Taking the Johnson Pledge

Though the Republican contenders are generating all the excitement and all the headlines as New Hampshire's March 12 primary approaches, a well-organized, intensive campaign is being waged on behalf of a Democrat whose name is not even on the ballot. Barely noticed outside the state, the write-in drive for Lyndon B. Johnson might very well serve as a model for the real thing in November.

The Johnson campaign was launched in August, when New York's Senator Robert F. Kennedy looked like a threat. Ruefully, a presidential aide recalled how L.B.J. had topped Bobby by a mere 4,000 write-in votes in the 1964 preferential primary, and he was determined to prevent a repetition. Bernard Boutin, who masterminded Estes Kefauver's successful New Hampshire campaign in 1956 and John Kennedy's in 1960, quit as Small Business Administrator in midsummer, soon thereafter surfaced in Nashua, where he is heading a similar effort for L.B.J. When Minnesota's Senator Eugene McCarthy entered the race, Boutin intensified the campaign and the state's two top Democrats, Governor John King and Senator Thomas Mclntyre, began stumping for the President.

Lapel Pins & Stickers. No Democrat will be left in any doubt at all about the mechanics of writing in the President's name. Because some voters might invalidate their ballots by misspelling Lyndon or Baines, campaign tacticians are urging them simply to put down "President Johnson." Some 15,000 green-and-white PRESIDENT JOHNSON lapel pins and an equal number of WRITE IN PRESIDENT JOHNSON bumper stickers are being distributed, while about 2,000 neighborhood coordinators will personally hand out numbered "pledge cards" to the state's 87,500 registered Democrats and to many of its 113,000 independents.

The voter fills out the card in three places. One part is kept by him as a reminder of his pledge; one part goes to local headquarters, with instructions as to whether he needs transportation or a baby sitter on primary election day; one part, marked "White House Copy," is presumably sent to the President. In the return mail comes a photograph of Johnson and Lady Bird sitting in Air Force One.

Johnson has no intention of campaigning in New Hampshire, but, as Boutin says with sublime understatement, he "is interested and is keeping posted." Johnson is also keeping posted on the November campaign, has assigned Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien, Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Democratic National Chairman John Bailey to key positions.

So far, Johnson has heard nothing but good news. McCarthy's lackadaisical campaign has dismayed even his most ardent admirers, and Bobby Kennedy made it clear last week that he was not about to give challenge. "I have told friends and supporters who are urging me to run that I would not oppose Lyndon Johnson under any foreseeable circumstances," said Kennedy, and such supporters as Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, who had been urging him to take the plunge, quickly hailed his decision as "right." The latest Gallup poll among Democrats shows the President leading Kennedy nationally by 52% to 40%, and a full 71% preferring Johnson to McCarthy.

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