A Setback for McGovern

"I think I have come to the point now where I have earned the nomination. And if a bunch of old established politicians gang up to prevent me from getting the nomination because I didn't come to them for help--just a negative, spiteful movement that subverts the democratic process--if I feel that has happened, then I will not let them get away with it. There's been so much hard work and emotion poured into this campaign by so many thousands of people, it would be such an infuriating, disillusioning experience for them all, that I would repudiate the whole process. I would run as an independent or support somebody else on an independent ticket. So if I'm denied the nomination by an illegitimate power play, that nomination will not be worth anything to the person who gets it."

THUS, in an interview in the current LIFE granted shortly before his campaign struck its first serious snag, George McGovern peered ahead somewhat apocalyptically at the difficulties he sensed might face him along the road to Miami Beach. Then last week the Democratic Party's Credentials Committee voted to deprive McGovern of 151 of the 271 delegates he had captured in California's winner-take-all primary last month. Instead of having a virtually unbeatable first-ballot arsenal, the South Dakotan suddenly had his delegate strength pared, at least for the present, down to well below 1,300 --far short of the 1,509 needed for nomination. Suddenly Hubert Humphrey was politically alive again. So, for that matter, were Edmund Muskie and any number of dark horses. What had promised to be a ritual endorsement next week at Miami Beach now loomed as a bitter and potentially fratricidal collision of McGovern insurgents and party regulars. The clash could cause a party schism that could destroy the Democrats' chances for victory against Richard Nixon in November.

When McGovern heard the news last week, he stormed out of a Senate cloakroom exhaling an uncharacteristic fire. He repeated the threat: "It's an incredible, rotten, stinking political steal. I'm not going to support anybody who is elected by crooked and unethical procedures. I wouldn't have any part of a convention that would sustain this kind of shabby back-room dealing." Later, when his mood had cooled and he realized that his fight had just begun, McGovern seemed to change his mind. "I don't want to make any threats," he said. "If the Democratic nominee is nominated according to the rules, in a way I think is fair and honorable, I'll support him." Even so, the credentials challenge mounted by Humphrey and other anti-McGovern forces emerged as the potentially critical event of the election year. It seemed the one circumstance that could stop McGovern and thus undo the almost surrealistically effective crusade he has waged since the wreckage of Chicago in 1968.

Spoilsport. The credentials fight had been an ironic affair. The moral thrust of the reforms by which McGovern ascended was to guarantee just representation for all factions of the party. California election law would seem to violate the spirit of those reforms. In fact, McGovern, as original chairman of the party reform commission, had opposed the winner-take-all idea, but he was outvoted. Days before the primary, Humphrey said that he would not challenge it if he should lose. "They've decided what they want to do here," he told CBS-TV'S Walter Cronkite, "and if you're going to challenge it, you should challenge it before it looks like you might have a tough time of it. I don't believe in that kind of politics." Only a "spoilsport," he said, would make such a challenge.

Yet it was just that kind of politics that Humphrey practiced last week when it seemed his last chance of staying in the race. Asked if he had become a spoilsport, he conceded: "I guess you'd have to say I have." McGovern took the California primary with 43.46% of the vote--thus winning all 271 delegates --while Humphrey ran second with 38.55%. When the 150-member Democratic Credentials Committee assembled in Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel to consider the challenge, the Humphrey delegates banded together with Wallace and Muskie forces in a stop-McGovern coalition that upheld the challenge by a vote of 72-66.

It was the old politics of sheer political power: changing the rules after the game had been played. Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota and the District of Columbia work by the winner-take-all principle; yet there were no challenges to those primary votes on that basis. The McGovern forces, previously adept at such games of muscle, found themselves simply overpowered.

The event left them in a bitter mood. Earlier in the week, McGovern had announced euphorically that a new bloc of 96 black delegates had "put us over the top" by assuring him of 1,510 1/2 convention votes. As it turned out, many of the new votes had been counted twice, and the total amounted to somewhere between 55 and 60. After the California decision, McGovern forces on the Credentials Committee rammed through a successful challenge unseating Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley and 58 other uncommitted delegates. McGovern stands to get 41 of those delegates, but he hardly seemed eager for such a victory, for it may earn him Daley's hostility not only at the convention but also in the general election should McGovern be nominated. Daley's Illinois will be a crucial state in November. In any case, Daley will reopen the question on the convention floor, promising still another battle.

The question now is whether McGovern has the delegate strength to overturn the Credentials Committee's California decision once it reaches the floor of the convention. Normally, a challenged delegation is not permitted to vote on the question of its credentials. But the 120 California delegates given McGovern under the committee's ruling may be permitted to vote with him on the credentials fight. If they do, McGovern's managers figure he would have 1,333 delegates out of the 1,433 he would need to get a victory on the credentials question. He might also pick up some sympathetic delegates who simply think he was badly treated. In addition, there are 87 delegates, formally pledged to Wallace for the first ballot, who have said that they would vote for McGovern later; if those delegates went with McGovern on the credentials battle, then he would need to collect only 13 more to win back all of his original 271 California delegates. That would still leave him short of a majority for nomination. But the convention must still decide whether McGovern's 120 California delegates can vote on the credentials questions.

Not the least irony of the current brawl is that McGovern had been working tirelessly to promote party unity as he looked ahead to the fall campaign. Early last week he embarked on a five-state Southern tour to try to reassure Democratic regulars there--including Georgia's Governor Jimmy Carter --who fear that a McGovern nomination would mean abandoning the region to Richard Nixon.

Meantime, as the Democratic Platform Committee met in Washington, the McGovern forces gave a remarkable display of coolness and conciliation. With some McGovernites pushing for abortion on demand, for legalized marijuana, for homosexual rights and other controversial stands in the platform, a minor civil war seemed certain to erupt. But the McGovern forces' mood was summed up by one feminist after she declined to support a proposed abortion plank: "Listen, we've kept McGovern afloat so far. We'd be stupid to sink him now." The professionals were impressed. On issue after issue, the insurgents maintained enough flexibility to avoid divisive bloodletting.

All of the carefully wrought conciliation achieved over the platform threatened to disintegrate after the Credentials Committee seemed to reopen the nomination battle. "We got Chicagoed," fumed McGovern Press Secretary Kirby Jones. "There's not going to be any more of this party unity stuff." A Humphrey agent said simply: "We smell blood." Humphrey, who now has 391 delegates and would have 497 if allowed to keep his part of the California total, pronounced his chances "markedly improved" and told reporters: "Just file away those political obituaries for a few days, fellas." Muskie's campaign manager declared his man "back in the race, very strong."

Dark Horse. For the present, all the candidates will wait for the fate of the California delegation to be decided on the convention floor. If McGovern cannot make it on the first ballot, there is talk that the anti-McGovern forces--including not only outright Humphrey, Wallace and Muskie backers but also Governors, big labor bosses, Senators and Congressmen--may be expected to hold firm. Then, according to one scenario, McGovern's strength may dissipate on subsequent ballots, with none of the major contenders able to push over 1,509. That would lead, perhaps, to a cry for Edward Kennedy. Or perhaps to some dark horse who might somehow be acceptable to both the McGovern insurgents and the regulars.

But even if McGovern does succeed in capturing the nomination, Miami may still leave some bitter wounds. Some of those wounds should be assuaged if McGovern can make Ted Kennedy his vice-presidential candidate. But though McGovern remains the probable choice, it will not be the walk in the sun that all his followers had expected. The battle will be complicated by the fact that more than once George McGovern has threatened to lead his armies straight out of the Democratic Party.

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