Catering to Azerbaijanis

Mike Balzano, Taras Szmagala, Libby Allemang, Mike Sotirhos, S.J. Skubik and Baiba Funke. The names read like a roster of Democratic precinct captains in Chicago's 42nd ward. Wrong place, wrong party. They are actually staff members of the National Republican Heritage Groups Council --certified Republicans all and proud of it in this election year. They have found a friend in Richard Nixon, and he has found congenial qualities in them: a conservative style of patriotism, the Protestant ethic (though they are mostly Roman Catholic), antiradicalism and nonpermissiveness. They are the so-called ethnics, whom the Republicans are sparing no time or energy to woo.

The ethnics comprise some 80 million people, and they are concentrated mostly in the big states that decide elections. The Heritage Council caters to a total of 32 different nationalities--more than the typical Republican knew existed a few years ago, or cared to know. Among those wooed are Albanians and Vietnamese, Hungarians and Lithuanians, Croats, Slovenes and Serbs, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians and Scandinavians. When Nixon was running in 1968, a mere 7,000 ethnic volunteers helped in his campaign. This year 50,000 ethnics are working for the President, and twice that number are expected to turn out before the race is over.

The ethnics are attracted to the Republican Party because they are repelled--doubtless against their wishes --by the Democratic Party. It no longer seems to fit them as comfortably as it once did. It used to be the home of the working man, but now he does not feel entirely welcome. He views the forces behind McGovern as elitist, overly ideological, antilabor and oblivious of his needs. Meanwhile, the President has been quite attentive. Since many of the ethnics are refugees from Communism, they are suspicious even of President Nixon's attempt to improve relations with both Russia and China. But they are even more mistrustful of what George McGovern might do. Says Steve Markowski, vice chairman of the eastern region Heritage Council: "They regard McGovern's position on amnesty and his promise to go begging to Hanoi as signs of weakness. They also have no use for the people they identify with McGovern: Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda."

The Heritage Council is presenting ethnics with as attractive an alternative as possible. It cranks out news releases for some 600 ethnic newspapers around the U.S. Whenever possible, the releases are in English. "We want to unite, we don't want to divide," says Laszlo Pasztor, the council director and a Hungarian freedom fighter who fled to the U.S. when the Soviets invaded in 1956. "The English language is a strong, binding force." Nevertheless, translation is provided for any nationality that would rather have its politics in its native tongue. There is also an ample collection of foreign-language tapes and records, which are distributed free of charge.

Whenever the Republicans have been kind to an ethnic group, the fact is sure to be noted in one of the Heritage Council's publications. A recent issue of G.O.P. Nationalities News, for example, pointed out that seven key members of the Apollo project team are Serbian Americans who "ensure that the millions of components and systems get our astronauts to the moon and back safely." No national holiday is overlooked, which means that Heritage personnel are busy almost every day of the year. The Republicans sponsor dances, picnics and banquets that are usually attended by a White House staffer. "This gives us a feeling of closeness to the President," says Nick Stepanovich, Heritage director in Indiana. On July 2, Pat Nixon showed up at the fourth annual Lithuanian folk festival in Chicago to tell the cheering throng that her daughters had told her "this is the most wonderful show in the world." Ethnics are often invited to White House breakfasts and Sunday church services, as well as to State Department briefings that fill them in on developments in their homelands.

Ceremony aside, the President has also been making policy decisions that are pleasing to ethnics. When he went to Moscow, he made a side trip to Warsaw--a signal to Polish Americans that he was not about to ignore Poland. On his return, he met at the White House with some Polish Americans, who burst into an appreciative song: Sto Lat, Sto Lat, or May You Live To Be a Hundred. The Republicans have poured an estimated $47 million into low-cost housing and other projects for ethnic groups, chiefly for Spanish-speaking people in California and Texas. While the President has vetoed other spending bills on the grounds that the federal deficit is too large, these expenditures are obviously an exception in an election year.

On Labor Day the President made his most vigorous attack on quotas, a direct appeal to ethnics, who fear that they will lose jobs to blacks under any kind of quota system. For the past six months the White House has been soft-pedaling its highly touted Philadelphia

Plan, which requires contractors working on federal projects to hire a certain percentage of minorities. Both the Republican National Committee and the Committee for the Re-Election of the President have black divisions that work energetically. But the Administration feels that it has more votes to gain by placating the white ethnics than by cultivating blacks. Last week a black Republican, former Assistant Secretary of Labor Arthur Fletcher, called the decision to modify the Philadelphia Plan "shocking." "It is very popular this year to run against everything black Americans stand for," he said.

Can the ethnics be converted to Republicanism on a permanent basis? "To some it's almost sacrilegious to pull that Republican lever," says Stepanovich. But it appears that many will pull it for Nixon, and Republicans hope that it will become a habit. A possible successor to Nixon, after all, is Spiro Agnew, an ethnic's ethnic. If the ethnic vote does not "come home," as McGovern urges it to, but finds a new home in the G.O.P., that will be the most crucial party shift since the early New Deal.

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