RACES: Busing Battle (Contd.)

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As he rips through his familiar litany of complaints against liberals and Northerners, the stomping crowds in Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, West Palm Beach and Homestead roar as though it all were fresh. George Wallace teases, holding his big gun for last. Then he brings it out and blasts away at what has become his favorite target: busing. "I'm in tune with you," he shouts. "This busin' is callous and asinine. We're busin' children to kingdom come. But that busin' is gonna come to an end in this country when you elect me." The crowds go wild.

Busing has emerged as almost the only issue in the March 14 Florida primary, and Wallace seems fairly certain to ride the much-maligned yellow vehicles to victory there. In both North and South, the school bus is emerging as an unexpectedly dangerous hazard on the road that Democratic contenders have to travel to reach their party's nomination for President. The number of politicians still willing to speak out unequivocally against all antibusing moves was dwindling, but at least three persisted: Florida Governor Reubin Askew. New York Mayor John Lindsay and Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff. Protested Ribicoff: "If politicians continue to fan blind passions, we are lost. Busing is not the issue at all. The basic issue is whether America is going to have apartheid. I don't think we can exist on that basis."

Softened Stance. Last week, even as Wallace was flamboyantly exploiting the issue in Florida, three of his Democratic opponents hurried back to Washington to soften the Senate's antibusing stance (TIME, March 6). Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie and George McGovern-cast decisive votes as the Senate reversed its adoption of the extreme antibusing amendment pushed by Michigan Republican Robert Griffin. Carried by just three votes a week earlier—with all five Democratic presidential contenders absent —the Griffin amendment would have removed the courts' authority to order the busing of children.

In a display of parliamentary subtleties, the Senate took three tense votes on the Griffin amendment last week. Vice President Spiro Agnew even made a rare appearance in the presiding chair so that he could break any tie by voting for the Griffin proposal. He never got the chance. On the first two votes Griffin opponents defeated the amendment by a single vote on one tally and by a three-vote margin on a second.

Next day, when many assumed that the battle was over, Kansas Senator Robert Dole, chairman of the Republican National Committee, slyly offered an almost identical amendment. He again alerted Agnew to be on hand. "We had word," Dole explained later, "that Muskie had to leave, that McGovern had taken off. We thought we might just luck out." The Senate leaders, Democrat Mansfield and Pennsylvania Republican Hugh Scott, were battling hard for a less restrictive antibusing measure of their own. At the end of the roll call, the Dole amendment led, 40 to 37. Then stragglers walked dramatically into the chamber. Dole's information turned out to be wrong: both McGovern and Muskie were still present, and the amendment lost, 48 to 47.