Fresh Faces Were Not Enough

In the wake of Watergate, politicians in both parties anxiously awaited last week's primary elections in 13 states, fearing that an angry electorate would crowd the polls to throw the "ins" out just because they were in. The worries were unjustified. The turnout was light, and the voters generally backed the incumbents.

All nine of the U.S. Governors running for re-election were victorious, as were all five Senators and 92 of the 95 Congressmen. Republican Governor Francis Sargent, 59, won easily in Massachusetts, although he is considerably to the left of his party, and Florida's Democratic Governor Reubin Askew, 46, also had no trouble, despite his controversial advocacy of busing to integrate local schools. Running with Askew, James Williams was the victor in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor.*

Given this general trend, a politician ambitious for higher office had to do something more than present a fresh and guileless face. He had to find a way to make a distinctive impression, as happened with spectacular results in New York State, where the voters defied the party bosses.

One of the clearest trends was the continuing surge of women competing for major political offices. With two primaries still to go, Democrats and Republicans have already nominated 44 women for Congress (v. 34 in 1972) and three for the Senate. Three women are running for Governor and three for Lieutenant Governor; two years ago, none were nominated for either office.

The issues of Watergate, President Nixon's guilt or culpability, and even President Ford's pardon seemed to have played relatively small roles in the election. Most voters were much more concerned about inflation, the economy and local issues.

A rundown of some key elections:

NEW YORK. Surveying the results of the election, one of the state's most powerful Democratic bosses was moved to heartfelt candor. Meade H. Esposito, leader of the Brooklyn bastion of the old guard, called for a revival of back room politics. Said he: "The back room gave you the best guys--Lehman, Roosevelt, Smith, Harriman."

Esposito had good reason to invoke the smoke-filled rooms--and the grand old names--of the past. The slate of party regulars he had so painstakingly helped put together had just been spectacularly smashed by Democratic insurgents, who managed to find fresh and personal ways of appealing to the electorate. The key results:

> Brooklyn Congressman Hugh L. Carey, 55, easily upset Howard J. Samuels, 54, in the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Samuels, a millionaire manufacturer with an impressive public service record, was making his fourth try for the Governor's mansion and was so confident of victory that he had chartered a plane for a triumphant tour of the state. But Carey, a hearty, quick witted Irish politician, charged that Samuels, a four-time primary candidate, was "in bed with the bosses" and blitzed his rival with a series of television commercials that artfully plugged his New Deal concern for social welfare and justice. In November, Carey will face Republican Governor Malcolm Wilson, 60, who inherited the job when Nelson Rockefeller resigned last December.

> Ramsey Clark, 46, Lyndon Johnson's liberal Attorney General, swamped Syracuse Mayor Lee Alexander, 47, for the Senate nomination. Texas-born Clark moved to New York in 1969, but he still looks--and sounds--strangely out of place, Gary Cooper lost in Times Square. Even so, Clark waged a highly successful campaign of low-key rage at social injustice. He put a ceiling of $100 on contributions to his cause and vowed that he was out to help "restore integrity to government." Facing Clark in November: liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits, 70, who will be trying for his fourth term.

> State Senator Mary Anne Krupsak, 42, had no trouble beating two rivals for the spot of Lieutenant Governor on the ticket. Her irresistible and irrefutable campaign slogan: "She's not just one of the boys."

FLORIDA. The only issue in the state's race for the Republican nomination to the Senate was the economy, and the only question was which candidate could do the most about it. Given those facts, Republican voters chose a cigar-chomping, bald, self-made millionaire named Jack Eckerd, 61, who created a chain of 422 drugstores in the South. Eckerd came across as a solid businessman who might bring some horse sense to the fight against inflation. (Eckerd's opponent will be picked by a Democrat ic runoff next month.)

Eckerd's primary victory was a stunning setback to the promising career of his rival, dynamic, attractive Paula Hawkins, 47, who made her name as a consumer advocate. Ironically, Hawkins' greatest triumph turned out to be her undoing. In 1972 she became the first woman in Florida's history to be elected to state office when she won a spot on the three-member Public Service Commission. But when the board was unable to keep electricity rates from soaring more than 35% in two years, her reputation as the consumer's best friend was short-circuited.

NEW HAMPSHIRE. Obdurate as a boulder of New Hampshire granite, Republican Governor Meldrim Thomson, 62, conducted his primary campaign as though he had never heard of the 20th century. He was against--or indifferent to--the fashionable political trends: demands for consumer protection, campaign reform, saving the environment, helping the elderly, creating an energy policy. In contrast, those issues were all favored by Thomson's opponent, David Nixon, 42, president of the New Hampshire senate and--since there is no Lieutenant Governor--the second-highest official in the state. What's more, Nixon, no kin to the ex-President, was as good a campaigner as the crusty Thomson was bad. The result: Thomson won by a margin of nearly 4 to 3.

The explanation was simple: taxes. New Hampshire is the only state with no sales or income tax, and ever since his election in 1972, Thomson has vowed to keep it that way. Nixon tried to slide around the issue by saying that the state might get enough from the Federal Government's revenue-sharing program to make any new tax unnecessary.

That was not good enough. Nor could Nixon make any ground on other fronts, including his "Watergate North" charge against Thomson for prowling through business tax records that involved his political opponents--a search that has since been declared illegal by the state's supreme court. Governor Thomson's opponent will be Democrat Richard Leonard, 55, a former state senator from Nashua and a fervent antitax man himself.

MARYLAND. The most spectacular victories by women in the nation were scored by two remarkably different candidates, the first members of their sex to be nominated for statewide offices in Maryland. The Republican gubernatorial race was won by State Senator Louise Gore, 49, a throaty-voiced doyenne of Washington and Maryland society and a cousin of Tennessee's former Senator Albert Gore. She defeated Congressman Lawrence J. Hogan. A member of the House Judiciary Committee, Hogan, 45, gained national attention when he went on television to call for Richard Nixon's impeachment before the final hearings began. "Unfortunately," said Hogan when the tally was completed, "there were not enough Republicans who could forgive me that vote."

Gore certainly did not. Campaigning as a Republican loyalist, she won largely by criticizing Hogan for his apostasy. In the coming election, Gore will have to develop a platform to run against feisty Democratic Governor Marvin Mandel, 54, who won his primary easily despite the fact that in July he divorced his wife of 32 years and married a woman 17 years his junior the same day.

Barbara A. Mikulski, 38, an ebullient, stubby (4 ft. 11 in.) member of the Baltimore city council, easily defeated ten rivals to win the Democratic nomination for Senator. Like Gore, Mikulski is unmarried, but there the similarity ends. A former social worker, she lives near her old Polish neighborhood and is active as a community organizer for the city's ethnic groups. Mikulski will face incumbent Senator Charles Mathias, 52, in what could turn out to be a fascinating election--liberal Democrat v. liberal Republican, ethnic v. the establishment.

RHODE ISLAND. The candidate who accomplished the most with the least amount of help undoubtedly was an ingenuous and indefatigable maverick named Edward P. Beard, 34, who upset Democratic Congressman Robert Tiernan. The party's man and a nine-year congressional veteran, Tiernan was so confident that he did not even bother to campaign until the last two weeks.

It was too late. For months, Beard, a house painter, had been running flat-out, exploiting the same beguiling tactics that had created a wellspring of voter support and vaulted him into the state legislature in 1972. Beard used a few radio spots--written by himself #151;but mainly he walked around shaking hands and displaying homemade campaign signs. He stumped Rhode Island's crowded beaches so diligently that sunburn sidelined him for a few days. "I'm nobody's man but the people's," Beard would say, proclaiming his honesty, his solidarity with his fellow workingman and his interest in the plight of the elderly.

Beard's victory over Tiernan--23,787 votes to 22,025--left him with just $40 in his pocket. His annual salary as a painter is now $9,000 (he gets $300 extra as a state legislator), but he can look forward to receiving a raise to $42,500 next year. In a zealously Democratic district, Beard is favored to win in November over Vincent Rotondo, the little-known Republican candidate.

COLORADO. He is still given to wearing polished, calf-length boots and three-leaf-clover cuff links, but handsome Gary W. Hart, 36, now a Denver attorney, has matured considerably since he directed George McGovern's campaign in 1972. Running for the Democratic nomination for Senator, Hart took much more pragmatic and moderate positions on defense and social issues than his old mentor did, going so far as to advocate a reduction in welfare doles and a new emphasis on public-service jobs and private employment.

Hart faced a special problem: he had to distinguish himself from his primary opponent, Herrick S. Roth, 58, who, it so happened, had worked in Colorado for McGovern. Hart's tactic was to attack not Roth but Republican Senator Peter Dominick, 59, who will be running again in November. Hart charged that Dominick, the chairman of the Senate's Republican Campaign Committee, had concealed the source of money received in 1972 from a dairy cooperative and passed it on to the Committee to Re-Elect the President. "Hogwash," said Dominick. Hart, he said, was "a liar."

Hart won by 13,284 votes. "Hart's not a new face," said G.O.P. State Chairman Dwight Hamilton. "He's an old pol, a soul brother of McGovern. He's going to have to answer every one of the issues McGovern stood for in 1972."

To which Hart snapped: "I don't know what the 'McGovern issues' are. I have my own positions. Besides, I don't know what's wrong with Senator McGovern. We may have made some mistakes, but none of us are in jail. If Dominick runs against McGovern, I'll have no choice but to run against Nixon."

* One notable exception to the back-the-incumbents trend: in Baltimore County, Md., Democratic voters rose up in wrath and routed what had been one of the strongest party machines in the nation for the past century. Corruption has been a way of life in the county, as the Spiro Agnew case dramatized. But the indictment for corruption--and the subsequent resignation--of Democratic County Executive Dale Anderson last spring apparently were too much. The voters defeated ten party regulars, ranging from Frederick L. Dewberry, Anderson's successor, to four candidates for the Baltimore County council.

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