The morning after last week's Nebraska primary, Ohio's Senator Robert A. Taft was standing in the Senate cloakroom, his eyes glued to the news ticker. a Democratic colleague called to him: "Is Stassen still winning?" "Yes, he's way ahead," replied Taft. "But Dewey and I together have more votes than he has."

Actually, Harold Stassen got only a trifle less than Taft and Dewey combined. He walked off with 43% of the vote, to 36% for Dewey and 11% for Taft. (The others: Vandenberg (whose name was entered without his consent), 5%; MacArthur, 4%; Warren 1%; Martin, 0.5%.) And he had done more than win a popularity contest. Thirteen of Nebraska's 15 convention delegates announced that they would vote for Stassen on the first ballot--though they are not legally bound by the primary results. The significance of the Nebraska election was that, in the space of two short weeks, Stassen had become the man to beat for the nomination--the man for all other candidates to stop, singly or in combination.

"A Good Man, But..." The Dewey and Taft camps denied that they had any "understanding" that they would work together to sidetrack the Stassen bandwagon. But Stassenites thought that they had spotted at least a willingness of the two groups to work together. They pointed to Omaha, where Senator Hugh Butler's machine had been expected to deliver strongly for Taft. Instead, when Stassen strength and Taft weakness became evident, it delivered for Dewey. The final Omaha results: Dewey, 12,500; Stassen 9,000; Taft, 4,000.

Stassen's headlong drive did not mean that he had the nomination in his pocket. But professional politicians who had said "he's a good man but he can't be nominated," hurried to take a second look. They also looked hard and long in the direction of Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg, whom Stassen never failed to praise and who might be the ultimate beneficiary of the Stassen strength.

Stassen himself continued his whirlwind campaign. He spent the morning of his 41st birthday in Omaha, cut a cake given to him by dapper Fred Seaton, his Nebraska manager, then hurried home to listen to the returns. Then he was off to Bob Taft's home state. He was competing with Taft for 23 of Ohio's 53 delegates. If he could take a dozen from Ohio's "favorite son," it would be the end of Taft's chances.

Stassen went at it as he had in Wisconsin and Nebraska, as if he were running for sheriff. At 9 a.m., four hours out of St. Paul, his chartered airliner dropped in on grimy Youngstown. For most of the next 15 hours he talked, answered questions, shook hundreds of hands. He got a warm reception; Ohioans seemed as friendly to him as Nebraskans.

"No Surpassin'." Then he was off for a day in Washington, where he talked to half a dozen Senators and about 50 Congressmen. At week's end, he flew down to Miami (Florida is holding a Republican primary on May 4). Stassen is the only G.O.P. contender who has made a personal effort to win any of its 16 delegates. Miamians who greeted him wore big badges: "No Surpassin' Harold Stassen"

This week he hustled back to stump in Ohio industrial cities (among them: Dayton, Toledo, Akron, Cleveland). Senator Taft, hurriedly canceling other plans, sped out to Ohio. The Senator had his gloves off. "Mr. Stassen" he cried, "could have been elected Senator two years ago and been in Washington to help us Republicans do our job. It would have been easy. He chose instead to spend two years running for the presidency." From now on, the going would be rough.

Not Just Amateurs

The best single reason why Harold Stassen won in Wisconsin and Nebraska was Harold Stassen himself. But U.S. elections are not won single-handed. Last week Harold Stassen's rivals suddenly realized that he had built a tight powerful organization.

The Stassen team, a highly varied group, operated with the zest and fire of dedicated men. But unlike Willkie's zealous amateurs, it included many an experienced hand. Its key men:

-- Warren Burger, 40, a husky, handsome St. Paul lawyer who is Stassen's chief of staff. An idea man with tremendous drive, he runs the national headquarters in Minneapolis, makes all but major policy decisions for the boss.

-- Victor Johnston, a shrewd, silver-haired journeyman politician who last week took over the operation of Stassen's Washington office. He managed the Wisconsin campaign, kept the Stassen memory green in 1944 while Stassen was in the Navy.

-- Al Lindley, a dour, bristle-haired lawyer who has been a Stassen strategist since the time Stassen was a brash county attorney bucking the G.O.P. machine for nomination as governor. He is treasurer of the Minnesota Fund, holds the purse.

-- Bernhard Levander, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Central Committee, another longtime Stassen man. Young (32) and razor-sharp, he is contact man and director at the ward and precinct level.

"Now Sit Down..." Stassen's national headquarters, which occupies the whole tenth floor of Minneapolis' Pillsbury Building, hums like a fraternity in rush week. Telephone calls pour in at the rate of 1,000 a day. In a huge mailroom, some 60 volunteers run clacking mimeograph machines, stuff envelopes, mail out an average of 300,000 letters a day. The volunteers, who work in shifts, are drawn from a pool of 700 society women, debutantes, office girls who come in after hours.

Scattered across the country are 49,000 "Citizens for Stassen" who get a steady stream of bulletins. Each new member is urged to get five additional members. After the Wisconsin primary, every worker got a personal letter thanking him and concluding: "Now sit down and write to your friends in Nebraska and Ohio." Senator Ed Thye, a farmer, wrote to 20,000 Nebraska farmers. Athletes are asked to write to athletes, veterans to veterans, even optometrists to optometrists.

Politicians & Politasters. Not all the activity is in Minneapolis. In Ohio last week, Earl Hart was energetically directing the primary campaign from a parlor-bedroom in Cleveland's Carter Hotel. A slight, intense man with a palm-of- the-hand knowledge of Ohio politics, Hart was campaign manager for Senator Harold Burton in 1940, for Ohio's Governor Thomas Herbert in 1946. Eastern headquarters in New York's Sheraton Hotel is headed by an affluent New Jersey lawyer named Amos Peaslee. In Philadelphia, Jay Cooke, great-grandson of the Civil War financier and a onetime G.O.P. candidate for the U.S. Senate, is in charge. In Chicago, active Stassen supporters include former Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, United Air Lines President William Patterson, and Walter Paepcke, chairman of the board of the Container Corp. of America.

All this takes money, and the Stassen organization has it. Originally, all campaign expenses came from the Minnesota Fund--a war chest set up by a group of wealthy Minnesotans. Chief of the backers and money-raisers was Harry Bullis, wealthy board chairman of General Mills. Others: James Ford Bell, recently retired board chairman of General Mills; John Cowles, board chairman of Cowles Magazines (Look) and president of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune; John S. Pillsbury, board chairman of Pillsbury Mills; and Jay Hormel, board chairman of George A. Hormel & Co. But in the last 18 months, over 13,000 people from all over the nation have contributed an average of $35 apiece--a total of about $450,000. The money, say Stassenites, has been spent as fast as it came in.

As Harold Stassen's chartered plane flew east from Oregon lat week, Lawyer Elmer Ryan, of South St. Paul, entertained the Stassen party with a recitation. Chubby Mr. Ryan, Stassen's former law partner and political strategist, romped up & down the aisle of the plane reciting Casey at the Bat. Elmer was the pitcher, the umpire, a bleacher fan, the great Casey himself. Candidate Stassen, exhausted by the Oregon campaign, sat back and roared. But when Lawyer Ryan finally intoned: "Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright...But there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has `Struck Out,'" Candidate Stassen subsided into pensive silence.

As the Stassen plane landed in Minneapolis, the first returns from the Oregon primary were beginning to come in. Stassen studied them. "It looks like a trend," he remarked worriedly. It was. At week's end there was no doubt about it. The score: Dewey, 111,657; Stassen, 102,419. There was gloom in Minneapolis. The mighty Stassen had struck out.

Fight for Oregon. It had been quite a campaign, its intensity far transcending the importance of Oregon's twelve convention delegates. Tom Dewey had traveled some 1,950 miles in three weeks, speaking to 100,000 people. He had talked from platforms, buses and village greens; he had signed autographs and driven a 1901 Locomobile down McMinnville's main street.

Stassen charging back into the state which he once thought was sewed up, had traveled some 2,465 miles in nine days. He spoke in a drenching rain at Coos Bay, addressed a crowd huddled under umbrellas at Newport, rode a white horse in Ontario, drank "blue ox milk" to please Roseburg's Paul Bunyan Club. Despite his victories over Dewey in Wisconsin and Nebraska, Stassen could not afford a defeat. But neither could Dewey. It was a knock-down fight which had astonished nobody so much as the open-mouthed voters of Oregon.

Nimble Tom. Dewey had won an important and vital victory. How did he do it?

He had put on a better campaign. He had shown the voters a new rough-&-tumble, folksy Tom Dewey who was a surprising contrast to the stiff, overstylized candidate of 1944. His hair was sometimes ruffled. He sounded friendly. He sounded knowledgeable. When Harold Stassen cornered him in their radio debate, he handled Stassen with aplomb. Most Oregonians thought that Dewey won their argument, agreed with him that any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party was folly.

Reported the Christian Science Monitor's Roscoe Drummond: "(He) is a different, improved and more effective campaigner than...Washington correspondents have seen in action before." Wrote Columnist Joseph Alsop: "It is reassuring to be able to report that this hard-driving, remarkably competent but sometimes rather inhuman governor is still growing as a man and a leader."

Dewey had a powerful, well-financed organization working in Oregon. It crammed newspapers with Dewey ads, saturated the air with radio announcements, put the Dewey message on some 150 billboards. Stassen put two admen to work figuring the cost of the advertising; they estimated it at $140,000. Stassen charged that Dewey spent a quarter of a million on the Oregon campaign. Dewey said it was only a "tiny fraction" of that.

Harried Harold. Stassen, starting late, tried to cover too much ground. He was tired before he even began. His organization sagged. So, in the closing days of the grueling campaign, did his speeches. Before the battle was over, he was out on his feet. It was then that he complained of Dewey's expenditures. The Stassen organization itself spent close to $100,000. Then Stassen charged that Dewey and Robert Taft were in a conspiracy to beat him. Said Dewey: "Desperate, irresponsible, eleventh-hour tactics." That was what they were. Stassen swung but he missed. He was out.

A lot of observers were willing to bet that he was out for good. It was not so much the Oregon vote which had done it as Stassen's own cocky and imprudent campaign. He had irritated Bob Taft by going into Ohio. Long before Oregon, he had antagonized Dewey by loudly announcing that under no circumstances would he be caught running on the same ticket with New York's governor. Oregon had deepened the ill will. Taft and Dewey would certainly be allied against him at Philadelphia. Mighty powerful backing would be needed to override their influence, even to get Stassen the nomination for Vice President.

The Last Stretch. Oregon was the last popular test before the convention. Now that the dust had cleared, it was possible to see the front-runners. They had narrowed down to three: Dewey, Taft and Arthur Vandenberg--who, although still an unannounced candidate, was the popular choice in the event of a deadlock. Taft was up there mostly on his nerve. He was in a position to do some jockeying and bargaining. On the first ballot, Dewey would clearly be in the lead.

Dewey's chances of winning would depend on how fast he could move ahead after the favorite-son votes were cast and the delegates got down to business. If he began to move fast, then he was probably on his way to the White House. If he stopped in his tracks, then the moment would be ripe for Arthur Vandenberg.