POLITICS: Front and Center for George McGovern

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McGovern has had trouble getting much support from blacks and organized labor leaders during the primary campaign, largely because both are part of Hubert Humphrey's natural constituency. After McGovern's Massachusetts victory, however, a noticeable shift was on. Representative John Conyers of Michigan said that he would back McGovern, and so did Julian Bond of Georgia; the Rev. Jesse Jackson of Operation PUSH in Chicago noted that he still prefers Shirley Chisholm, but thinks McGovern stands the best chance to win. Jackson will campaign for McGovern in Ohio and California. In the general election, of course, blacks would overwhelmingly prefer McGovern to Nixon. As for labor, the AFL-CIO's George Meany, a hawk, dislikes McGovern's views on the war. United Auto Workers President Leonard Woodcock, once a Muskie man, may now join the McGovern camp; that would give McGovern a boost in Michigan.

One aspect of the McGovern campaign that has confounded the experts is McGovern's unexpected appeal to blue-collar workers. His triumvirate of 21-year-old poll takers, seniors at Harvard who have formed Cambridge Survey Research, Inc. (TIME, May 1), first saw the phenomenon taking shape in working-class districts of Manchester, N.H. It appeared again in Wisconsin —for example, McGovern carried the blue-collar congressional district in Milwaukee that contains the state's heaviest concentration of Poles. Last week Protestant McGovern took some heavily Irish and Italian sections of Boston by as much as four to one—with the Kennedy organization scrupulously standing aside from the contest.

Style. Adviser Ted Van Dyk remembers a McGovern handshaking visit to grimy factory workers in New Hampshire: "One of them stepped forward and said, 'You know, Senator, you've made a lot of friends here today. Muskie came through last week and he shook our wrists.' " In a fashion reminiscent of the Kennedys, however different his style, McGovern has created a blue-collar following that might otherwise go to George Wallace (see box, page 18).

McGovern has yet to be tested nationally; he has so far not been subjected to the same tough, critical scrutiny that is all too familiar to Teddy Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. He faces a possibly painful ideological dilemma: to build a truly national base he may need to move toward the center, but to keep his most ardent following he must not stray too far from the striking positions he is admired for. Already, McGovern has begun to modify some of those positions, and has moved toward reconciliation with the party bosses. He has so far refused, for example, to join in challenging Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's delegation to the Miami Beach convention. Daley has yet to be won over; he believes the convention will deadlock and Kennedy will be drafted.