The Races: Over Already?

Maybe not, but Carter and Reagan look just about unbeatable

"Let me just say there is a possibility I will be the nominee, and I shall conduct myself on that basis."

--Ronald Reagan

"It's mathematically always possible that we wouldn 't get there, but the numbers begin to roll up."

--Carter Campaign Manager Robert Strauss

Such out-of-character understatements from the camps of the two all but certain winners were quite understandable. With three-fourths of the presidential primaries still to be held, neither Republican Ronald Reagan nor Democrat Jimmy Carter wanted to dampen the zeal of his fund-raising and vote-drumming organizers by declaring that the two races for the nomination were already over. Practically speaking, however, and barring a political miracle that no one could foresee, they were. In a sense, the general election campaign began last week. It was Carter vs. Reagan.

Both of the front runners, to be sure, could suffer some embarrassments before their parties hold nominating conventions in July and August. As the near certainty of the final outcome sinks in, many voters who object to such a result could coalesce behind the leaders' major opponents. There was a distant possibility that Ted Kennedy could benefit from such sentiment by pushing Carter harder than expected in this week's New York primary and later in the District of Columbia or Rhode Island. It was more likely that John Anderson could jostle Reagan in a primary here or there, most probably in Wisconsin and Oregon, and he might even mount a challenge in Reagan's home state of California. George Bush, too, vowed to fight on to the end, and he hoped to do well this week in Connecticut. But even if the underdogs snap and bite from time to time, there seems to be no way they can stop the march of delegates falling in behind Reagan and Carter.*

It was as much the manner as the margin of last week's victories in the Illinois primary that made the winners look so invincible. Kennedy and his clan had spent more than 100 days collectively in Illinois. The Senator, whose campaigning had taken on a more natural, less strident style in the face of adversity, enjoyed some of the same shoving, shouting adulation that his brothers had inspired as he pushed eagerly into crowds in Chicago. Yet there were some boos too.

Kennedy knew he could not come close in the Illinois popular vote, but he was banking on Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne's promise to deliver 49 Kennedy delegates in the separate balloting for 152 seats at the convention. Yet when the votes were counted, both Kennedy and Byrne had been crushed. Carter won by the huge advantage of 758,455 to 349,395 and collected 138 delegates to Kennedy's woeful 14, all from Chicago. Byrne's malfunctioning machine, which the late Mayor Richard Daley had built into the last of the great urban juggernauts, even lost key local offices. Kennedy was beaten not only in black, Jewish and labor districts but also in Irish Catholic areas. Both Byrne and Kennedy proved unpopular, prompting Carter Campaign Manager Robert Strauss to gibe: "The mayor and Senator are having trouble walking around together. Each is a little heavy for the other to carry."

The breadth of Reagan's Illinois win, if not the margin, was just as impressive. Anderson, who would once have been viewed as a surprising success if he could finish ahead of Bush and within 15 percentage points of Reagan, had raised high expectations by doing so well in New England. Anderson drew large and excited audiences as he campaigned through his home state. Some preprimary polls showed him ahead. But Reagan was also winning ovations in the state in which he too grew up. In Galesburg, where Reagan had attended grade school, even the fire department rolled out two lime green trucks for his motorcade. Declared the proud fire chief, Dale May Jr., in mock explanation: "With a celebrity like this in town, we can't take any chances."

Reagan collected 48% of the Illinois vote (525,823) to Anderson's 37% (401,252), while Bush trailed badly with only 11%. With the delegate count still incomplete, Reagan had at least 45, Anderson 26 and Bush only 2. There was a high crossover vote; this helped Anderson considerably, but Reagan won nearly a third of these Democrats and independents.

In winning so handily in a large industrial Midwestern state after his earlier primary successes in both the Northeast and South, Reagan destroyed the notion that his appeal is either geographically or philosophically narrow. At the same stage of his 1976 campaign, which he finally lost by only 117 delegates to incumbent President Gerald Ford, Reagan lad not yet won a single primary. This time he has captured seven. Said Texas Pollster V. Lance Tarrance, who has kept tabs on Republican presidential candidates since 1964: "This is one of the most clear-cut races we've had in a decade. It's like a Monopoly game. Once Reagan passed Illinois, he passed Go."

A few critics of both Reagan and Carter refused to concede that the primary race was over, clinging to the notion that each was capable of some horrible gaffe that would send the two parties searching anew for alternatives. Carter's recent reversal of the U.S. vote on Israel at the United Nations had revived charges of his incompetence, and his latest of several tries at an anti-inflation program drew widespread criticism as being inadequate and ineffectual. The hostages in Iran seem no closer to freedom than a month ago. Once again, Carter's rating in the polls is slipping sharply. Last week's New York Times-CBS News poll showed Carter's job-approval rating down to 40%, compared with 52% last month.

But if Reagan still sounded simplistic, he had not blundered. On the contrary, his nis campaigning campaigning was was smooth and confident. He has so far even avoided any show of fatigue or illness, such as the mild flu that afflicted Kennedy, which would have been seen as a telltale sign of aging in Reagan.

The primary process, which so many experts had predicted would be a long, taxing ordeal, seemed to have turned out to be a rather short, taxing ordeal. This prompted criticism, especially from those who did not like the apparent results. Contended Newton Minow, Chicago lawyer and former FCC commissioner: "It's an atrocious system guaranteed to give us bad choices because the broad center of the country does not participate in the primary process." Complained Louis Masotti, director of the Center for Urban Affairs at Northwestern University: "It's terribly confusing and is a period of unusual and cruel punishment for the American public, the press and the candidates." Political scientists began to bring up some long familiar ideas: a single nation wide primary, a series of regional primaries, a return to giving party leaders a major voice in the selection of candidates through bargaining in the traditional "smoke-filled rooms."

Without doubt, valid objections can be raised to the current system of almost weekly primaries, the unwarranted emphasis on the earliest states and the distorting manipulation, by both candidates and the press, of the psychology of expected results. It may also be true, as New York Labor Lawyer Theodore Kheel observed, that "we pick people for their ability to raise funds, come across on TV, and as campaigners, rather than for their ability to recognize or solve our problems."

As Theodore Sorensen, President Kennedy's speechwriter, insisted, "For the first time, we are beginning to see almost a total separation of the qualities needed to win elections and the qualities required to govern effectively."

Yet even if all that is true, it is hard to dispute that Reagan and Carter are the men their respective parties prefer as nominees in 1980. "The voters responded overwhelmingly," insisted Gordon Nelson, Massachusetts Republican state chairman. "They decided who they wanted and who they did not want in both parties."

Despite Carter's weaknesses, Kennedy's are even greater. He has been unable to enlist broad support, the early weeks of his campaign were highlighted by poor planning and inept execution, and the public has refused to forgive him Chappaquiddick. Certainly Reagan, who has already won the support of 1.4 million primary voters, more than twice as many as Bush or Anderson, would hardly have been bypassed by party leaders in favor of either of those two foes under some alternative system. Without the primaries, in all probability, neither Bush nor Anderson would even have gained serious consideration. Only Ford or Howard Baker would have had some chance to emerge as the nominee in a backstage contest dominated by party brokers--but when Ford did temporarily offer himself, hardly any of those very leaders were willing at that late date to enlist publicly in his cause. Baker discovered to his dismay that the respect he has earned among his Republican colleagues in the Senate as their minority leader did not translate into wider support among Republican primary voters.

Rather than being unfair to underdogs, the primary system this year gave Kennedy an early chance to score against a stumbling incumbent President, and it gave Reagan's challengers an opening to upset him in areas of the country where he might have been weakest. Yet both Carter and Reagan won impressively in widely separated areas of the nation. Theorists may devise a better way to choose the party's presidential candidates--and many Americans hope they do--but no system would work any more successfully unless it could start with a different cast of characters.

*As of last week, Carter had won 615 of the 1,666 delegates needed to secure the nomination, Reagan 206 of the 998 required in his party.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.