Pennsylvania's Guerrilla War

Stumping the hardscrabble ethnic precincts and the fashionable ballrooms of Pennsylvania, the three most active Democratic candidates last week at times seemed peckish and anxious. All have drastically had to chop their spending and personally phone likely contributors for more aid. Congress had put them in the bind by unconscionably taking off for an Easter recess before a law reviving federal campaign subsidies could be passed (TIME, April 12). And all three were worried that they faced varying degrees of loss in the state.

Morris Udall, whose candidacy may not survive another disappointment, was most severely handicapped by the money crimp. "Pennsylvania," he complained, "may turn out to be a busted play for me because of it." Last week he had to give up his chartered plane and his hopes of coming from behind with a TV blitz, but he did not surrender his candor. For the first time he acknowledged that the ubiquitous noncandidate, Hubert Humphrey, "has a real chance."

Scoop Jackson was desperately trying to persuade voters that he is more than a stand-in for H.H.H. Straining to discredit his chief competitor on the ballot, he even tried to suggest that Jimmy Carter's indifferent stand on the right-to-work law when he was Georgia's Governor was somehow responsible for unemployment in Philadelphia. Big labor and most of the state's party sachems were pushing for Jackson in hopes of stalling Carter and making the Pennsylvania outcome so indecisive that the real winner would be Humphrey. Locals of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, the International Union of Operating Engineers and other unions were sending out mailings for Jackson, canvassing by phone and planning to field thousands of people to get out the vote on election day. Still, Jackson's early lead in Pennsylvania was becoming shaky.

Carter said he viewed the Pennsylvania contest as "Jimmy Carter against the world." He has yet to prove he can win in a big industrial state, but he hoped for a clear victory--an upset that could finish Jackson. Udall's polls showed Carter ahead. Carter's own private polls indicated that he was the most popular candidate among the three in Pennsylvania, but the voters were so ambivalent that his recently won advantage could vaporize by primary day.

Even if Carter ekes out a plurality in the statewide popular vote, as seemed likely last week, Jackson stands an excellent chance of gaining first place in the quite separate vote for delegates. Reason: the delegates are elected in 50 local races, each of which is crowded and confused; but Jackson's labor and machine allies can steer voters to the "right" choices. (Of Pennsylvania's 178 delegates, 134 will be elected next Tuesday and the balance appointed later.) Thus the primary that had been billed as a dramatic Armageddon was becoming more of a diffuse guerrilla war that could yield split results.

The hand-to-hand combat was being conducted not so much by the candidates but by their infantry--the 1,102 people who are vying for the delegate seats. Day after dogged day, these contestants were hard at work in buttonholing, doorbell-ringing, coffee-klatching campaigning. New York Bureau Chief Laurence I. Barrett followed three Pennsylvanians as they scoured for votes:

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