The First Casualty

POLITICS The First Casualty Harold Hughes raised the flag and no one saluted. Last week the U.S. Senator from Iowa accepted the obvious, announcing he had made a "clear-cut and irrevocable" decision not to seek the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. A long shot in an already crowded field, Hughes became the first casualty of the politics of '72.

Hughes, 49, never formally announced his candidacy, but there were some who thought he just might catch on in the lackluster field of Democratic hopefuls. Big, broad-shouldered and ruggedly handsome, with a deep bass voice and the oratorical gifts to go along with it, he seemed a natural. Moreover, his sincerity and concern were genuine.

Seances. A reformed alcoholic gone on to the Governor's mansion and the Senate, Hughes never got off the ground as a presidential candidate. His Gallup poll rating was 2%, and even this meager rating was suspect since he is often confused with Tycoon Howard Hughes.

But the crucial blow may well have been Hughes' unusual beliefs, which in recent months have become a matter of increasing press scrutiny. Hughes is a Methodist lay minister who believes in faith healing, extrasensory perception and spiritualism. He has attended seances, and believes that at one of them he was able to communicate with the spirit of a brother killed in an automobile accident. Hughes intimates knew that the end was near when the Senator consented to a long newspaper interview two weeks ago that explored his beliefs.

Hughes' withdrawal will have minimum impact on the campaign because he has such a small estate to divide. Taken almost as lightly is the candidacy, announced late last week, of Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris. Harris' most valid claim to the position is that he presided, none too successfully, over the Democratic National Committee in the darkest days after 1968. But he has no real strength on the national stage and is in political hot water in his home state.

Still, Harris was included when current National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien last week called together the other candidates to hammer out primary spending limitations. The party is still $9.3 million in debt from '68, and all the hopefuls are suffering from money troubles. There is also the danger of the candidates exhausting themselves campaigning and cutting one another up in public to Nixon's ultimate profit. Such harsh realities undoubtedly aided the group in reaching an agreement to limit TV and radio spending to 5-c- per 1968 registered voter (Democrat and Republican) in each of the primary states, or a total of $2.8 million per candidate for all the 20-plus primaries looming ahead. How many of the Democratic hopefuls can raise that much remains to be seen.

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