June 16, 1976

Front Runners Still A Puzzle

Super Tuesday - the last and biggest of the primary elections that was supposed to produce presidential nominees - has only deepened the political puzzles.

The Democrats have given Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia, a formidable lead.  By his own count, Carter is less than a hundred delegates short of winning his party's nomination on the first ballot.

Yet, George Meany, head of the giant AFL-CIO labor union, is ominously quiet.  I will not believe Carter has the nomination sewed up until Meany jumps on the band-wagon.  As of this writing, the crusty old union boss is conspicuously missing.

Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Automobile Workers has endorsed Carter.  The UAW has always been an independently acting union, and Woodcock is believed to be ambitious for Meany's job.  Woodcock's endorsement and Meany's silence raises the question of whether union politics will affect labor's national political stand.

If Carter can win the nomination without Meany's support, the labor leader may be finished.  He sat out the Democratic Convention four years ago and watched George McGovern get clobbered in the general election.  There is no way Meany can survive an eight-year freeze out.

There is some evidence that big labor leaders no longer can deliver a bloc vote - that individual union members now make up their own minds.  Inaction by Meany would greatly accelerate this trend.

Carter has put labor between a rock and a hard place.  As governor he supported "right to work" proposals which allow a person to get and keep a job without necessarily joining a union.  Meany fights right-to-work with passion.  He can not bring himself to get in bed with Carter - yet to delay will end his career and let his union members taste political independence.

Carter needs union money and support which has given this nation Democratic government for 40 of the last 44 years.  Without Meany's help, Carter will have an uphill battle against any Republican candidate.

There is evidence that Meany is quietly attempting to round up pro-labor, anti-Carter delegates.  Allegedly he has a substantial number of delegates who ran as Carterites but who will vote for some other Democratic candidate on the first ballot.  Meany's low profile so far leads credence to this possibility.

If Carter is stopped on the first ballot, look out!  A monumental floor fight could then develop between his fiercely partisan delegates and the pro-labor faction.

Carter has won his delegates fair and square.  He is miles ahead of the next closest Democratic candidate.  To deny him the nomination - for any reason - would surely split the Democratic party apart for years to come.

The Republican predicament is similar but more obvious.

Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford are neck and neck in the delegate race.  It does not appear that either will go to the convention with any hope of a first ballot nomination.  The GOP is certain, therefore, to experience a bruising battle that inevitably will diminish November enthusiasm.

Ford has a handicap never before borne by a presidential candidate - he is an incumbent who was neither elected by the people nor selected by his party.  He was appointed by a disgraced president who was a step ahead of impeachment.

This unique situation complicates the usual political prognostications.

Ford is an incumbent president.  Supposedly this confers built-in publicity advantages.  Yet there is not one voter who had a part in that incumbency.  There is no built in personal interest or loyalty to back up the publicity image.

It is apparent that the President, himself, is puzzled by his unusual situation.  He put together a campaign committee that faltered and then organized itself distressingly close to Richard Nixon's heavy-handed re-election team.  Ford alternately stresses his accomplishment and attacks his Republican challenger on a too-personal level.  The result is an odd mixture of panic and confidence.

The Ford and Reagan forces are so evenly divided that a deadlock is quite likely.  Each camp has worked up intense feelings about its candidate.  A nation wide survey last week revealed that 40 percent of both the Reagan and Ford forces would vote for Democrat Carter rather than the opposing Republican contender.

A Republican Convention floor fight between Ford and Reagan might create a no-win situation in the general election.

Washington gossip has it that the old party pros are assembling forces for a dark horse candidate to compromise the Ford-Reagan battle before the blood gets ankle deep.

As I speculated in this column six months ago, the campaign has developed outside the traditional guide lines.  New elements of politics have been introduced.  Regardless of the winner at the conventions or in the election, American politics is undergoing profound change and probably will never again be the same.

Author: Lindsey Williams