THOSE MUCH-WOOED DELEGATES

Now the curtain rises on Act II of the quadrennial American drama. Scene: the conventions. Enter the delegates -- the most courted, yet least known supporting players in presidential campaigns.

The delegates are creatures of paradox. For months, the candidates have wooed them; for a glorious week, they will stand at the whirling hub of decision. Yet they are widely described as mere tools of the true decision makers. The great scholars of American politics have largely ignored them: neither Tocqueville nor Lord Bryce nor Sir Denis Brogan take them very seriously. Yet these seemingly faceless men and women are now at the focus of national attention.

Who are the delegates? There will be 4,322 of them--1,333 Republicans in Miami, 2,989 Democrats in Chicago, plus nearly as many alternates. Along with varying ideologies, there are clear contrasts between the parties. Reflecting their longtime power, more than one-third of the Democratic delegates are apt to be public officials, compared with one-fifth of the Republicans. If past conventions are any guide, three out of ten Democratic delegates will be lawyers or judges, against two out of ten Republicans; similarly, the Democrats will have many more union members and officials. Only about one-quarter of the Democrats will be businessmen, compared with one-third of the Republicans. About 20% of the Republican delegates and alternates will be women--almost twice the Democrats' proportion. Though one in every nine Americans is a Negro, less than 5% of those attending the Democratic Convention will be Negro, and less than 3% of the Republicans.

Despite party differences, and the intriguing fact that most of this year's delegates (82% of the Republicans, for example) will be attending their first convention, past statistics paint the portrait of a kind of composite delegate. He is a white, middle-class male of about 50. He is more than likely a college graduate. He lives well: the median income for Democratic delegates in 1964 was over $18,000 a year and for Republicans over $20,000. About 10% of the Democrats and 14% of the Republicans earned more than $50,000.

The Activist Loyalist

For all his comparative wealth, the typical delegate can hardly be accused of buying his convention seat. To be sure, the nation's political-finance reporting laws are notoriously lax. But at least on the record, the median contribution by 1964 delegates of either party to their state organizations was under $240 a year; less than 30% gave as much as $500. What really marks the typical delegate is a long record of giving time and energy to the party of his choice. This is what may pin the hack label upon him--though it also clearly demonstrates a continuing concern, whether base or altruistic, that makes him feel far more entitled to shape the political process than his long-indifferent neighbors.

Even if he's sometimes a hack, he's seldom a boob, He knows more about the issues, and has much stronger opinions about them, than the overwhelming majority of ordinary voters. He has seen and heard the candidates in person, even if through a smog of rhetoric. He is worried about the war and the riots and his own role in nominating a President. Inevitably, he values party loyalty and remembers long service. He reads the polls and weighs what he wants against who can win.

Will he assert his independence? The answer depends partly on how the typical delegate was chosen. Amid the bewildering variety of state election laws, he could be hand-picked by his Governor, elected by a state convention, or selected by a tiny elite of state party committeemen. In only 15 states do registered voters elect delegates in primaries, which may be more or less open; another three states, including New York, pick some delegates by primaries while party leaders name others. Whatever the mechanics, unless the delegate is an insurgent, it is highly likely that he goes to the convention as a payoff for his loyal activism--and that hardly presages independence.

Even so, the very profusion of selection methods brings every imaginable type to the conventions. Some are expectable: the two conventions will muster most of the 50 state Governors, and a predictably high proportion of U.S. Senators and Congressmen. Equally expectable types include the pretty, enthusiastic Republican matron from Virginia who has given four to eight hours a day, five days a week, to her local party headquarters to earn her vote in Miami; or the Negro athlete whose name adds luster and racial balance to the California Democratic delegation.

The archetypal moneybags--but hardly typical delegate--at either convention is Delaware Republican Reynolds du Pont, 50, one of the clan's richest members. After M.I.T., he had a go at the family firm, but quietly dropped out. Du Pont likes politics and yachts. He was elected state senator in 1958. In both 1964 and 1966, he managed syndicates of similarly bankrolled yachtsmen who tried unsuccessfully to win the right to defend the America's Cup with the twelve-meter American Eagle. This summer, though he is leader of the Republican-controlled state senate and also chairman of the Republican state finance committee, Du Pont missed both Rockefeller and Reagan when they came to Delaware a-woo-ing delegates, because on both those weekends he happened to be out to sea.

Moderates, Insurgents, Bosses

The epitome of the moderate labor leader is Texas Democrat Ed Watson, 48, son of a deputy sheriff and now vice president of Local 4367 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. This will be his first national convention, but Watson has been a political activist since 1952, when he lost a bitter factional fight in his local precinct. "The issue then--as now--was whether liberals or conservatives would control the Texas Democratic Party." Watson favors Humphrey, and thus finds himself for once on the same side as his longtime conservative opponents.

The archetypal insurgent is John Elder, Massachusetts Democrat, Presbyterian minister and assistant to the dean of the Harvard Divinity School. Elder, 36, is married with five children, a nine-year-old partially blind foster child and a six-year-old Negro boy living with the family. He is president of the Arlington, Mass., Committee on Viet Nam. "As a clergyman, I suppose I'm most sensitive to some of the moral issues involved, and I have been very much impressed with the grounding of McCarthy's thought in Christian moral theology. He says the war in Viet Nam is an immoral war, using the criteria for a just war that have a good many centuries of Christian thought underlying them." Elder long ago decided 'to work within the Democratic Party to reform it." This spring, when he ran as a McCarthy-pledged delegate, Elder and his running mate defeated organization opponents who were mayors of sizable towns. Since Robert Kennedy's death, he has also decided to run for Congress.

Party bosses come to conventions in all shapes and sizes. Consider the contrast between Victor Smith, Illinois Republican state chairman, and Jesse Unruh, Democratic speaker of the California assembly.

Vic Smith is slim, white-haired, countrified in speech, friendly in manner. He publishes the tiny (circ. 2,000) weekly Argus in the midstate town (pop. 7,400) of Robinson. He golfs and fishes, is a Rotarian and a former statewide vice president of the Elks. Fascinated newsmen describe him as the healer who wound up as Illinois Republican chairman in 1960 because, in a party ripped and bloodied with faction, "he was the only man nobody was mad at."

Smith has attended every convention since 1944; he supported Dewey, Taft and Goldwater. He now "leans" toward Nixon, though "I'm not a zealot for him like some members of the delegation. I think that people who've been in the political process as I have are comfortable with Dick Nixon, I've always trusted him and felt grateful to him, I could feel this way about Rockefeller or Reagan if I knew them better, but I don't, There's the old saying here--stay with a friend."

Jesse Unruh, who sports the longest sideburns in the game, is the old pro converted to the new politics. Once the literal Big Daddy of California's Democratic machine, Unruh has shed 90 lbs. since he fell in love with dissent; he now chairs the 172-member delegation that won a three-cornered primary contest in support of Robert Kennedy against groups committed to McCarthy and to Humphrey. Unruh is uncommitted and angry. Through cigar smoke: "The gap between political leadership and the people is widening at the very time it ought to be narrowing . . . We're not going to the convention simply to validate decisions someone else has made in some back room in Washington."

Representing & Responding

Unruh's delegation has glamor and diversity: Actress Shirley MacLaine, Singer Andy Williams, Athlete Rafer Johnson, Mrs. Milton Berle--plus a dozen students, including Richard Raznikov, only 22, a budding political scientist who got into politics when the Citizens for Kennedy were impressed by his paper on the feasibility of denying the nomination to an incumbent President. 'This delegation is about as representative as any you can find," Unruh says. "There are very few major campaign contributors, but a lot of party activists and the more general type of activists who aren't tied to any party. As things stand now, none of the candidates could really turn them on."

While some delegations are more representative than others, the people are not fully represented, as the marked underparticipation of women and minority groups quickly proves. Even if delegates did mirror the electorate, the old rules of party discipline would probably blur the image. Most Democratic delegations, for example, follow the handcuffing unit rule, under which the majority point of view is binding on all members of a delegation. What most delegates actually represent is clear: a consensus of the activists who toil at year-round politics. These people have at least a presumptive claim to special qualifications--as well as the defense that politics is open to any American who cares enough to participate in not only the presidential world series, but also the obscure games that lead to it.

Reformers yearn to revamp the delegate selection system--if nothing else, to make it a real system. Some advocate a national primary; others urge at least uniform legislation in all 50 states for the selection of delegates by direct popular vote. Yet such schemes might further boost the country's soaring campaign costs and unfairly favor the richest candidates. Moreover, since parties are inevitably dominated by activists, it may well be that delegations selected by open primaries are no more representative than those frankly chosen by party leaders responding to the pressures within their organizations.

In fact, the very flux of this surprising election year has forced party leaders to respond in ways that may open up the conventions a good deal more than has been predicted. Though California's Democratic delegation was chosen entirely by primary election, for example, the death of Robert Kennedy has led to a series of resignations and reappointments--a new balance of the original Kennedy slate with McCarthyites and even Humphrey supporters. New York's Democratic leaders confront hot protests from underrepresented McCarthy forces, to say nothing of Negroes and Puerto Ricans. In response, State Chairman John J. Burns has already persuaded some delegates to make way for replacements. Though such adjustments may be minor, the striking fact is that politicians often characterized as bosses are redressing imbalances following open primaries.

What the People Want

Such forces are at work even in the rather unusual case of Georgia's Democratic delegation, which is handpicked by Segregationist Governor Lester Maddox. Maddox cannot ignore the realities of political balance, and Georgia delegates aim to keep open minds. Or so insists Lawyer Irving Kaler, a Jewish liberal delegate who rebuilt the party's Atlanta machinery. "The convention atmosphere itself encourages you to consider very carefully," says Kaler, "You don't operate in a vacuum. Every instrument of public opinion is focused on you. If you wear a delegate badge, five people stop you before you can get across the hotel lobby, and every one of them asks, 'What are you gonna do?' In the whole convention process now, more and more influences are reaching the delegates, moving them farther from the old boss system." Kaler argues that this must bring the outcome "pretty close to what the people want."

The candidates' increasingly frantic supplication of supposedly convinced delegates suggests that quite a few of those 4,322 minds may be open. In this volatile political year, which has been rife with surprises, which has produced widespread grumbling about preordained choices but presents little visible evidence of bossism at work the delegates may conceivably be more independent than ever.

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