Politics: The Race After R.F.K.

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The assassination clamped an immediate moratorium on campaigning, but there was no end to the speculation about what Robert Kennedy's death would mean to the future of the presidential contest. The first effect was confusion, accompanied by a Babel of rumors. One had it that the U.S. Supreme Court would study the constitutionality of simply postponing the election until 1970. Another predicted that Hubert Humphrey would withdraw from the race in favor of Ted Kennedy. Yet another said that Lyndon Johnson might plunge back into the race. All were remote possibilities at best.

Ironically, however, the assassination probably will have the effect of clarifying rather than obfuscating the prospects of the campaign year. As a result, most politicians agree, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, even more than before, seem destined to capture their parties' nominations and meet in November.

Pockets of Strength. Even before last week, Humphrey's forces had quietly marshaled sufficient delegate strength to put him within clear marching distance of a convention victory; Kennedy's death put him even closer. In his eleven-week campaign, R.F.K. had amassed more than 300 convention-delegate votes, including the 172 he won in California last Tuesday. Much of Kennedy's delegate legacy will inevitably fall to Humphrey. In Indiana, for example, the New Yorker's May 7 primary victory had assured him of at least 53 of the state's 63 convention votes. After Kennedy's death, Indiana party leaders declared that the slate would go uncommitted to Chicago, but in fact Governor Roger Branigin, who ran as a favorite son in the primary against Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, will almost surely throw most of the votes to Humphrey on the first ballot.

Similarly, 94 of Michigan's 96 votes are expected to be solidly arrayed for the Vice President. While McCarthy will doubtless inherit pockets of delegate strength formerly pledged to Kennedy, the Minnesotan's unorthodox style does not endear him to Democratic party professionals, who have tended to favor either Kennedy or Humphrey. With the important primaries over, the search for delegates will shift from the polls to political clubhouses—an uncongenial environment for the professorial Senator.

The inheritance of Kennedy's popular support is problematic. Many of his partisans, stunned and embittered, have already forsworn further interest in the outcome of the election—an attitude that would hurt the Democratic candidate in November. Yet thousands of former R.F.K. backers in organized labor and among Negroes, Mexican-Americans and urban ethnic groups will undoubtedly gravitate to Humphrey. Students, intellectuals and antiwar Democrats who favored Kennedy will probably wind up with McCarthy.