HYRC Fails to Attract 'Big Name' For Republican Man-of-Year Award

Beset with election year problems, the Harvard Young Republican Club has been forced to postpone the selection of its Republican of the Year until next fall.

Only a year after the annual award was first given to Sen. Kenneth B. Keating (R-N.Y.), the HYRC was unable to find a prominent Republican to come to Harvard and accept the honor.

Earlier this year, the Club's repeated attempts to induce Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton to accept the award failed, as the governor did not even reply to the HYRC's requests. And then this spring, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) was asked to accept the award, but she answered several weeks ago that her schedule was too full to permit a trip to Harvard.

The HYRC's executive committee officially postponed the award's presentation last week by tabling a motion to name Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge '23 as Man of the Year. The motion will be reconsidered at the committee's first meeting in the fall.

"The feeling was that because this was a 1964 award there was no reason to give it in the Spring--and give it to someone who wouldn't come to Harvard. This would be unwise and would more or less devalue the award," one member of the executive committee said last night.

Developments in Republican politics this summer may well determine the eventual recipient of the award next fall. "A good deal depends on what happens at the Republican National Convention," Eric A. Von Salzen, president of the HYRC, said last night.

Von Salzen revealed that Scranton, Sen. Thruston Morton (R-Ky.), Rep, William E. Miller (R-N.Y.), national Republican chairman, and Massachusetts Attorney General Edward W. Brooke were being considered for the award along with Lodge.

Above all, Von Salzen said, the club wants to follow the general trends established by the national convention. He cautioned, however, that it would probably be impossible to get the presidential or vice-presidential candidate to come to Harvard and accept the award.

The postponement of the award will mean that the club will name two Men of the Year during the 1964-65 academic year. The first will receive the belated 1964 award and the second, to be selected next Spring, will receive the honor for 1965.