Three Candidates on the Run

Lonely long-distance runners, the three major Democratic candidates face a daunting schedule ahead--if they stay the course. After this week's New York and Wisconsin primaries, it will be on to Arizona and Missouri and then to the greatly important Pennsylvania contest at month's end. In May, provided stamina, money and voter support hold out, the challengers will struggle through 16 primaries. A sample of life on the high-hurdled campaign trail is given in the following reports by TIME Correspondents Stanley Cloud, on Jimmy Carter; Bonnie Angela, on Morris Udall; and Angelo and Roland Flamini, on Henry Jackson.

Carter: The Deacon

After a hard day of campaigning in Wisconsin, Jimmy Carter traveled to upstate New York and settled into bed before midnight at the Tudor-style house of Lawyer Gerald Fincke and Wife Pat in Rochester. Carter tries to stay in private homes when campaigning, to save hotel bills and cultivate his grass-roots support. As usual, he opened his New Testament, which he is now reading in Spanish in order to brush up on the language. This night he read Chapter 8 of II Corinthians: "We aim at what is honorable not only in the Lord's sight but also in the sight of men." Only after a few minutes of pondering what he had read did Carter go to sleep.

Next morning he arose at 6, and, typically, made his bed, carefully smoothing out the blankets as he was taught while a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. Then, shaved, showered and dressed, he stepped into a waiting Plymouth sedan to begin yet another day of campaigning.

The first stop, at 7 a.m., was the studios of television station WHEC, where Eddie Meath, a local talk-show personality, asked if Carter used pep pills to keep going. Carter, a Baptist deacon who has sworn off even his occasional Scotch-and-soda during the campaign, smiled and said no. By 9:15, he had met with a group of would-be New York delegates in the Genesee Room of the Americana Hotel, talked with local civic leaders in the Corinthian Room, addressed a $10-a-plate breakfast in the main ballroom (he netted $500) and convened a press conference.

When reporters scurried to file their stories, Carter chatted privately for 30 minutes with Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty, who had flown to Rochester specifically for the meeting. Later Flaherty would declare his support for Carter in Pennsylvania's April 27 primary.

At mid-morning Carter was on his way to a senior citizens' center and then to St. Simon's Episcopal Church in a black neighborhood. Then off to Buffalo for lunch with a group of uncommitted candidates for convention delegate; a TV interview with NBC's John Hart on Carter's religious beliefs (Carter says that he thinks about God or prays about 25 times a day, but adds: "I have never in my life said a prayer asking God to let me succeed . . . but I do ask God to help me do the right thing"); and a news conference. Carter told the reporters that he could not give full details of his proposal to reform taxes by eliminating most deductions and taxing "all income the same" until after he was in the White House. Later, as Carter settled into his car, Press Secretary Jody Powell thrust his head through the window. Said he: "I think you made a mistake. In the past, you've said you would fill in the details of your tax proposal after the convention, not after you were in the White House." Replied Carter: "That's right. I'll give details after the convention, but it's unrealistic to expect a fully comprehensive tax proposal then." "O.K., I understand," said Powell a little uncertainly.

That night, after dining privately with a small group of potential backers at a Holiday Inn, Carter took commercial flights to Washington and then on to Atlanta. Finally, by a chartered twin-engine Cessna, he flew 110 miles south to Americus and drove to his home town of Plains, arriving at nearly 2 a.m. He had been going for almost 20 hours. Wife Rosalynn had returned to Plains only a few hours earlier, having completed a separate campaign swing of her own to Kentucky. As he fell into bed that night. Jimmy Carter might have been forgiven by God and man if he had left his Bible in his suitcase and gone immediately to sleep. But he opened it again to II Corinthians and read from Chapter 9: "He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully."

Jackson: The Tiger

"I've got a bit of the tiger in me-- I don't let go." Scoop Jackson's detractors might regard the mule as more appropriate imagery, but there is no disputing that he does not let go--or let up --in his pursuit of the presidency. While there is a persuadable voter within voice range, Jackson campaigns.

Late at night, he will at last disappear into a hotel suite and munch on steak and salad with two or, at most, three close aides (Jackson rules out most dinner appearances as too time-consuming). Then, tucking a magazine or position paper under his arm, he will trundle to bed, reappearing at 6 a.m. to breakfast--preferably alone--on tea, prune juice and bran with skim milk, and to read the morning newspapers. To avoid Jackson's grumbling about the outrageous cost of room service, aides bring in coffee-making machines and hot-water brewers as well as juice and boxes of cereal. Before his public day begins, Jackson outlines strategy with his advisers. "I'm a morning person," he explains. "I tend to get a little short with people late in the day." The Jackson retinue, always small, generally travels via commercial airline--economy class. His wife Helen rarely goes along with him, but he phones her and their two young children daily, and recently broke off campaigning to fly home and help Son Peter celebrate his ninth birthday.

Jackson runs his own campaign as much as any other candidate does. He chooses his issues, decides how much to spend where and for what. Explains an aide: "He was single until he was 50, and he became very self-reliant." He interrupted a busy campaign day recently to preview personally seven commercials prepared by his TV experts. He approved six, rejected one (too anti-Carter). When aides reportedly urged him not to add $100,000 to his TV budget for New York, leaving more available for Pennsylvania, Jackson weighed the arguments--then ordered the money spent in New York. When Robert Keefe, his chief political aide, brought up the question of whether to contest an Ohio delegate slate pledged to curmudgeonly Congressman Wayne Hays, Jackson gave the answer: no.

Self-conscious about his inbred seriousness, Jackson tries hard to shed some of his stuffiness. Piling off a plane, he orders the press: "Everybody onto the bus. We're going to be true liberals and force busing."

Since establishing himself as a possible nominee by winning his first-ever primary victory in Massachusetts, he has begun to feel some of the heat that had concentrated on Jimmy Carter. Jackson's old declaration that he would accept George Wallace as a running mate "if he were the choice of the convention" is being thrown up to him --and he is denying that he ever said it. (But he did--on Feb. 14,1974, in Huntsville, Ala.) A Jackson comment in Wisconsin was interpreted as favoring U.S. military action in Lebanon, and Carter accused him of "warlike" tendencies; Jackson hedged at subsequent stops.

National Gallup and Harris polls last week showed Jackson trailing far behind Carter and Hubert Humphrey, but he remains outwardly confident that his vote-pulling power in the large industrial states will win him the nomination and election. That remains to be seen. But Jackson supporters and foes agree that until and if the tiger in him is defanged, he won't let go.

Udall: The Sage

More than any other presidential candidate, Mo Udall has--and retains --a sense of humor. At a hey-look-him-over party for liberals at Arthur Schlesinger's Manhattan town house, Udall tried to reassure skeptics on his switch from describing himself as a liberal to the more cautious "progressive." Said Udall: "It's like the law professor who asked a student, 'What's the difference between fornication and adultery?' The student replied, 'Well, I've tried them both, and I can't tell the difference.' " In Wisconsin, when asked if he would accept the No. 2 spot on the ticket, Udall quipped: "I'm against vice in every form, including the vice presidency." Given the heavy pressures upon him, it is remarkable that Udall can keep his wit --and his wits. One typical 24-hour period last week went this way:

Telescoping the whole tired 6 ft. 5 in. of himself into a DC-3 seat tailored to Mickey Rooney, he shuts out the day's string of hassles. As the old plane lumbers from Buffalo toward Milwaukee and morning, it is more important to sleep. One day has ended and another begun; there is no clear line of demarcation in the Udall campaign. His schedulers leave their candidate only brief respites in the 24-hour cycle.

On this flight, the candidate, wrapped in a tan blanket, sleeps through flashbulbs as photographers intrude. The day had been rough. He had made appearances in ten different locations in New York, some of them rousing successes, others total flops. He had started out at Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station at 8 a.m., accosting commuters single-mindedly on their way to work. He had courted Jewish voters, though he knew their hearts were with Scoop Jackson; he had been cheered by students, who he knew were his own. Twice he had been attacked by radicals shouting "Fascist!" His motorcade had suffered the ignominy of a flat tire on the Grand Central Parkway. In the afternoon, he flew to Buffalo.

Then the final indignity. His chartered airplane, replete with chandelier and elegant trappings from its days in the service of Mexico's President Luis Echeverria, had been sold without warning. His harried staff chartered a venerable DC-3, hardly posh, and at last his battered entourage trooped aboard--his Secret Service detail, two aides, a contingent of growling press, and his brightly resilient wife Ella. It may be the jet age for everybody else, but for the Udall campaign it was four hours from Buffalo to Milwaukee, a flight not aided by head winds, the ministrations of a glum stewardess and a pilot whose name, discomfitingly, was Slaughter.

A normal human being might have checked into a local hotel rather than undergo all of this. But a candidate is not a normal human being. Even so calm and modest a candidate as Mo Udall is, after all, still a creature possessed by the vision of the White House just over the next state line.

Two Strikes. On his Wisconsin journey, Udall pursued labor support into smoky clubrooms, promising jobs. Emphasizing his commitment to transportation and environmental issues, he turned up at an abandoned ferry slip on Lake Michigan and also at a solid-waste recycling plant. What if a mere 20 voters were present to hear him at the lake? The scene made a good photo, and perhaps a television correspondent would get it onto network news.

Once in a while, even the most even-tempered candidate rebels. Udall asked to skip a stop at one of Milwaukee's Red Carpet bowling alleys, where he had been only the week before. "But, Mo," whispered an earnest young aide, "this time the local television will be there." Udall sighed. "Of all the bowling alleys in Wisconsin, do we have to pick the same one twice?" But he went. And bowled. And got two strikes in a row --on television, of course.

In these days of perpetual motion (Ella Udall recently put in one 23-hour stretch), the candidate spends little time with his top staff back at headquarters. He protests that even Sundays have become campaign days. Says his rumpled press secretary, Richard Stout: "Mo likes to think." But on the campaign trail, there are few minutes left for thinking.

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