In July, 1965, the D.F.L. executive committee met at Sugar Hills, a northern Minnesota resort, and decided that Rolvaag could not win and should not run in 1966. No written resolutions came out of the conference but when word of what had happened there leaked to the Minneapolis papers in September, Rolvaag was as good as dumped.

The D.F.L. convention nine months later was gruelling and bitter but still something of an anti-climax. Keith needed twenty ballots to win its endorsement but Rolvaag didn't even stay for the finale. The governor hoped to block Keith and force the convention to adjourn without endorsing anyone, but even six months of vigorous Rolvaag campaigning in early 1966 and growing apprehension over Keith's dangerous liabilities couldn't turn the Democrats from the course set at Sugar Hills.

While the Democrats were clawing at each other's throats, Minnesota Republicans were proving very agreeable opponents. The Republicans' campaign mistakes have balanced out the D.F.L. internal split so thoroughly the November 8 gubanatorial election could end in another dead heat.

The Republicans began by coosing the weakest of three potential candidates for governor. Anderson, the self-made loser in 1962, was still the party's strongest man and could have beaten either Rolvaag or Keith. But the former governor played his cards wrong again. He feigned non-candidacy through most of 1966, hoping finally to be the compromise choice of a deadlocked convention. It didn't work.

Instead they picked Harold Levander, a relatively unknown St. Paul lawyer who is running for statewide office for the first time. Levander held on to his support among rural conservatives at a long confused convention in late June. But Rolvaag had not yet declared his candidacy and Republicans wasted their convention time attacking Keith's "craven ambition" and "assassination of a friend."

In some ways Levander's campaign has been shrewdly planned. During the D.F.L. primary struggle he made the traditional trips to the outstate boondocks, solidifying his rural strength. That left 85 per cent of his campaign time in September and October for wooing the big city votes in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Levander has the kind of qualifications that win elections in Minnesota. He has a solid record of athletic, scholastic, and business success -- all within the state. He is Swedish -- ethnically perfect for Minnesota's heavily Scandinavian population (though on this score no one can match Rolvaag, this score no one can match Rolvaag; gid pioneer classic Giants In The Earth). Levander also has a reputation for forceful oratory; he was a star schoolboy orator and later taught public speaking.

But the stream of campaign rhetoric emanating from Levander headquarters has been surpassingly banal and has prevented his campaign from generating any real momentum. He started by labeling the Republican ticket the "integrity team." That did not catch, but Levander went right ahead and made his main campaign slogan "Let's be proud of Minnesota again." In an attempt to humanize their candidate the Republicans borrowed a leaf from John Lindsay's book and started issuing pamphlets asking, "What kind of guy is Harold Levander?"

The Republicans' big hope for victory has always been the insurance scandal. Three weeks ago Levander added sensational new fuel to a fire Republicans have been stoking for the last year and a half. He demanded the Rolvaag explain a $2000 campaign check from the notorious American Allied insurance empire dated January, 1965 -- just before the furor began.

The charge might be crushing proof of D.F.L. corruption if the party had accepted the money. It didn't Levander is trying to prove that they held the check until American Allied was declared insolvent in August, 1965, but he doesn't appear to have any way to make the charge of an "illegal contribution" stick.

Rolvaag, meanwhile, has been widely non-campaigning. He doesn't answer Levander's charges or even recognize his opponent by name in speeches that monotonously tick off his achievements of the last three and a half years.

The D.F.L.'s biggest and still unresovled problem is naturally party unity. After the primary Keith brooded at his home in Rochester for three days. Bowing to party pressure he then announced his support of Rolvaag "for the good of the party." Since then he's made several appearances at D.F.L. rallies and spoken half-heartedly in support of the now official ticket. Humphrey, who wisely sat on the sidelines during the primary fight, has returned to lend his waning prestige to Rolvaag's campaign and patch up the party's wounds.

But Keith and his band of young Turks and old liberal idealists are anything but placated. Their big worry, observers say, is not Rolvaag, but Short, who clearly has his eye on the governorship in 1970. Short is a new-style politician like Pennsylvania's Shapp, with money and ambition, but little else.

If Rolvaag wins narrowly and Short wins big next Tuesday, as both very likely will, the victory will have a double irony. For Rolvaag it will mean being saddled once again with a lieutenant governor who wants to use the position as a stepping-stone to the governorship. The plight of DFL's intellectual aristocracy is even worse though, for if the Democrats win, leadership of what once was a potent arm of liberalism will fall to a crochety maverick they tried to repudiate and an opportunist they throoughly mistrust