ing overtime about what Gov. Lee plans to do with his time after he winds up his second term as governor. ! Not many people feel the governor gover-nor will shoot for a third term, i i The big argument here is that he could not do so and be consistent with past remarks about "dishonesty" "dishon-esty" of being too long in one office. of-fice. And inconsistency is not a thing the governor can usually be i accused of. I Naturally, the hottest rumor is j that Gov. Lee will forsake the I green pastures of Utah for the greener ones in Washington. There are still those who will tell you the governor is trying to build up interest in a third party movement which would head the Utah chief executive toward to-ward the White House. A far more logical explanation is that the governor has his eye on a seat in the U. S. Senate chambers. If the sentiments expressed by Gov. Lee in Chicago and New York were anything new, there could be some depth to the third party whispers. The fact is, Utah's controversial governor said exactly exact-ly the same things back east as he has long said privately and publicly here at home. The only difference is, there was more .hubbub .hub-bub raised nationally when the statements were made nationally. One Utahn who is not ready to count Gov. Lee out as ready for the political graveyard is Senator Wallace F. Bennett. The whispers keep growing that Gov. Lee is aiming for a showdown show-down with Sen. Bennett in the 1956 primary election. The constitutional barrier which says governors should not run for the Senate "during the term to which they are elected" will not be an insurmountable one. Wyoming's Supreme Court and also the U. S. Supreme Court has ruled that no state constitution can bar a man from becoming a Senator if he is qualified under the federal constitution. With Lee's term as governor ending just a few months past election there would be even more reason for the court to hold with the precedents already set in Wyoming Wy-oming and other states. The one man who knows, if anyone does, what Gov. Lee plans to do is simply not talking. That is Gov. Lee himself. But there is one thing sure. Utahn's ought not count the governor gov-ernor among the political "dead-wood" "dead-wood" too soon. No matter what he decides to do himself, he will be a big issue in some facet of the 1956 election. |