Straws Blowing in the Wind

By WALTER ISAACSON

With a year to go, the Democratic hopefuls are out and hustling

The results in San Antonio were interesting, but the procedure was highly unorthodox. Ohio Senator John Glenn trounced former Vice President Walter Mondale in a straw poll 452 votes to 108, with the rest of the field far behind. In contrast to other symbolic showdowns among Democratic presidential contenders, the one held by party regulars at the Villita assembly hall was followed by Breathalyzer tests to make sure the voters were sober enough to drive home. Their "votes" consisted of buying $5 margarita cocktails in the name of their favorite candidate. For Colorado Senator Gary Hart, whose Texas backers drank only 39 margaritas in his behalf, it was a setback after he had leaped into contention at a showdown in Senator Alan Cranston's home state of California. In the candidates' division of the Calaveras County Jumping Frog contest, Hart's frog surprised pundits by leaving the rest of the pack in the dust.

It is exactly a year before 3,923 Democratic delegates will descend on San Francisco to choose their party's presidential nominee. But already the contenders are being ranked in a series of surveys and straw polls (some perhaps no more enlightening than a round of margaritas, but anxiously studied nonetheless). This month is filled with "cattle show" appearances before key political groups: the Sierra Club and the National Education Association a week ago, the National Women's Political Caucus this past weekend, the N.A.A.C.P. this week, the National Council of Senior Citizens later in the month. The fall will bring more straw polls, with key contests, so to speak, in New Jersey, Maine and Florida.

Why does it all begin so soon? Partly because of reforms designed, ironically, to abbreviate the process. By "frontloading" the primaries into March of election year, officials have forced candidates to try to build in advance a large base of national support rather than focus on a few early contests. "With 2,000 delegates to be chosen in three weeks, you've got to get your money and political support in 1983," explains Sergio Bendixen, the manager of Cranston's campaign. Says Hart: "It's a highly specialized effort at this point aimed at active Democrats who are concerned with the political process."

The prolonged procedure is not kind to front runners. Mondale, the fastest out of the gate, has been the first to run into difficulties. "Mondale is suffering front-runner blight," says Wisconsin Democratic Chairman Matthew Flynn. "There are very high expectations for him, and when he stumbles a bit the criticism seems to echo." After slipping slightly in public opinion surveys and being topped by Cranston in a June straw poll of party activists in Wisconsin, Mondale has attracted withering scrutiny. Is he too beholden to special-interest groups? Can he conquer his image of outdated liberalism? Is he the most electable challenger to Ronald Reagan? Pollster Patrick Caddell, a colleague and occasional antagonist of Mondale's in the Carter White House, says bluntly, "He's vulnerable. Can he excite people enough to central themes?"

Mondale, an avid fisherman, went on an early-July trip with his family, seeking trout and pike on the Minnesota-Canada border while staying in a rustic cabin with no electricity, phone or running water. But he cut short the vacation at the end of last week to cast his lines before the women's political convention in San Antonio and the N.A.A.C.P. meeting in New Orleans. His political advisers have been trying to find central issues for his campaign; recently Mondale has been focusing on education, arguing that the nation's schools require a restoration of the federal funding that Reagan has cut (see EDUCATION).

The main beneficiary of Mondale's slippage has been Glenn, whose amiability and hero's aura exert a quiet, steady appeal. A new TIME poll conducted by Yankelovich, Skelly and White Inc., which asked Democrats and independents their preference among the six declared candidates, shows Glenn with 26% support, drawing close to Mondale's 30% rating. This is an increase of 5 percentage points for Glenn since last March and a decrease of 8 points for Mondale. The support for the other candidates: Cranston, 6%; Hart, 3%; former Florida Governor Reubin Askew, 2%; South Carolina Senator Ernest Rollings, 2%. Glenn, who draws more support from independents than Mondale, does even better in the poll when all voters are asked whether they find each candidate "acceptable" or "unacceptable." Glenn's acceptable/unacceptable ratio is 53% to 20%, Mondale's is 49% to 35%, Cranston's is 20% to 25%, and Hart's is 16% to 19%. (In each case the remainder were uncertain or unfamiliar with the candidates.)

"There's a wealth of good will there," says Glenn Spokesman Greg Schneiders. "But it's superficial and uninformed." Indeed, out on the campaign trail these days, the question most asked of the first American to orbit the earth is what it was like to step on the moon (He never did.) Among the 15,000 people who turned out for the Fourth of July parade in Clear Lake, Iowa, in which Glenn rode in a 1964 Chevrolet convertible, was Jim Conrin, 63, farmer and loyal Democrat. Mondale, he said disparagingly, was "an establishment politician," but he noted of Glenn: "I like his sincerity." Rather than emphasizing specific issues or making promises to special constituencies, Glenn has concentrated on evoking a sense of traditional values that he hopes will appeal to a broad-based constituency.

Cranston, at 69 the most ebullient and energetic campaigner in the pack, has been able to make hay with the straw polls. "I love 'em," he gloats. And well he should. His straw-poll upset of Mondale in Wisconsin seemed to bear out his intense organizational effort in the state (one aide spent six weeks in a single congressional district). But thus far Cranston has been unable to attract broad popular support. As he took a Fourth of July ride on a ferry across Puget Sound to Winslow, Wash. (pop. 2,420), and paraded amid bagpipers and bellydancers there, he was met by quizzical stares from onlookers wondering who the tanned and gaunt stranger was.

Cranston has staked out the nuclear freeze issue, lacing his speeches with emotional descriptions of what the world would be like in the event of a nuclear war. This has earned aim a fervent cadre of supporters, but lis role as a champion of disarmament is beginning to be undercut. The other candidates have come up with more detailed proposals for arms control than Cranston, who in act has voted in favor of the B-1 bomber (which is made in California). Moreover, as Hart remarks pointedly, "No one is going to get nominated on one issue."

Cranston's strategy of stressing a single issue and organizing early among party activists resembles that pioneered by Hart when he served as George McGovern's manager in the 1972 campaign. Hart himself has not been able to capitalize on the technique this year. He has neither rallied significant support in straw polls nor inspired issue-oriented voters with his thoughtful, detailed compilations of proposals. "If you develop a high degree of fervor early, you'll have trouble sustaining it," he says. Hart's approach is to try to build support slowly by meeting with small groups of interested voters. At the Sierra Club conference, the 45-year-old Senator urged the group to "put a man of our generation in the White House."

Although they cause campaigns to crank up artificially early, straw polls enable dark horses like Cranston to thrust themselves into the limelight. Hollings and Askew, little known outside the South and not overwhelmingly familiar even there, are still looking for such an opening. They failed to seize the opportunity presented by the recent Massachusetts and Wisconsin contests to gain the national attention they so strenuously seek. Hollings complains that too much attention has been focused on the straw polls and too little on such events as his own introduction by Congressman Dan Rostenkowski to 7,000 Cook County, Ill., Democrats as "the next President." Says Hoilings: "I'll take Cook County." But for all the ideas he has been propounding (including placing a freeze on federal spending while at the same time granting all teachers a federally funded $5,000 raise), it is unlikely that Hollings will take Cook County unless he can find a device to get his campaign off the ground.

Straw polls, of course are highly inaccurate reflections of voter sentiment. After Mondale lost that contest in Wisconsin, a survey of likely Democratic voters in the state showed him with 49% support, in contrast to Glenn's 20%, Cranston's 9% and Hart's 6%. Nor has Mondale's fund raising been severely affected by intimations of slippage. He has has raised raised $5.1 million in the first half of this year, $3.1 million of it in the past three months. Glenn has raised approximately $2.5 million so far this year. Cranston, with an affluent California base to draw upon, has raised only $1.2 million, and has been spending it as fast as it comes in. Hart has collected less than $1 million, but is hoping to line up concerts by some of his supporters in the pop music world (such as Jimmy Buffett, Stephen Stills and Linda Ronstadt) to nourish his hungry treasury. Hollings also has less than $1 million in donations for the year. Askew, however, has raised $1.3 million so far, and with his low-visibility campaign has been able to put $400,000 of it in the bank.

Mondale has also been leading in endorsements from state and local officials. His biggest boost could come if, as currently expected, he wins the endorsements of the N.E.A. and the AFL-CIO. Although such overt union support might make some voters uneasy, a unified effort by organized labor could lend imposing muscle to Mondale's campaign. AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland would like his union's decision to be made in December, but many Mondale backers are pressing for it to be moved up to October, when the organization holds its convention in Florida.

Fears that the overexposure of a long campaign could cause Mondale and his opponents all to fade have led to renewed talk about a late starter's joining the field. Says Pollster Caddell: "People will ask, 'Isn't there someone else?' " Former Party Chairman Robert Strauss speculates that the candidates might burn out before the primaries finish, leaving room for a brokered convention and a possible compromise candidate. (With only slight prodding, he drops his own name as a possibility.) Senator Edward Kennedy, who last December firmly removed himself from consideration but cannot resist an occasional joke about what his role in a deadlock might be, topped all of the announced candidates when his name was included in a poll published this month by Political Strategist David Garth (25% for him, 23% for Glenn, 17% for Mondale). Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers, another declared noncandidate, is also considered a possibility by those yearning for a new face.

The most likely seventh candidate, however, is Jesse Jackson, the Chicago civil rights activist, who is already stumping the country as if he were a candidate. When he is listed in the polls, he usually runs third, drawing about 10% support among Democrats. On a voter-registration trip to Macon, Ga., last Thursday, Jackson exhibited his prowess on a basketball court at a local recreation center and preached at a Baptist church. At the very least, he says, his candidacy could inspire blacks to register and prompt whites to focus on black concerns. "If you force these ideas onto the agenda, if the candidates must fight over who has the best affirmative-action program or program for corporate responsibility, then the dialogue shifts," he says.

Many civil rights leaders oppose the idea of organizing behind a black candidate for fear it would siphon support from liberal candidates who have a greater prospect of success. "I don't think a black candidate has a ghost of a chance to be nominated," says Executive Director Benjamin Hooks of the N.A.A.C.P. A Jackson candidacy would be a blow to Mondale, who has significant support among blacks. Jackson held private meetings with Hart and Glenn in Washington last week. Hart intimated to Jackson that he hoped the race would shape up as a mainstream quest that registers blacks rather than as a divisive contest that separates blacks from the party.

The only thing that is certain at this early stage is that all is uncertain. Dave Nagle, party chairman in Iowa, where the first caucuses will be held in seven months, estimates that 70% of the state's voters have not yet made up their minds, which is as it should be now. At this point in 1971, Edmund Muskie was the solid Democratic front runner, with George McGovern in sixth place. In the summer of 1975, voters were telling pollsters they supported Edward Kennedy, Governor George Wallace and Senator Henry Jackson, while "Jimmy Who?" was listed as an asterisk under "others." Despite all the parades and polls and straw votes, veteran Ohio Democrat Paul Tipps, now a Glenn supporter, makes a good if slightly dispiriting point. "This isn't the ball game yet," he says. "This isn't even batting practice.''

--By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Christopher Ogden/Chicago and Evan Thomas/Washington

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/Chicago, Evan Thomas/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.