Nixon's New Image, Rocky's New Clothes

Jostling through the victory-night crowd at his Manhattan campaign head quarters, Richard Nixon savored an un familiar sensation. For the first time in years, he felt like a winner again. "We won't need a recount," he chuckled to the crowd. "This is a beginning, a very smashing victory."

Nixon's beginning was an impressive performance in the New Hampshire primary where, with a heavy turnout of 104,000 G.O.P. voters, he gained 78% of the total votes following a campaign masterfully geared to exhibit the former Vice President as the nation's youngest elder statesman. New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, whose cause was belatedly promoted by a haphazard write-in campaign after the abrupt exit of Michigan Governor George Romney, won only 11% of the vote, an unspectacular showing that some Republicans thought might possibly have condemned him to the political penumbra.

Before the primary, Rocky had allowed: "I would guess I'll get about 10% of the vote, but I think Nixon can win easily--and he deserves it. He's worked hard." Many G.O.P. leaders, including Rockefeller's partisans, believe Nixon won so easily that he is inexorably moving toward the August Republican nomination. Assured of comparable--and virtually uncontested--triumphs in Wisconsin on April 2 and Nebraska on May 14, he already commands much negotiable loyalty from a powerful array of party workers throughout the nation.

Curious Silence. Meanwhile Nelson Rockefeller moved ever closer to entry in the Oregon primary, which he now has to win just to stay in the race with Nixon. Last week 33 top Republicans gathered in his Fifth Avenue duplex to advise him on strategy. The council included Maryland's Governor Spiro Agnew, Rhode Island's Governor John Chafee, New York's Mayor John Lindsay and, improbably enough, Barry Goldwater's 1964 running mate, former Representative William E. Miller. All but four of the 33 counseled Rocky to declare his candidacy and begin an all-out campaign in Oregon, where he won four years ago.

Over the weekend, a platoon of Rockefeller volunteers from Oregon traveled to Manhattan bearing a petition of 35,000 signatures urging his candidacy. Even George Hinman, Rockefeller's principal adviser, who previously had cautioned the Governor to avoid all primaries lest he capsize his cause and split the party, admitted that he must now campaign hard in Oregon. Curiously silent on the issue, however, was Michigan's erstwhile presidential candidate, George Romney, who surprisingly declined to endorse Rockefeller after his own withdrawal. Last week at a Lansing, Mich., press conference, he again stood mute. Would George back Nelson if he were to announce formally? "No," said Romney. If he is discouraged by the professionals' skepticism, Rockefeller could at least take comfort from the latest Harris Poll comparing him with Nixon in a race against Johnson and Alabama's George Wallace. In a Nixon-Johnson-Wallace race, Harris showed Nixon 39%, Johnson 39%, Wallace 12%. Substituting Rockefeller for Nixon, the result was Rockefeller 41%, Johnson 34%, Wallace 14%. As if he had already seen the poll, Rocky went out last week to buy a rackful of new suits--the first he has bought since the 1964 campaign.

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