POLITICS: McGovern Redux

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McGovern, at one point, also counted heavily on the young to back him because of the war. The results have been somewhat disappointing. To be sure, his plan to grant general amnesty to all draft dodgers after the war ends gets cheers from college audiences; he went over so well at Illinois State University near Bloomington recently that the student band played Hail to the Chief twice. Yet in an October sampling of newly eligible voters from 17 to 23 only 5% named him as their first choice; he ranked behind Kennedy, Muskie, Humphrey and Lindsay.

Gut Feeling. To broaden his base, McGovern has lately begun seeking allies among labor and reaching for the increasingly important farm vote. Until late last summer, he was on AFL-CIO Chief George Meany's blacklist. It was partly a matter of hawk against dove, but equally at issue was a little-noticed attack by McGovern, long remembered by Meany, on labor's opposition to the 1963 U.S. wheat sales to Russia. "That really stuck in his craw," McGovern says, "and I went over to see him and apologize." Last month, McGovern was the only Democratic presidential possibility to address the full AFL-CIO convention in Miami Beach; others were invited but did not attend.

The farm states are up for grabs, and McGovern has begun hammering away at low corn prices and high interest rates for farmers. Recently he interrupted a week-long tour through the Midwest to jet back to Washington to vote against Nixon's nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, who has little support among farmers. But whether he can count on any substantial backing from either group remains to be seen. He has also made some new allies among blacks after campaigning actively among them. On a four-day swing through California last week, he picked up commitments from three black state legislators to run on his slate in the California primary next June.

At the moment, McGovern's greatest plus is his organization. His Washington staff numbers about 80 and includes many former Kennedy and McCarthy volunteers. Leading the list of his political operatives are onetime Bobby Kennedy Aides Frank Mankiewicz and Gary Hart. Having so many veterans at work has made for a fairly well-synchronized campaign. The scheduling and the advance work are tight, and there are always enough campaign buttons and literature on hand. Money, in the preprimary period, has not been a problem. A well-orchestrated drive for $10 and $20 subscriptions has kept the campaign in the black and accounted for the bulk of what he has spent thus far.

McGovern's gut feeling is that he will do respectably in New Hampshire, and that the big money will start flowing in. Then he will move on to Florida and Wisconsin, where the strategy will be to appeal to youth, blacks, farmers and the urban poor—the kind of populist alliance that he needs to win the nomination. But it is a formula that has not worked well for him thus far, and it is hard to imagine McGovern forging in three months a coalition that has eluded him for the past year.