Issues That Lost, Men Who Won

THE essence of the campaign was there on the three networks in 30 minutes of election-eve prime time. The Republicans bought the first quarter-hour to rerun Richard Nixon's speech at a Phoenix rally two days earlier. The Democrats purchased the second segment to present Senator Edmund Muskie, speaking from a study in Cape Elizabeth, Me. The contrast was telling.

The President was agitated, stern in a noisy setting, and the victim of a bad television tape. His subject was the San Jose stoning, an atrocity already condemned in all responsible and even quasi-responsible quarters, but Nixon was still trying to score points from it. "They're not romantic revolutionaries," he said of violent dissenters. "They're the same thugs and hoodlums that have always plagued the good people." What to do? "Our approach," he said, "the new approach, demands new and strong laws that will give the peace forces new muscle to deal with the criminal forces in the United States." This, presumably, was the ultimate Republican summation of the campaign. There was no listing of G.O.P. accomplishments, save for one brief paragraph about Viet Nam. There was no expression of positive goals or ideals, no echo of the occasional eloquence or dedication to reform that adorned Nixon's 1968 statements (see "What Nixon Might Have Said," page 28).

One Certainty

Muskie came across as calm and concerned, if somewhat theatrical. Everyone, he pointed out, is for law-and-order; the Democrats have voted for Nixon's anticrime legislation. What about national unity, he asked. What about racial tension, the environment, economic problems? "There are those who seek to turn our common distress to partisan advantages, not by offering better solutions but with empty threat and malicious slander."

There in microcosm was the contest as it had been played out in state after state. The President had set an audacious test for himself when he transformed the mid-term election into a referendum on his presidency and his person. Thus he traveled 17,000 miles through 23 states (Spiro Agnew logged 32,000 miles across 32 states), and he and his party emerged weaker than before. What is astonishing is how badly Nixon and many of his candidates misread the electorate's mood.

From the swirl of contrary trends, ticket-splitting, upsets and dissimilar contests, one result seemed certain: most voters in most places opted for calm, for reasonableness, for a cessation of domestic hostilities. Spiro Agnew, and Nixon in the final days, dispensed bitterness. The current tenor of conservatism was surely there to be exploited, but not by a narrow, harsh approach reminiscent of Nixon in the 1950s.

Many in Nixon's natural constituency also feel a pull toward the center, a desire not to be out on the edge of any basic issue. Liberals, as distinguished from the New Left, feel the same urge. But Nixon, who well understood the appeal of the center in the 1968 campaign and during much of his presidency, now veered away from it.

This was the heart of the often mentioned, often misinterpreted Scammon-Wattenberg thesis. The two psephologists argued that liberal Democrats were in danger of becoming too closely associated with radicalism and permissiveness. They also contended that Republicans should not allow themselves to be painted into a negative corner where human needs were concerned. The Nixon Republicans tried to make the first part stick this fall, but neglected the second. By contrast. Democrats in a number of races sounded more crime-conscious than before without surrendering liberal dogma on pocketbook questions.

Nonworking Strategy

In searching for a theme that would cut across local issues and personalities, Nixon seemed to forget how difficult a trick this is in nonpresidential years, how voters become preoccupied with proximate concerns rather than national ones. Further, attempting to transfer prestige from a national figure to a local one rarely succeeds. From the White House, perhaps, the strategy appeared simple: counter criticism of the economy with emotion, finesse the specific, give a confused electorate a national figure to rally around. In the event, it did not work that way. Examples:

THE SOCIAL ISSUE, the wraparound in-phrase of the year, covering dissatisfaction with protest, fear of crime, and disgust with drugs, promiscuity and pornography, had less universal impact than initially assumed. It was a genuine concern everywhere, helpful to Republicans in some states, but rarely crucial. Those who used it most loudly could not persuade large numbers of citizens that a vote for Democrat X was really a vote for the Weathermen or the mugger.

THE SILENT MAJORITY, the broad group that includes blue and white collars, small businessmen, professionals, and assorted "straights" who are supposed to be susceptible to the social issue, were assiduously wooed by Nixon. In some races, the S.M. responded to Republicans in larger numbers than usual. But, as in 1968, it proved to be neither cohesive nor a majority in partisan terms.

VIET NAM, while on everyone's mind, decreased in importance as the campaign progressed. The continuing military disengagement makes it seem as if there is little to choose between political rivals. A few of the more prominent doves were defeated and others spoke less and less about the war. In Boston and Detroit, referenda for immediate withdrawal failed; one passed in San Francisco.

THE ENVIRONMENT was also a generalized concern, but one that rarely provided a clear contrast between competitors. It was a factor in some races, such as the surprising defeat of Idaho's Republican Governor, Don Samuelson (see page 27). An antipollution group, Environmental Action, accused twelve Congressmen of compiling bad records. Seven were defeated in either primaries or the general election.

THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY, a misnomer because it aims at Border and Western states as well as the Old Confederacy, fared poorly in this nonpresidential year. Nixon and Agnew remain personally popular, and conservatism seems to be holding its own, but the problem of transference is yet to be solved.

For TIME, Pollster Louis Harris interpreted the 1970 election this way: "Efforts to put together a new coalition of diverse elements under an umbrella of common aversion to the young, the blacks and the poor just won't jell. The thesis that the U.S. is 'unblack' (88% are white), 'unyoung' (83% of the vote is over 30) and 'unpoor' (88% are not in poverty) turns out to be a vast half truth at best. After the 1970 election, we must obviously remember that by that kind of measurement we are also unsmalltown (71% live in metropolitan areas); unsouthern white (80% are not); unRepublican (72% of the voters are Democrats or independents); unconservative (65% do not call themselves that).

"The extraordinary political fact of America in the early 1970s is that politically we are a collection of warring minorities with no Real, Silent, Middle America, Conservative, Centrist, Liberal or other kind of majority presently operative. There is increasing evidence that the first principle of the old politics, embodied in Roosevelt's New Deal, of putting many different groups, races, religions and regions under one permanent party tent may not work any more."

Four Big Winners

From last week's montage of conflict, four Senate contests stand out as representative, in different ways, of the 1970 elections. They illustrate the clashes of personality, the interplay of local considerations and national ones, the varying perception of voters in diverse regions. As the personality sketches on these and the following pages show, they also produced engaging winners who may be starting significant careers in the U.S. Senate: New York's James Buckley, Tennessee's William Brock, Illinois' Adlai Stevenson III, California's John Tunney.

Buckley is the political wonder of the year. A right-wing Republican by background and a Nixon follower on most issues today, Buckley ran on the Conservative Party ticket in the nation's most consistently liberal state. More than any other major candidate, he made the social issue work, drawing enough of a Silent Majority vote with an approach summarized by his motto:

"Isn't it time we had a Senator?"

When organized in New York eight years ago, the Conservative Party consisted mainly of right-wing Republicans who could not abide the liberal wing led by Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits and John Lindsay. Now the Conservatives have expanded beyond nuisance stature by attracting disaffected Democrats, principally blue-collar and middle-class Catholics, whose influence in the Democratic Party withered as Jews, blacks and Puerto Ricans gained power.

Still a small minority, the Conservatives had a serious chance this year because of several fortuitous circumstances: Jim Buckley's intelligence and sun-dappled personality plus the nearly identical liberal positions of Republican Senator Charles Goodell and Democratic Candidate Richard Ottinger. In addition, the Democrats were burdened with Arthur Goldberg as gubernatorial candidate. His feckless campaign lent no strength whatever to Ottinger.

What sets Buckley apart from so many other ideological conservatives, is his obvious class, the way he wears his education and inherited money with nonchalance. His manner exudes sincerity and good will. During the campaign he pronounced the usual warnings of doom, decadence and destruction by federal power, but he said these things without malice. Buckley could take a hard stand on campus dissenters, but, as one of his aides put it: "Jim was not the guy who was about to bayonet your kids."

Indeed, unlike most conservatives --and many other politicians of assorted persuasion this year--Buckley attracted thousands of college-age volunteers. Humor helped. One of the party's founders, J. Daniel Mahoney, collected anti-conservative bromides into a rah-rah song:

Three cheers for fear and hatred,

Division and mistrust.

When Jim goes to Washington,

These will be a must.

Six years of pure repression

Our liberties will rust.

Six years for our dear Jim

To union bust.

Despite these assets, Buckley still had a major problem. He could not win unless his opponents split the moderate-liberal vote closely enough to allow a Conservative plurality. Enter the Nixon Administration. The White House decided early that Goodell had no chance to win. From its viewpoint, good riddance; Goodell had become more liberal and more troublesome to Nixon than many Senate Democrats. Buckley early-on vowed to vote with the Republicans in Washington.

In their shrewdest and perhaps most effective single stroke of the campaign, Nixon and Agnew disowned Goodell --loudly. Their purpose was to get liberals to switch from Ottinger to Goodell in sufficient numbers to defeat the Democrat. It worked exactly that way. Early polls showed Goodell with about 15% of the vote. The excitement caused by his feud with Agnew raised that figure ultimately to 24% in the election. Buckley got 39%, just two points more than Ottinger.

Even considering the extraordinary circumstances, the fact that an avowed Conservative with scant appeal to Jews or blacks could win in New York represented something of a milestone. He did it by rallying Italian, Irish and suburban voters, and by cutting heavily into union halls that were once the exclusive domain of the Democrats. In New York, jobs and Viet Nam were not the pre-eminent concerns; the social issue was. Rockefeller benefited similarly; he had moved markedly to the right, and steadily refused to attack Buckley on Goodell's behalf. Rocky rolled up the biggest plurality of his career in winning an unprecedented fourth four-year term.

Special Target

A more conventional conservative coup occurred in Tennessee, where Congressman Bill Brock dislodged Albert Gore, one of Nixon's most nettlesome liberal foes in the Senate. At the same time, a Memphis dentist, Winfield Dunn, defeated Lawyer-Businessman John J. Hooker Jr., a Kennedy Democrat, in the gubernatorial race. Thus Tennessee becomes the only Southern state in modern times to have two Republican Senators and a Republican Governor.

Though Nixon and Agnew had made a special target of Gore, the victory was clearly a personal one for Brock and the Republican organization he has helped create in the last ten years. Coming from a wealthy family, Brock is one of those Southern patricians who is willing to aid and integrate blacks, provided that the efforts are local and voluntary. As the Republican organization grew, so did its returns. Eisenhower had carried Tennessee in 1952 and 1956. Nixon did in 1960 and 1968. Republican Howard Baker won a Senate seat in 1966. Gore was the obvious challenge for Brock this year. The Gray Fox, as Gore has come to be called, was out of tune with Tennessee. He is pro-civil rights and antiwar, in favor of gun-control legislation and against compulsory prayer in public schools. Gore also voted no on Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.

Thus Gore wrote the outline of Brock's script. Issue by issue, Brock attacked systematically: gun control, school busing, the Haynsworth-Carswell votes, school prayer, support of the President on Viet Nam. Said Brock of the Senate doves who took credit for giving impetus to Nixon's latest peace proposal: "They disgust me--all of them, including Albert Gore." Ken Rietz, a partner of Harry Treleaven, the political TV consultant, came from Washington to manage Brock's campaign. "We did not underestimate Gore," said Rietz. "We never assumed that he was a dead dove." Aside from an advertising blitz that easily outshone Gore's, the Brock forces established campaign organizations in every one of the state's 95 counties.

The efforts were prudent, because Gore, 62, and a veteran of 32 years of political strife, counterattacked with more gusto than Brock, 39, seemed able to muster. Old Albert stumped hard, reminded Tennesseans of the bread-and-butter benefits he had fought for, and held his ground with courage, if not cunning. Unlike Democrats elsewhere, he refused to scramble for safe rhetoric when assailed on law-and-order.

Toward the end it seemed that Gore was gaining, that the old loyalties to him might overcome Brock's youth and conservatism. But it was not enough, New Deal memories had grown too dim. Brock carried the normally Republican eastern third of the state easily, cut into the Democratic central region, and cleaned up in the rural western end of the state, where George Wallace is popular. An American Broadcasting Company voter profile showed Brock scoring heavily in Memphis, farm areas, suburbs and working-class precincts. From these he put together a majority of 52%.

Swept Slate

By contrast, nothing worked right for the Republicans in Illinois, where Senator Ralph Tyler Smith lost badly to Adlai Stevenson. "I thought I had my finger on the people's pulse," Smith lamented, "but I obviously miscalculated. I just must have misread what people were really concerned about." Actually, Smith had little chance, regardless of his strategy. The Stevenson name and stolid, sincere persona were just too potent for the Republican state legislator who had been appointed to fill out Everett Dirksen's unexpired term.

Playing a catch-up game, Smith witlessly tried to tie Stevenson to the extremist left. Stevenson pinned an American flag on his lapel, recalled his own sponsorship of anticrime legislation in the state capitol, and lined up with two symbols of Illinois law-and-order, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and former U.S. Attorney Tom Foran, chief prosecutor of the Chicago Seven. For balance, Stevenson also enlisted the active support of Daniel Walker; it was the Walker Report that termed the 1968 Chicago upheaval a "police riot."

Stevenson dismissed Smith as a "frantic man," one of the G.O.P.'s "peddlers of hate and fear." After Smith declined an opportunity to reject John Birch support, Stevenson piously middle-roaded it: "I don't want the support of the Weathermen, the S.D.S., the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen or the John Birch Society." He did not need it. He swept the state, even getting an equal split in the Republican south, taking Smith's own home county by more than 12,000. In amassing 56% of the vote, Stevenson carried along a host of minor Democratic candidates, solidifying Daley's hold on Chicago and preparing the way for an assault on the Governor's mansion in the next election.

Nixon's once and future home state was the arena for another crucial contest. California, particularly since Ronald Reagan's political advent four years ago, was supposed to provide ideal soil for Middle-American politicians. Last week the trend instead was toward the middle of the road, favoring the Democrats.

Western Miscalculation

Republican Senator George Murphy, 68. a Nixon loyalist and hawk ("The war is going great"), at first tried to pooh-pooh Congressman John Tunney, 36, as "that boy." Then Murphy picked up the Agnew line, running against "troublemakers and destructionists" instead of against Democrat Tunney. The problems liberal critics harp on, he insisted, were "contrived crises" blown up for political purposes. After it was disclosed last spring that Murphy was receiving $20,000 a year plus fringe benefits from Technicolor Inc., the association ended and Murphy grumped that his integrity had never been questioned before. By the last week of the campaign, it was obvious that Murphy's chances were expiring, despite the repeated ministrations of Nixon, Reagan and Agnew. Then came San Jose. Murphy's camp papered the state with ads declaring that the "decision you make tomorrow will be between anarchy or law-and-order."

"Political terrorism!" retorted Tunney. Indeed, it seemed that Murphy was guilty of the same miscalculation as Nixon in overplaying the stone-throwing incident. San Jose Police Chief Raymond Blackmore deflated the Republican attack a bit by arguing that the extent of the violence had been exaggerated--Santa Clara County, including San Jose, voted for Tunney. How much the backfire amounted to was academic, however. Tunney already had established himself as firm on law-and-order by urging pay raises for police and taking an occasional ride in a police cruiser. Tunney's opponent in the Democratic primary, George Brown, represented the Democratic left, thereby giving Tunney an opportunity to portray himself as a moderate even before the general election campaign. Murphy, moreover, was handicapped by a whispery voice, the result of an operation for throat cancer.

Tunney belabored Murphy mercilessly on his income from Technicolor, and repeatedly attacked the Senator's unquestioning loyalty to Nixon policy, particularly on Viet Nam and the economy. It was the economy, however, that seemed to score most heavily, because the state has some of the most severely depressed pockets in the country, and statewide unemployment is far above the national average. Murphy, Tunney charged, "who claims such close ties with the White House, has said or done nothing about it." By a surprisingly large margin, the voters agreed. Tunney captured most of the normal Democratic majority and attracted an estimated 20% of the state's Republicans. Jews, blacks. Chicanos and trade-union families gave him substantial majorities, and he ran well in most of the large cities.

The Republican ticket for state offices also lost ground. In attempting to campaign for all his running mates, Reagan spread himself thin and watched his 1966 plurality of nearly 1,000,000 votes shrink to roughly half that. The Republicans lost both houses of the state legislature. The reversal was particularly damaging because the 1970 census gives California five additional seats in Congress; the new legislature will determine how the state is to be redistricted.

Reagan strove hard to hold the line. Emulating Nixon, he designated a dozen state senators whom he found particularly difficult. All five of the dozen who ran this year won. Reagan supported the re-election of Max Rafferty, the ultra-conservative state Superintendent of Public Instruction; Rafferty lost to a moderate black educator, Wilson Riles (see EDUCATION).

It appeared that Californians were indignant over the state's continuing school problems--an issue that rubbed off on both Reagan and Rafferty. There was also discontent over growing taxes, which had been a favorite theme of Reagan's four years ago. In national terms, California's results considerably dimmed Reagan's sheen as a spokesman for the Republican right.

Heartland Problems

In other important races, Republican Governors also felt voter wrath over fiscal problems. Incumbents in the Midwest, Plains and Mountain states were ousted. Farmers' unhappiness over Administration agricultural policy was another factor. Congressman Clark MacGregor, enlisted to fight a hopeless battle against Hubert Humphrey, lost 58% v. 42%, a larger margin than he or the polls had predicted. Minnesota got a Democratic Governor as well. "My hunch," said MacGregor, "is that a latter-day populism is rising in the Upper Midwest. That would explain the similar pattern of voting in the cities and in the rural areas. It would be in the tradition of that area."

The heartland, which is supposed to be Nixon country, withstood the President's campaigning. One of the few important Republican scores in the Midwest was the Ohio Senate race, in which Robert Taft Jr. eked out a narrow victory over Howard Metzenbaum. The seat presently belongs to Democrat Stephen Young. But in yet another example of ticket-splitting, Ohio elected Democrat John Gilligan to succeed a retiring Republican Governor.

Farther west, Nixon had selected five incumbent Democratic Senators as likely targets for unseating: North Dakota's Quentin Burdick, Wyoming's Gale McGee, Utah's Frank Moss, New Mexico's Joseph Montoya and Nevada's Howard Cannon. Conservatives were recruited to run well-financed campaigns against the ostensibly vulnerable quintet. Campaigners from Washington hustled through. Agnew anointed Moss "the Western regional chairman of the Radic-Lib Eastern Establishment." Moss was re-elected easily, and the four other Democrats also won. Three of the Republicans put up against the incumbent Senators were House members; Democrats captured those three seats.

Indiana provided a vivid case study of the season's acidity. Democratic Senator Vance Hartke, a leading dove and unreconstructed liberal, was challenged by yet another conservative chosen by Nixon, Congressman Richard Roudebush. The Republican, a former national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, wrapped himself in the flag almost literally. Roudebush's three claimed achievements in the House were bills prohibiting desecration of the flag, requiring U.S. astronauts to plant only Old Glory on the moon, and making a flag patch part of the uniform of Washington, D.C., police. Not only did Roudebush attack Hartke's stand on Viet Nam, he also put on a TV commercial showing a Viet Cong being handed a rifle. The punch line was that supporting trade with Communist countries, as Hartke does, is like "putting a loaded gun in the hands of our enemies." Roudebush also pushed the social issue hard.

Hartke, meanwhile, made it sound as if Roudebush were somehow personally responsible for the state of the economy. Other Democrats fantasized about nonexistent marriages in Roudebush's past; in fact he has been married only twice. The Hoosier vote split in crazy-quilt pattern that defied analysis, and was so close that there was no clear winner last week. In the unofficial count, Hartke led 867,857 to 863,608. Though Hartke claimed victory, Roudebush refused to concede pending a formal tally and an investigation of fraud charges.

Throughout the campaign, most politicians assumed that the personal intervention of Nixon and Agnew was helping the Republican cause. In hindsight, doubts are arising, and even Nixon is not certain how much his protean campaigning helped. In Texas, where Washington poured in more money than any other state, the enterprise was self-defeating. Nixon had high hopes of electing Congressman George Bush to the Senate. Young, attractive, conservative, Bush personifies what the new G.O.P. in the South is supposed to be all about.

No National Prescription

Trouble was, Texas Democrats denied Bush the kind of liberal opponent Brock enjoyed in Tennessee when they defeated Senator Ralph Yarborough in the primary. In his place was Lloyd Bentsen, attractive, youthful and conservative. Bush counted on a low voter turnout of from 1.6 million to 1.8 million, with a preponderance of middle-class Republicans. But the visits by Nixon and Agnew swelled interest in the campaign. Mexican-American and black leaders, who had been inclined to sit out the contest between two conservatives, now felt directly challenged by the national Republicans. Further, Bush had been arguing that the man. not the party, was the thing. Nixon and Agnew stressed the necessity of a Republican victory, a Republican Senate. "There is no question." Bentsen said later, "that Nixon's appearances were very helpful to me." Instead of 1,800.000 voters, there were 2,200,000. Said Bush: "Like Custer. who found there were too many Indians, I guess there were just too many Democrats."

Other Dixie losses obviously weakened the G.O.P. in the South, but the results there were not as ominous for Nixon as they seemed. Tennessee, like the Yarborough primary defeat in Texas, pointed up the region's enduring conservatism. In a two-man race, Nixon could probably carry most of the South against any Democrat now available for 1972. The party's immediate future is less sanguine. Progressive Republicans who had made inroads in the South are now in retreat. In Virginia, for instance, the White House ignored the Republican Senate candidate, Ray Garland, giving implicit help to Harry Byrd's "independent" candidacy. Byrd won, and will presumably be Nixon's debtor, though he has said he will vote with the Democrats to organize the Senate.

The President's attitude toward the Virginia election pointed up his ambiguous role this fall. Nixon the politician had always been the party regular. Yet in Virginia, as in New York, he deserted the duly nominated Republican in exchange, presumably, for Senate support. Helpful though that may be occasionally, the tactic is hardly a prescription for strengthening his party nationally or for building rapport with independent-minded Republicans.

White House aides argue that there was little choice, that Republicans had no tactical choice but to avoid the economic problem and therefore had to put the Democrats on the defensive over the social issue. Yet the same advisers admit that it is difficult to single out elections where this attack proved crucial. Two Senate victories that the Republicans picked up almost casually --Glenn Beall's in Maryland and Lowell Weicker's in Connecticut--turned on other factors. Weicker ran against two opponents, Democratic Incumbent Thomas Dodd. who campaigned as an independent after failing to win renomination. and Joseph Duffey, an antiwar liberal who had gained the party's designation. Beall unseated Joseph Tydings, whom LIFE accused last summer of having less-than-strict ethical standards. Tydings also failed to attract large numbers of black voters whose support he needed. Neither Beall nor Weicker matched the bellicosity emanating from Washington.

Senator Mark Hatfield believes that Nixon, by not taking the political highroad in his campaign, had missed "a historically unprecedented opportunity to make significant gains in the Senate." That is probably claiming too much. In many places the Nixon-Agnew approach evidently hurt. In others, it is possible to argue that the results would have been roughly the same no matter what Nixon did or what he might have done. Only in one sense were the voters predictable this year: the polls did fairly well in forecasting the outcome of various races. But in general, it was an election of patterns broken and theories confounded. TV blitzes had less impact than predicted. Racial tension did not prevent black victories. Despite the tendency to turn out incumbent state officeholders, voters treated their U.S. Representatives kindly. The electorate was simply not of a mind to be stampeded. In the year of the independent voter, it was every candidate for himself, and the results were a vindication of the essential good sense of the American voter.

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