Preparing for the Plunge

John Anderson decides about running as an independent

The planning is still in a primitive stage, the odds enormously long, the obstacles numerous and towering. Nonetheless, barring an unlikely last-second change of heart, John Anderson will announce this week that he is giving up his hopeless quest for the Republican nomination and running as an independent candidate for the White House.

Anderson knows the odds he faces. Never has an independent won election as President of the U.S. But the candidate reasons that "these are unusual times, with lots of strange currents" and that he therefore has a realistic chance of winning.

He has ruminated about an independent candidacy ever since his shattering loss in the Illinois primary March 18. Two weeks ago he asked Political Consultant David Garth, a New Yorker with a reputation for running winning campaigns, to form an exploratory committee to look into the legal and political problems of an independent candidacy. Then last week Anderson canceled scheduled campaign appearances in Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to rest and reflect at home in Washington. He needed the time off. After ten months of intensive campaigning, he looked tired and his normally booming orator's voice sounded soft.

Anderson resolved many of his doubts in a series of family dinners with his wife Keke and their five children, and in phone calls to "professors and politicians around the country." He was impressed by polls--especially one taken in late March for TIME by Yankelovich, Skelly and White Inc. --showing that more than half the registered voters are disenchanted with a choice between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Moreover, though the latest polls, including a New York Times-CBS News survey released last week, show Anderson as an independent with the support of only 18% to 20% of the voters, the polls indicate that he would take those votes about equally from Carter and Reagan. Anderson has said several times that he would not run if the effect of his candidacy would be to help Reagan, whom he has criticized with growing vehemence during the campaign as too conservative. But Anderson told TIME National Political Correspondent John Stacks: "I think we have demolished the argument that my candidacy would elect Reagan."

By midweek, Anderson had reaffirmed one critical decision: if he did go, it would be as a total independent rather than a third-party candidate. That would enable him to skip the time-consuming and expensive chore of organizing a party, selecting delegates and holding a convention. But Garth and other advisers urged that he wait a few more weeks before making his final decision. They argued that the prestigious Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter, which Garth had hired, needed more time to answer the most pressing question of Anderson's campaign: In how many states does he stand a realistic chance of getting on the November ballot?

That is a severe problem in some key states. In both Michigan and his native Illinois, Anderson cannot be listed as an independent but has to meet state qualifications for a third-party candidacy. In Michigan, under present law, he must collect 18,000 signatures from several congressional districts by May 5; in Illinois he will have to form a party that will also run candidates for Vice President, U.S. Senator and the University of Illinois board of trustees. Even so, the consensus among experts on election laws is that Anderson can qualify in enough states to have a mathematical chance of winning the 270 electoral votes needed to gain the presidency. Anderson already has missed the filing deadlines for independent candidates in five states with 52 electoral votes: Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico and Ohio. He must, and will, file petitions by this week's deadline for putting his name on the New Jersey ballot in November. While that step is not irrevocable, he apparently feels it will bring him so close to a formal candidacy that he might as well go all the way and make his announcement.

By running as an independent, Anderson will be barred from continuing to collect federal matching funds. By law, the cash can go only to the candidates of established parties during the campaign; under the Federal Election Commission's interpretation of the statute, some third-party candidates, but not independents, can pick up matching money after the votes are counted. However, Anderson's fund raisers have put together an imposing mailing list of potential contributors, and appeals to them have drawn donations from as many as 5%, a startling figure (2% to 3% is regarded by experts as good). Anderson says he can raise $10 million to $12 million, which he believes "would be enough" for a respectable campaign.

Getting on the ballot and raising money are only the immediate, pressing problems: the deeper one is the tendency of voters, even if they admire a third-party or independent candidate, to write off his cause as hopeless on Election Day and cast their ballots for the Democratic or Republican nominee. Anderson is well aware of the discouraging history of third-party and independent candidacies. He has resolved that he will drop out by fall, if his candidacy seems to be turning into a "spoiler" operation, in which his campaign becomes only a nuisance to the established candidates.

But for now, Anderson is talking long-shot optimism. An analysis delivered to him a few days ago indicates that he has an outside chance if he can draw to the polls millions of people who otherwise would not vote. He thinks it is possible to do that because of disillusionment with the choice between Carter and Reagan. His goal is to bring about a party realignment. He muses that if he wins the White House he will form a new organization that would be a kind of centrist Republican Party under a new name, leaving the official Republican Party to the far right. Says he: "This is a very, very unusual period of history, and that makes it an opportunity to strengthen the System. What we have now is a one-and-a-half party system. We need two strong centrist parties." qed

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