Hot on the Campaign Trail

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Bush or Howard Baker, whichever is still standing.

Connally has proved to be a phenomenal fund raiser, bringing in $2.2 million in the first half of this year, compared with Crane's $1.7 million, Bush's $1.5 million, Reagan's $1.4 million, and Baker's $643,000. His string of lavish money-raising fetes—usually gatherings of a wealthy handful at stately homes from Newport to Easthampton to Orange County, Calif, bring in up to $1,000 per guest, the legal maximum.

But he can also excite rank-and-file donors. Said Cook County Republican Leader Sharon Sharp: ";After you hear Connally, you want to run up and give him a check." Candidate Robert Dole lamented recently to a meeting of his Massachusetts supporters: "When John Connally comes to Boston, he takes out a vacuum cleaner and sucks up all the money."

Connally hopes his forceful style will help him cut across ideological lines and win support from blacks and workers who have opposed him in the past. At a building trades convention in New Jersey this summer, his rousing speech had union members cheering. Labor leaders passed the word to hold back on providing him many more such forums. He campaigned last month in black and ethnic neighborhoods of Providence, and has hired a Chicago firm to devise a strategy to lure black votes.

Connally is a restless man, quick to size up a situation and quick to grow bored with it. He is compulsive and meticulous, prone to polish his shiny shoes with a tissue or to straighten pictures on the wall. Despite an easy and cordial manner, he has a strong sense of privacy, always keeping a certain distance. "I pick my friends carefully," he says, "watching them for a long time before I commit. I'm aloof, I know that. I have very few close friends." Connally's temper is sharp, his sense of loyalty demanding. He has barely spoken to Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen Jr., long a close friend, after Bentsen did not testify as a character witness in the milk trial.

Every good ole Texas boy dreams of having cattle, money and power. As he sits in front of the stately stone main house on his 10,000-acre ranch, Picosa, near his birthplace, with cicadas chirping hi the spotlighted trees and the lush coastal Bermuda grass, the last of these desires seems to be the only one unfulfilled. Near by is a ring for his quarter horses and another ring for showing his cattle. "I think I've got the finest herd of young bulls hi the country," the master breeder proudly boasts of his shiny red Santa Gertrudis cattle. He and Nellie have three children and seven grandchildren.* They are avid antique collectors, and their home, furnished partly from their travels and partly from carefully following estate auctions, contains screens from Bah', Persian carpets, eleven hand-carved doors, a marble dining room floor from a London mansion, plus a wide collection of Southwestern American art.

Squinting his eyes narrow like a trail scout contemplating the next set of hills, ConnaUy considers his ride away from these surroundings to pursue the presidency. Says he: "Very few people know how to handle power, how to keep it from overcoming them. Other people become so obsequious." To him, weak leadership portends anarchy, and he sees that in the Carter Administration. Ted Kennedy, he predicts, will be his opponent,