Nation: Preparing for the Plunge

John Anderson decides about running as an independent

The planning is still in a primitive stage, the odds enormously long, the obstacles numerous and towering. Nonetheless, barring an unlikely last-second change of heart, John Anderson will announce this week that he is giving up his hopeless quest for the Republican nomination and running as an independent candidate for the White House.

Anderson knows the odds he faces. Never has an independent won election as President of the U.S. But the candidate reasons that "these are unusual times, with lots of strange currents" and that he therefore has a realistic chance of winning.

He has ruminated about an independent candidacy ever since his shattering loss in the Illinois primary March 18. Two weeks ago he asked Political Consultant David Garth, a New Yorker with a reputation for running winning campaigns, to form an exploratory committee to look into the legal and political problems of an independent candidacy. Then last week Anderson canceled scheduled campaign appearances in Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to rest and reflect at home in Washington. He needed the time off. After ten months of intensive campaigning, he looked tired and his normally booming orator's voice sounded soft.

Anderson resolved many of his doubts in a series of family dinners with his wife Keke and their five children, and in phone calls to "professors and politicians around the country." He was impressed by polls—especially one taken in late March for TIME by Yankelovich, Skelly and White Inc. —showing that more than half the registered voters are disenchanted with a choice between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Moreover, though the latest polls, including a New York Times-CBS News survey released last week, show Anderson as an independent with the support of only 18% to 20% of the voters, the polls indicate that he would take those votes about equally from Carter and Reagan. Anderson has said several times that he would not run if the effect of his candidacy would be to help Reagan, whom he has criticized with growing vehemence during the campaign as too conservative. But Anderson told TIME National Political Correspondent John Stacks: "I think we have demolished the argument that my candidacy would elect Reagan."

By midweek, Anderson had reaffirmed one critical decision: if he did go, it would be as a total independent rather than a third-party candidate. That would enable him to skip the time-consuming and expensive chore of organizing a party, selecting delegates and holding a convention. But Garth and other advisers urged that he wait a few more weeks before making his final decision. They argued that the prestigious Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter, which Garth had hired, needed more time to answer the most pressing question of Anderson's campaign: In how many states does he stand a realistic chance of getting on the November ballot?