Democrats: Unforeseen Eugene

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YOU DON'T HAVE TO SIGN ANYTHING TO VOTE FOR GENE MCCARTHY. As the balloting neared, L.B.J. loyalists began hitting below the belt, offending Hampshiremen's sense of fairness. When McCarthy supported "selective conscientious objection" to the draft, Senator Thomas Mclntyre described him as one who would "honor draft dodgers and deserters." Governor John King declared that any significant vote for McCarthy "would be greeted with cheers in Hanoi." Radio commercials at tacked "peace-at-any-price fuzzy thinkers who say 'Give up the goal, burn your draft card and surrender.' "

Gradually, McCarthy perked up as a campaigner, too. He even suggested that he play a few minutes of hockey for the cause (his supporters later distributed thousands of 70 auto windshield scrapers showing him on skates and saying "McCarthy Cuts the Ice"). Big names rallied to him. Harvard Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who as chairman of the Americans for Dem ocratic Action helped throw the group's endorsement to McCarthy, turned up. So did Poet Robert Lowell, who told listeners that the Republicans offered no alternative because "they cannot sink and they will not swim." Actors Robert Ryan and Tony Randall took to the stump, but Paul Newman's appearances had to be circumscribed for fear of a riot among Hampshirewomen.

Alienated & Uncommitted. And, of course, there were the kids. They came from as far south as the Carolinas and as far west as the Great Lakes. Not only the alienated but the merely uncommitted were drawn by McCarthy's antiwar stand and by a hope of revitalizing a political system that many had been at the brink of disavowing. "We're almost afraid to ask them what their intelligence quotients are," said McCarthy, "because they open with M.A.S and an I.Q. of 150 and go on from there." On the final weekend, his headquarters had to turn away 2,500 volunteers, including a group that was ready to charter a plane from California.

Thanks to the unpaid youths, McCarthy's staff was able to ring some 60,000 doorbells, reaching most of New Hampshire's 89,216 registered Democrats, and to mail out some 700,000 pieces of literature at a minimal expense. As it was, the campaign cost anywhere from $170,000 (McCarthy's figure) to $300,000 (the Administration's figure). Key moneymen: Dreyfus Fund President Howard Stein, who is said to have raised some $100,000; Arnold Hiatt, executive vice president of Boston's Green Shoe Manufacturing Co.; independently wealthy Harvard Social Scientist Martin Peretz; and San Francisco Heiress June Degnan.

"Anti" Votes. On election eve, Johnson Campaign Manager Bernard Boutin declared that anything under 40% of the vote would be a defeat for McCar thy—figuring that he had chosen an unattainable figure. He had not. The following night, an anguished Boutin sat in Johnson's Manchester headquarters, reluctant to put through the telephone call that White House Aide Marvin Watson was waiting for in Washington. The picture would improve, Boutin kept saying, as soon as the results came in from Berlin. McCarthy carried Berlin. By 10:40 p.m., one of the two bars that had been set up hours earlier in the Sheraton-Carpenter motel had to close, since the L.B.J. "victory" crowd had only 26 patrons.