DEMOCRATS: Carter: Slowed but Still Probable

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As the silvery Metroliner highballed through New Jersey, Jimmy Carter slumped deeper in his seat and tried to nap. His blue eyes closed, then flickered open, closed again and opened again. Finally Carter gave up and gazed blankly out the window, his brow furrowed more deeply than usual. He had just won three primaries, finished second in three others and picked up about 140 delegates —five times more than any other Democrat that week. It seemed a good week's work, boosting his score in the primaries to 16 victories in 25 attempts and his delegate total by conservative measure to 865, or about 60% of the votes that he needs for the nomination.

But Carter was troubled by a perplexing problem: despite the impressive arithmetic, pundits and party leaders were focusing on his series of primary losses. Even his much larger than expected totals in Arkansas (63%), Kentucky (60%) and Tennessee (78%) —which amount to home turf for a Southerner—could not make up for the psychological impact of his defeats last week. He lost Idaho to the state's Democratic Senator, Frank Church, and Nevada to its favorite neighbor, California Governor Jerry Brown.

Thin Bench. Most damaging to Carter's campaign was the setback in Oregon, where he had lost a once comfortable lead in the closing weeks to Church. Carter's Oregon campaign manager, Tom Mackey, an advance man for Robert Kennedy in 1968, ascribed the loss to insufficient campaigning and battle fatigue among the staffers caused by Carter's strategy of entering every primary except West Virginia's. Said Mackey: "I had the feeling that our people were running out of gas. With Bobby, the bench was very strong. The Carter cadre has always been thin. That's becoming a problem now." In contrast, Church campaigned vigorously as the man from next door and won with 34% of the vote to 27% for Carter.

At the same time, Brown, who finished third with 25%, mounted a frenzied, last-minute write-in campaign that appealed strongly to young voters. Even though he was clearly disappointed with the outcome, his third-place finish was a stunning achievement, demonstrating anew that he is the phenomenon of the late primaries. Brown won nine delegates (to 14 for Church and eleven for Carter), but he is expected to capture a majority of California's delegates on

June 8, giving him a final total of about 200. On the other hand, Church doubtless will add more delegates to his total of 48—particularly in Montana, where he was favored to win this week—but will probably finish far back in the running.