A Mormon-Jewish Ticket?

In electing John Kennedy their first Roman Catholic President, U.S. voters swatted down the WASPish fetish that religion is automatically a criterion for presidential or vice-presidential candidacy. The Republicans may give tradition a further gig in 1968. Michigan Governor George Romney, a Mormon, is one of the most promising possibilities for the Republican presidential nomination. For geographic balance alone, the G.O.P. might well pick Romney's new but warm friend, New York Senator Jacob Javits, as his running mate, there by setting up an unprecedentedly balanced, Mormon-Jewish ticket.

Jack Javits is New York's champion vote-getter of either party. He has won seven consecutive elections--four for the House, one for the office of state attorney-general and two for the U.S. Senate--beating his last opponent, James B. Donovan, with a plurality of nearly a million votes in 1962. He even carried overwhelmingly Democratic New York City in that year, although Dwight Eisenhower had lost there by 62,000 votes in 1956 and by 359,000 in 1952.

For all that, he has not been seriously discussed for national office. One reason is that Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a fellow liberal, has managed to pre-empt the title of Mr. Republican in New York, and in 1960 and 1964 tried his best to get the G.O.P. presidential nomination. Javits had little choice but to support Rockefeller's White House aspirations. The Senator will be 62 next week; 1968 will be his last chance. Last week he completed an elaborate minuet whose burden was Javits for Vice President.

With more headline clatter than realistic expectation, Javits had been touring the state to decide if he should contest Rockefeller's bid for a third gubernatorial nomination this year. In fact, New York's senior Senator had no need to venture beyond his Park Avenue apartment to know that Rocky had the state convention sewn up in advance. But while the Governor was inviting him to serve as campaign chairman--and mentioning him for the state's favorite-son nomination in 1968--Javits cannily strove to create the impression that it was he who retained the initiative. He ended, predictably, by announcing his support for Rockefeller's gubernatorial campaign, while pointedly reminding the public that the Governor had renounced all further presidential ambitions. The G.O.P., after all, could hardly nominate two New Yorkers. As for his own vice-presidential hopes, Javits allowed modestly that in 1968 the party would need "new faces." "Mine," he added, "would be a new face--a new and established face."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.