Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:38:46.191Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Changing the Rules Changes the Game: Party Reform and the 1972 California Delegation to the Democratic National Convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

William Cavala
William Cavala*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Rules changes in the Democratic party have substantially altered one of the fundamental institutions of American politics. This article is an effort to assess some of the effects of the new rules on the selection of delegates to the Democratic National Convention on the strategic environment faced by presidential candidates. The article outlines the basic aspects of those rule changes, describes the problems involved in the implementation of the rules, and attempts to evaluate some of the consequences faced by the presidential campaign of Senator George McGovern in the context of the California primary of 1972.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 27 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 These proposals were the product of a study made by a group organized by a liberal Democratic faction, the Commission on the Democratic Selection of Presidential Nominees, Harold Hughes, Chairman. The report of that Commission, The Democratic Choice (Washington, D.C., 1968)Google Scholar, included a series of recommendations, some of which were later adopted in modified form by the 1968 National Convention.

2 In Georgia, for example, all delegates were simply appointed by the State Chairman of the party, who in turn was appointed by the governor: Ibid, page 75. The fact that most of those involved in the Hughes Commission recommendations had their eye primarily on the 1968 Convention (rather than 1972) has been well documented. White, Theodore, The Making of the President, 1968 (New York: Atheneum, 1969); pp. 273ffGoogle Scholar; Herzog, Arthur, McCarthy for President (New York: Viking Press, 1969), pp. 242–7Google Scholar; Chester, Lewis, Hodgson, Godfrey, and Page, Bruce, An American Melodrama, (New York: Viking Press, 1969), pp. 551–7Google Scholar. At the Convention, after the Challenges to delegations chosen under the old rules had been safely put away for 1968, the recommendations described supra passed almost as an afterthought: 1972 was a long time off.

3 Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, Mandate for Reform (Washington, D.C.: Democratic National Committee, 1970), pp. 14–15 Google ScholarPubMed.

4 Polsby, Nelson W. and Wildavsky, Aaron B., Presidential Elections, 3rd ed. (New York: Scribners, 1971), p. 7 Google Scholar.

5 Material for this article is based on a large number of private conversations, personal observations, and formal interviews gathered during a period extending from May of 1971 through November, 1972. During this period I spoke on matters connected with the subject of this article to more than 100 of the relevant actors: members of the California Commission on Party Reform, campaign staff members of the MeGovern, Lindsay, Muskie, McCarthy, and Humphrey campaigns, state legislators, party officials, party financial contributors and members of the eventual winning slate of delegates as well as participants in the delegate selection meetings of the various campaigns. An effort was made to cover a broad spectrum of views, and to speak with participants from every part of the state and from every ideological position within the party. The interviews themselves were unstructured and openended.

Access to the private opinions of many of these actors was facilitated by my own role in the events of 1972. Through August of that year I served as assistant to the manager of the campaign for Senator George McGovern in the 50 counties of Northern California. In this role I had responsibilities which extended from the organization of the McGovern delegate selection meetings through the National Convention itself. Most of what is described herein happened in my presence. Much of the material on which this article is based stems from a day-by-day record which I kept of the events and conversations that took place during the campaign.

As a participant-observer I was able to gather information about the motives and deeds of some actors not ordinarily available to researchers. At the same time, because the relevant actors gave much of the information contained here to me in my role as participant, ethical problems would be raised were I to reveal specific sources. Many actors do not wish to be publicly associated with statements they are willing to make privately. Others have made clear their unwillingness to be publicly associated with some of the implications and conclusions of this article.

6 In their specific consequences, the new rules varied greatly in impact from state to state. In states where delegates were chosen through a convention system (Iowa, for example), the mandate for open participation made possible a situation where a candidate with substantial elite support but a small popular base could win a large share of the delegation. The new rules directly affected the question of who the nominee was to be in states with this type of system. In California, a closed primary state, the effects were less direct; their influence dealt primarily with the ability of the party to garner campaign support for the party's nominee. We have, as yet, no study which would allow us to gauge the full national impact which the rules had on the question of actually determining the party's nominee.

7 White voters received copies of the various slates with their sample ballots in the mail, at the polls the ballot simply says vote for “delegates pledged to. …”

8 The winner-take-all provisions of the California primary came under strong attack at the 1972 Convention. While the victorious slate was seated at that convention, a rule was adopted that would eliminate this provision in subsequent conventions.

9 Lee, Eugene C., “The California Democratic Delegation of 1960” in Case Studies In American Government, ed. Bock, E. A. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 143 Google Scholar.

10 In 1964, when Edmund Brown, who was then governor, led a united party slate in support of Lyndon Johnson's nomination, virtually every delegate chosen was either a contributor, fund-raiser, elected official, party official, campaign chairman, or (with a handful of remarkable exceptions, if female), the wife of a member of one of these categories. Perhaps a more striking example of this phenomenon is to be found in the insurgent California Delegation of 1968. In that year California Attorney General Thomas Lynch had filed a favorite-son delegation pledged to the renomination of Lyndon Johnson. Most of California's elected officials, labor leaders, etc. had already pledged to serve on this slate when Robert Kennedy announced for the presidency on March 13th—only 20 days before a slate had to be filed in the state. It might be reasonable to expect then, that the Kennedy delegation would have been some-what less traditional in its composition. Yet,

—13 per cent were congressmen, state legislators, or the wives of such officials

—28 per cent were identifiable major contributors to the California Democratic party, or the wife of a major contributor

—27 per cent were identified by the campaign press release as party officials, local government officials, campaign officials, or long time party activists

—6 per cent were labor union officials

In all, 130 of the 174 delegates, or 75 per cent of the total delegation, fell into these four categories. Of the 44 delegates who did not fall into these groups, four were celebrities, eight were college or university professors, twelve were students (and three of these were state officials of the Young Democrats), and twenty were identified only as “housewife.” Excluding those men identified by a public, party or campaign office (and their wives), 33 per cent of the delegates were identified as being either attorneys or businessmen.

11 One of the most important albeit indirect consequences of the new rules involved the early date required by those rules for the district meetings. The simple mechanics of verifying the approximately 15,000 signatures which each campaign was required by law to file with their slate of delegates (more than 1,200,000 such signatures were filed by the various campaigns in 1972) is a laborious process requiring many weeks. The process of verifying, printing, and distributing sample ballots to all of California's ten million voters requires another 30 days. These two mechanical deadlines, embodied in law, meant that the final date for securing and submitting the 15,000 signatures in 1972 was March 23. In order to provide each campaign organization with an equal and ample period in which to circulate their petitions, no candidate was allowed to collect signatures prior to February 22nd, the final date for submitting the names of the delegates selected for each candidate. Since the delegate selection meetings could not be held on a weekday, this meant setting their date on the week-end either of February 12th or the 19th. The latter was chosen by the legislature to provide the time necessary for printing the petitions with the name of each delegate.

It is interesting to note that under these new deadlines, Robert Kennedy would not have qualified as a candidate in 1968, and George Wallace was unable to qualify in 1972. Under the old deadline (prior to the caucus procedure for delegate selection), which was April 6th, George McGovern would have been a quite different candidate than he was on February 12th. (Muskie had by then suffered a close call in New Hampshire and two defeats, Florida and Wisconsin); Lindsay was out of the race—as was McCarthy. The California campaign was, by then, shaping into a McGovern-Humphrey race. None of these events were easily forseen two months earlier.

12 The remaining 12 per cent were to be selected after the primary by the winning slate.

13 The Democratic party's Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection reached the issue of group representation by a simple interpretation of their mandate on participation: “The Commission believes that discrimination on the grounds of age or sex … (or) race, creed, color, or national origin … is inconsistent with full and meaningful opportunity to participate in the delegate selection process,” Mandate for Reform, pp. 39–40. To remedy this wrong, the Commission required that state parties take “affirmative steps to encourage representation … of young people … minority groups … and women in reasonable relationship to their presence in the population of the State.” Ibid., p. 40.

14 While the Commission specifically noted that its guidelines were “not to be accomplished by the mandatory imposition of quotas,” the only alternative appeared to be “voluntary” imposition of quotas by the various campaign committees, Ibid., 40, fn. 2.

15 This was, in fact, the case with the Party nationally as well. The convention which initially adopted these rules, it should be remembered, was not one dominated by reformers. Although the implementing commissions themselves were chaired by liberal reform Democrats (Senator George McGovern, Rep. Donald Fraser), the recommendations of their commissions had to be accepted by both the Democratic National Committee under the leadership of Lawrence O'Brian and by the various state party organizations.

16 As an example, during the period in late 1971 when Senator Muskie still appeared certain to win the Democratic nomination, several of the largest contributors in Northern California met in San Francisco and agreed to withhold any substantial donations until after the Convention in July. All felt confident that a convention seat was theirs for the asking regardless of this pact. As one man put it, “Muskie knows he'll have to come to us eventually—no matter what we haven't done to that point.”

17 Every campaign activist interviewed who had been involved in choosing delegates in past years agreed that with four or five major exceptions, legislators were more often selected to avoid negative sanctions than to make any positive gain in resources for the campaign. As one put it, “Four legislative endorsements equals one printed press release, and that's the sum total of the benefits they get you.”

18 Sorauf, Frank, “Party and Patronage” in Politics and Social Life, ed. Polsby, Nelson W. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1963) p. 452 Google Scholar describes this other face of patronage convincingly.

19 Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 37 Google Scholar.

20 Why did so many of the Democratic Party's elite accept changes which effectively limited their power to control outcomes at the National Convention? One possible explanation is the widely held belief that Senator Edmund Muskie would be the Party's standard bearer in 1972. Muskie's early lead had the effect of focusing the attention of party elites primarily on the problem of unifying the party behind his candidacy against President Nixon in November. Party regulars, concerned with winning that election, were persuaded to accept changes providing delegate positions to the liberal-reform element in order to gain the support of that group in the Fall. The prevailing assumption was that the Convention itself would be more of a showcase than a substantive decision-making body. The participation by more women, young people, and minority groups would aid in the cause of party unity, hence victory. Most party leaders, in short, were looking back to the problems of the 1968 campaign (liberal defections from Humphrey) when they made their decisions on implementation of the new rules. They assumed that the problem in 1972 would again be one of uniting liberals around the candidacy of a “regular” Democrat, Muskie.

21 Under the new rules, the slate-making group for each campaign was to be composed of one person nominated by the campaign's executive committee from every congressional district. This person, who normally served as chairman of his own district meeting, was expected to be primarily responsive to the desires and direction of the campaign staff who had selected him. When we refer to the slate-makers, our reference is to the campaign staff who were actually expected to do this job, not to this larger group who simply ratified the final decision.

22 As with many of the attitudes and sentiments of the campaign professionals, there is no clear factual basis for this feeling. We have little evidence to support contentions that elite disaffections produce mass disaffections—or, indeed, that campaign organizations have any substantial impact on the final decision of the voter. From a purely mechanical viewpoint it could be argued that a primary campaign with enough money and manpower has no real need to incorporate the elite structure of its opposition into a broader general election coalition. But the point is that whether the conviction that a larger coalition is necessary is correct or not, it does remain a firm belief guiding the behavior of the actors in California.

23 The process of integrating losers into winning campaigns is an intricate and ritualized phenomenon. Below the level of major public officials (whose endorsement is a pro-forma obligation), it often takes the form of an elaborate courtship governed by a set of unwritten but complex rules. Winners are expected to humble themselves, to extol the virtues of their previous opponents, to credit luck rather than virtue for their success. Losers praise the efforts of the winners, usually observing that they must need no additional help, that they would simply disrupt a winning team should they come abroad. Winners are expected to counter this objection by pointing out their own weaknesses and noting the indispensability of the loser's aid, and so on. This formal behavior serves a number of important functions. It helps to defuse the now unproductive emotions which may have existed between two former competitors; it helps by appealing to those values that long time activists hold in common, stressing similarities rather than differences; or, as one politico put it, “If I shot all my enemies today, I'd have no friends tomorrow.” Finally, it helps prevent primaries from becoming zero-sum games, an important consideration if our major parties are to remain the legitimators of the final two choices for public office.

This ritual courtship may or may not extend to the point of involving the loser in an active way in the winning coalition. After propriety has been served by the necessary asking and refusing, a point is reached where it becomes obvious that either the winner is sincere in his plea for help or the loser is firm in his refusal. If the latter is the case the reason given is usually a simple plea of exhaustion, a legitimate excuse. Under the code, it is now not legitimate for the loser to grumble. If the winner is sincere and the loser is interested in becoming involved, then the problem becomes one of finding or creating a role in the campaign structure commensurate with the new recruit's status in politics. This often results in a number of delicate situations requiring sensitivity and diplomacy. A new recruit offered responsibilities which are perceived to be incommensurate with his or her status may take offense; a legitimate reason for opposing the winner may be created. On the other hand, to provide a role of great authority for a former loser may result in the offending of some of those who have been with the winner since the beginning. To share decision-making authority in a campaign, it should be remembered, means taking authority away from those who already have it. The point is that in almost every campaign, strategic decisions are subject to constant review and revision by new personnel as they become involved. Long-range planning thus appears to most of the participants as obviously unproductive.

24 To the major participants in a campaign the pace is constant and frantic. Authority in a campaign tends to be fluid rather than rigid, based on persuasion rather than command, and enforced rather through a sense of legitimacy than through sanction. Because most activists are involved in a campaign at least as much for the pleasure they derive from the activity as for a concern with the hope of eventual gain should victory be theirs, compliance with campaign decisions is best obtained primarily through discussion. The smallest decision may involve a campaign staff person in hours of such discussion. But to neglect this form of “involvement” often means making the campaign less enjoyable to the participant, thus diminishing one of the prime motives for his or her participation in the first place. Further, the need for money is infinite and the supply is always less than needed. Endless hours must be spent on fund-raising. Events must be planned. Contributors have a some-times annoying wish to be talked with on matters other than money. “Leaders” of every group, no matter how small, must be courted courteously. All such activities take time—leaving precious little time for reflective thought. Moreover, the best minds of a campaign will usually be put-to work on the most serious problem—which are always the most immediate problems. Persons concerned with long-term strategy tend to be taken less seriously by campaign professionals.

25 As examples, here are the semi-official scenarios of the campaign staffs of Chisolm, McCarthy, and Lindsay at the beginning of 1972.

Chisolm: By commiting herself early to running for President, Chisolm hoped to have placed the burden of black disunity on those who would oppose her. Once established as the black candidate, she would have become the rallying point for the disaffected and those wishing to put liberal pressure on the probable nominee, Ed Muskie. If Muskie had eliminated the other candidates in the early going, then Chisolm might reasonably have expected a respectable vote total in the California primary. This in turn would have increased her ability to bargain at the National Convention.

McCarthy: Assumed that Muskie would eliminate the nascent McGovern effort in the New Hampshire primary, and that some combination of Humphrey, Jackson, and Muskie would eliminate Lindsay in Florida. With both of the major contenders for the liberal position out of the race, McCarthy would then have met Muskie alone in the one-on-one race in Illinois. There, in the full glare of national publicity, McCarthy would have pinned the Daley label on Muskie (to make it more difficult for the Senator to obtain liberal support in later primaries), and come close enough to establish himself as a man with substantial support in even this unlikely state. If these conditions had been met and McCarthy had come close in Illinois, then he should have been able to win in friendly Wisconsin as the only liberal in the field. With two months to organize in California and New York, he should have then been able to consolidate this support and prevail against a divided field. With the Convention divided between Humphrey and Muskie, McCarthy should then have been able to obtain a bloc of votes large enough to be the balance of power, exact concessions on the platform, and so on.

Lindsay: As a latecomer to the Democratic party and to the presidential race, Lindsay was simply too new a Democrat for many California activists. But against this liability Lindsay was able to throw his appearance, style, and image—important in a state where glamor politics has many adherents. Many politicos have found it possible to support a liberal candidate if he has the good looks to offset this presumed liability. Emphasizing his press and television appeal, Lindsay's backers could plausibly foresee a victory in the California primary. Lindsay's scenario was simple. He would ignore New Hampshire where his unfavorable New York image would hurt him, and where he and McGovern would be competing for the presumably small liberal and/or anti-Muskie vote. New Hampshire should have eliminated McGovern, leaving no identifiable “liberal” in the Florida primary. There against a conservative field, Lindsay would parlay his liberal stance and charismatic image into a plurality victory. On the base of this victory he would move on to Wisconsin, to another victory, to increased momentum, and so on.

26 Although McGovern's efforts have been widely identified as nonregular or anti-regular Democrat, those attitudes were not shared by the top decision makers on his California staff. McGovern's northern California manager, for example, had served in that same capacity for the party's last gubernatorial nominee, Jesse Unruh. His state chairperson, Mrs. Elizabeth R. Gatov, California's National Committee-woman between 1956 and 1964, had served as chairman of many state campaigns over the past 15 years.

27 McGovern's abortive effort in 1968 had a greater impact among California activists than has been generally realized. The peak of that effort came in the debate between McGovern, Humphrey, and McCarthy before the 1968 California delegation. McGovern impressed a good many of that group, ultimately gaining more than a third of his total strength from the California delegation. (See Chester, , Hodgson, , and Page, , An American Melodrama, pp. 560–562 Google Scholar for an adequate description of this event.) The good will garnered at that convention provided McGovern with another small advantage over Lindsay.

28 Senator Edmund Muskie was obviously in the best position of any candidate at the beginning of the year; the leader in all polls, both state and national; acceptable to (if not the first choice of) all wings of the party; felt by most to have a good chance against President Nixon in November—all things seemed to be going well for Muskie. However as a person, Muskie was not the first choice of most party activists, and certainly far from their sentimental favorite. If other candidates began to show strength, it was at least conceivable that Muskie could be stopped. Liberals who were with him because they desired a ‘winner’ would have preferred a winning liberal; moderates might have preferred a rejuvenated Hubert Humphrey. Still others could hope that should Muskie fail, Ted Kennedy might offer himself at the convention. Aware of these weaknesses, the Muskie campaign staff was also involved in a pre-emptive campaign strategy in California. As the only campaign group other than McGovern's to organize prior to the delegate selection meetings (although six months later than McGovern) the Muskie group felt that the early decision forced on activists by the date of the delegate selection caucuses would mean that potential Kennedy backers, pragmatic liberals, and sentimental Humphrey supporters would all have to choose between the possible and the probable just at that point when Muskie appeared the strongest.

29 Goals 1–3 were specifically directed toward the achievement of the ends dictated by McGovern's initial scenario: to pre-empt the liberal campaign position in California. Goal number four is the traditional goal of all campaign professionals involved in putting together a state delegation.

30 One of the traditional avenues to favorable publicity traveled by candidates with little support in public opinion polls is to argue that support at an early point in a campaign should be measured qualitatively. The “grass roots” argument used by the McGovern staff was in this hoary tradition. Support for front-running Muskie, it was argued, was broad but without depth. Support for McGovern was limited but intense. Over the long haul, they argued, the latter would prove victorious. While the press personnel were understandably skeptical about the conclusions of this self-serving argument, they were willing to use attendance at the delegate selection meetings as a rough indicator of where each campaign stood in terms of “active” support. That is, they were willing to consider the numbers that showed up at the district meetings as a newsworthy event. The McGovern people, having helped to establish this criterion, and having made claims about the quality of their supporters, were therefore required by the rules of political journalism either to have the largest crowds or to be labeled the real losers of the day.

The fact that political reality in electoral campaigns is to a large extent the product of a consensus brought about by the interactions of politicians and journalists has never been fully described, but see Polsby, and Wildavsky, , Presidential Elections, p. 134 Google Scholar and Polsby, Nelson W.. “Primaries, Polls, and Populist Ideology,” Wall Street Journal, May 22, 1972 Google Scholar.

31 It is worthy of note that none of the campaign professionals interviewed believed that the new rules would have any substantial direct or indirect effects on the voting populace. The concern of all was with defections among the cadre of activists who provide so much of the manpower in a campaign. The problem was perceived to be one of elite disaffection; the solution was to provide symbolic representation to the disaffected elite. That such actions might have an effect on the mass base of the party was not considered seriously by the California professionals.

32 The distinctions between “symbolic,” “descriptive,” and “substantive” representation are, of course, Pitkin's, Hanna in her Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

33 In fact, they often became a liability. The antipolitician attitude was so marked at several of the meetings that persons running for delegate nominations were hooted from the podium for listing such traditional qualifications as campaign experience—most especially in cases where that experience was gained in the service of a moderate candidate. In one congressional district caucus a local officeholder nominated three men in the mistaken assumption that his political prominence would rebound to the benefit of his nominees; all three finished last in the balloting.

34 A widely believed implication of this argument is that to reject it is tantamount to rejecting any concern for the interest of the subgroup.

35 On the distinction between descriptive or symbolic representation and substantive representation, cf., Pitkin, chap. 9.

36 Given the state of their campaign at that time (far back in the polls, with four opponents from the liberal wing of the party alone), the threat of losing support of any kind was immensely powerful to the local McGovera campaign people.

37 The campaign's state finance chairman, a man who was to leave his business and family for weeks on end to devote his time to fundraising efforts, was nominated at a northern California district caucus for a delegate position by a local Assemblyman's staff assistant and lobbyed for by the campaign's Bay Area coordinator. He ran sixteenth (out of 19 running), but was the highest vote-getter of the white males over 30.

38 Although several women had been appointed campaign county chairpersons, they found this to be of little help in obtaining a delegate slot: all were by-passed in the voting at their meetings.

39 One meeting had no less than seven subgroup caucuses. The fact that it was the “interest” of each category that claimed representation (rather than simply the category) made it difficult to combine the categories—although the rules did allow a certain amount of overlap of this kind. Of the final slate of the Northern California delegates, for example, only five of the blacks were women, and only one of those was under 30 years of age.

40 Two courageous state assemblymen, both of whom risked political advancement to support McGovern, both of whom wished very much to be delegates, finally decided not to run at the meeting when it became clear they would very possibly be defeated in their own districts.

41 California's minority population (black, brown, Indian, Asian) comprises about 18 per cent of the total population of the state; women constitute about 52 per cent. One of the major questions at the time of the caucuses was whether to represent according to general population figures, according to Democratic registration figures, or according to Democratic loyalty. The final decision appears to have been to use that standard which best served each minority group.

42 The McGovern commission rules required only that all Democratic voters have the “full and timely opportunity to participate” in the delegate selection process.

43 Several of the meetings adopted resolutions expressing this point. Not only did they demand that the final selections be made from the nominees of the district meetings, but—in cases where the number of nominees exceeded the number of delegates alloted to that district—that they be chosen in the order of the votes they received. Thus a district alloted six delegates might find 20 candidates. The top 12 names would be submitted to the state staff, but the caucus resolved that the top 6 must be selected. For most activists the only legitimate reason for deviation was to increase the number of minority representatives on the slate.

44 These sentiments were usually accompanied by threatened sanctions involving not only the withdrawal of support, but also of positive action to harm the campaign's chances in California. In one district two of the eight delegates were not chosen from among the caucus nominees. The result was a virtual civil war within the campaign in that district, including a series of bitter accusations and recriminations in the local press.

45 This expectation was only partially realized. The leaders of two of San Francisco's most powerful labor unions chose to regard the decision as a personal choice on the part of McGovern to slight organized labor in general and themselves in particular.

46 A press release issued by the campaign headquarters shortly after the meetings stated that: “First, and we feel most important, 94 per cent of the McGovern delegation was chosen from among those who were nominated at the delegate selection caucuses last Saturday. … As supporters of the man who headed the McGovem Commission on Party Reform, we have long felt a special obligation to practice, as well as advocate, real citizen involvement. We are proud of this delegation because, in every possible way, it fulfills our special obligation” (February 16, 1972).

47 While there are a number of practical reasons for structuring a campaign this way, the committment of many of the political activists interviewed went far beyond questions of efficiency in their defense of the existing system. One person, active for over 15 years, put it this way:

If everyone were able to “do their own thing,” if we voted on campaign decisions such as whether to endorse this or that local candidate or issue or what the candidate's position on issues should be—if we did that, then the candidate would not really be in charge of his own campaign. That could not only be bad for the candidate, but it's bad for the country. One of the few really good indicators we have of how a man will govern is to ask how good a campaign he has. Is he able to attract loyal, competent men? Is he able to keep them working as a team when they disagree with him or with each other? How accessible will he be if he wins? What is his sense of constituency? What is his sense of politics? All of us make guesses about these things, but a campaign provides the only hard evidense one way or another. If campaigns were run from the bottom up rather than the top down, you would just never know.

Many of the activists involved in McGovern's effort accepted neither the traditional manner of campaign structuring nor its justification. They would argue, rather, that the strength of the campaign lay in its mass base of activists. That strength would presumably be lost if members of the mass did not have an equal say in policy decisions.

48 While the losers under this system can be described in terms of political categories (officials of the party and campaign, office-holders, contributors, etc.), it is also worth noting that a high proportion of the men in some of those categories were Jewish. Traditionally represented in numbers greater than their proportion of the population on Democratic delegations because of their long-term committments of time and money to Democratic politics, Jewish males over 30 were virtually excluded from participation in 1972. While no discriminatory motives were involved in this exclusion, the fact of being placed in an excluded category still rankled among many of those who; by the traditional standards had earned a place on the delegation but still, even though members of an ethnic minority group, did not appear to qualify under the new rules.

49 To the losers, this “balancing” process is more than symbolic. If the winners are vindictive, losers in a primary fight stand to lose more (in terms of office, status, and authority) if their own party wins the general election than they would if the other party won. Because of this fact the losers require some assurances that, by enthusiastic participation in the general election, they may atone for their early sins and earn a place in the division of offices. The first opportunity for such assurance is the balancing of the delegation. The gesture is expected. Not to make the gesture is, to some, the equivalent of a hurled gauntlet. Cf. also note 22.

50 This attitude was of course, precisely the stance feared by the losers. It is perhaps best exemplified by the treatment given California's junior U.S. Senator, John Tunney, by the delegation when they met after the primary to fill out the open slots on their slate.

McGovern's campaign staff in California had recommended adding Tunney, an early Muskie backer, to the delegation. This recommendation was accepted by McGovern's national staff and, in a phone call played over a loudspeaker, the national campaign director, Gary Hart, told the assembled delegates that McGovern's personal desires were that Tunney be placed on the delegation.

Those delegates who had been politically active in the past had almost unanimously supported Rep. George Brown over Tunney in the bitter 1970 Senatorial primary. They responded to McGovern's recommendation noisily and negatively. A period of debate followed during which a vote count by McGovern's staff showed that Tunney would lose. To stem this tide, George Brown himself was brought to the hall to endorse Tunney's selection. The final speech for Tunney, itself symbolic of the campaign's difficulties, was delivered by Assemblyman Willie L. Brown, Jr., one of the leading black politicians in the state and later chairman of the California delegation. The flamboyant Brown proceeded to castigate Tunney in the most vitriolic manner for fully 10 minutes—each insult receiving louder cheers. Brown concluded by saying: “John Tunney is a devil. But the book says that we have to give the devil his due. What the devil is due on this delegation is one seat—and who better to sit on His Seat than John Tunney.” This appeal struck a responsive chord with a majority of the delegation and, by a close vote, they accepted Tunney. There remains some doubt as to how appreciative Senator Tunney was about the gesture.

51 The law required 88 per cent of the delegation to be chosen by the process described in this article. The remaining 12 per cent were to be selected after the primary by a vote of the 238 delegates chosen on the first date.

52 Because many of the women and black delegates on the Humphrey slate came from the ranks of organized labor, the challenge to the McGovern slate at the convention took on the characteristics of a battle for labor's right to many union officials. This only further complicated McGovern's difficulties later on.

53 For example, the Nixon Committee was able to charge as late as October 15th that only three of California's 43 Democratic Assemblymen were openly campaigning for McGovern.

54 It is ironic that McGovern suffered more under the new rules than did any other candidate. Those rules freeze the public face of a campaign into the image it had when the delegates were chosen. McGovern, whose early image was as a candidate of a narrow section of the party had both personally and through his staff made many efforts to broaden his support within the party in California. But the inability of his staff to back up its verbal assurances with actual seats on the delegation had left many uneasy. Watching the convention on television, this uneasiness hardened into conviction for many traditional politicians. As one horrified official put it, “It looks more like the cast of ‘Hair’ than a Democratic delegation.”

The Press, for the most part, treated the delegates chosen under the new rules exactly as they had treated delegates in past years: as official spokesmen for the campaign. Often this resulted in conflicting signals. Shortly after the convention, one of McGovern's staff members, having just left an exhausting three-hour meeting designed to persuade an important contributor that he was “wanted,” turned on his car radio to hear one of the delegates using the contributor as a prime example of the “old hacks and fat-cats that we beat this year.”

55 Axelrod, Robert, “Where the Votes Come From,” American Political Science Review, 66 (March, 1972), 11–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.