Oregon daily emerald., January 13, 1972, Page 12, Image 12

f~ World News
Humphrey sets sights
for Florida primary
WASHINGTON-As Hubert Humphrey recalls
it, he stopped playing coy about another campaign
for the presidency just a few weeks ago—at a
garden party in Miami Beach.
Up to that point most of his Florida supporters
had counseled a waiting game and assumed that
Humphrey was taking their advice. And, for a
while, he was.
But then, he says, “It came to me just as clear
as could be that if I were to get the nomination, I
would have to go after it, not wait for it to drop in
my lap It wasn't going to do that. Nor should it. I
think it's fair for people to ask the question: ‘Can
Humphrey win?’
"So I said, ‘All right, I accept that challenge.’ ”
The informal announcement was made
December 4 at the elegant home of Miami Beach
banker-lawyer Arthur Courshon, a longtime
Humphrey loyalist. About 20 couples had gathered
there to dine in a star-lit garden with the Senator
and Ms. Humphrey for 1,000 dollars apiece. Not all
were delighted at the news that he had decided on
an all-out campaign starting with the Florida
primary
"I'm with him all the way, says one of the
HHH boosters who was at the get-together. “But I
think he'll do terribly in Florida. Yes, behind
Muskie Maybe* behind Jackson, too. But he had that
look in his eyes It’s a disease. He’s got run-itis.
Nobody was going to tell him he couldn't make it.”
Courshon is a bit more optimistic, even though
he, too, was one of those who had been advising
Humphrey to stay away from Florida’s March 14
primary.
“I'm still not convinced it’s the right thing to
do," Courshon acknowledges, “But what do you do?
Hun away from it? I honestly believe that he’s the
lx's! qualified candidate in the race. If we can start
the ’he can be a winner’ psychology along with that,
he might make it If he does well here, it’ll surprise
the hell out of everybody."
After losing out to John Kennedy in I960 and
Richard Nixon in 196H, Humphrey has no illusions of
easy victory What was illusory, he became con
vinced. was the notion that he could sit back until
the other Democratic candidates stumbled and the
Humphrey appeal became apparent. At age 60 in
Presidential politics, demure hesitation is not the
most seductive pose.
Humphrey trailing Muskie
Foiling conducted in Florida in late November
helped him make up his mind The results repor
tedly showed Humphrey running neckand neck
with Sen Edmund Muskie Never mind that they
also put Alabama Gov George Wallace ahead of
»M»th of them To Humphrey. Florida suddenly of
fend a chance to come in ahead of Muskie. h«s
running mate in 1968 and now the presumed front
runner for the Democratic nomination
"Wallace doesn't count nationwide," says
Courshon “We were surprised at our strength in the
poll vis a vis Muskie and Sen Henry Jackson.
That's pretty well when Humphrey decided he was
going to jump in "
Buoyed by tin uecision. Humphrey has been
proclaiming happily that he feels like a new man, no
longer dogged by the shadows of Lyndon Johnson
and the nightmarish 1968 Democratic National
Convention in Chicago
"I feel more relaxed, more released, more of an
emancipated man.'' the Minnesota senator said in
a recent interview "I'm not saying this critically,
hut when I was vice president. 1 constantly had to be
careful as to whether or not I was causing the
president any embarrassment." Even wife Muriel,
says Humphrey, has noticed the difference Sur
prisingly , he says, she encouraged him to try again
“She said that she felt I was a much different man,
that I didn't feel or act the same way 1 did three or
four years ago "
Campaign different
Convincing the voters of that will be the chief
task of the Humphrey campaign Ramrod for the
effort will be campaign manager Jack Chestnut. 39,
the single-minded Minneapolis lawyer who directed
Humphrey 's successful 1970 race to win back a
senate seat.
Other top aides include Minneapolis millionaire
,l<»hn Morrison, deputy campaign manager, and
James (Mikei Maloney Jr . a political orgatuier in
charge of corraling Democratic convention
delegates lake Chestnut both men are in their 30 s
They promise to give Humphrey the best
organized campaign he has ever had and, except for
the incurably voluble candidate himself, the most
tight-lipped. A busy man who eats lunch at his desk,
Chestnut has been described as “the S.O.B. inside
that Humphrey never had before.” The candidate’s
1968 campaign was considered a babel of voices, full
of chattering advisers. By contrast, the Washington
headquarters of “Humphrey for President” in
1972 -opened without fanfare on December 6—
resembles an FBI office, full of subordinates who
have been told not to talk to newsmen. The at
mosphere is always business like, occasionally
brusque. There is no hoopla. Until recently at least,
there wasn't a bumper sticker in the house.
Chestnut considers them a waste of money.
Humphrey has been checking into the odds on a
comeback for months, holding onto political friends
and moneymen as tightly as he could while he took
his soundings. Despite the dead-weight of his image
as a yes-man for President Johnson and the war in
Vietnam, which he tried to shuck off in 1968, he says
he has found a reservoir of good will towards him
throughout the country. It is often difficult to
distinguish between simple nostalgia for “good old
Hubert” and affection that can be translated into
votes, but Humphrey thinks there is more than
nostalgia to it.
“I know lots of times you hear what you want to
hear, but I’ve tried to be pretty objective about
this,” he says. “I’m reasonably sure that I have a
good chance. I think it’s all nip and tuck. In some
areas, it’s an uphill battle. But it’s not so far out of
reach.”
Home state divided
Still as bouncy and irrepressible as ever,
Humphrey, it seems clear, has been itching for a re
run ever since his loss to Mr. Nixon by a scant
510,(KK) votes, a margin of less than one per cent.
Humphrey began his political comeback in 1970,
combining an old-fashioned, handshaking cam
paign for the senate with prodigious efforts to
overcome the division in Minnesota’s Democratic
Farmer Labor party. The organization had been
shattered first by a bitter gubernatorial primary in
1906, and then by the competition between Hum
phrey and that other Minnesotan, Eugene Mc
Carthy, in 1968. Humphrey managed to put it back
together again, winning the senate election by the
biggest margin he’d ever commanded.
Even so, it would have been unseemly for the
junior senator from Minnesota re-assert himself
for higher office sooner than he did. It was Sen.
elect Humphrey, after all, who told newsmen just 13
months ago that he would use his influence as titular
leader of the Democratic party to consolidate
support behind the frontrunner for the 1972
nomination and thus avoid a series of "incredibly
expensive, bloodletting" presidential primaries.
There was, however, a caveat to the proposal. If
there was no clear front runner by the end of 1971,
Humphrey said, he might get into the race himself.
This, Humphrey submits, is precisely what hap
pened If there is a front-runner, the Gallup and
Harris polls indicate, it is Sen. Edward Kennedy
• Massachusetts), who had repeatedly said he has no
intention of entering the primaries.
”Ed Muskie is a leader,” Humphrey
acknowledges, "but he's not ahead of Kennedy. And
if you take Kennedy out, I get a bigger share of the
Kennedy vote than anyone else It becomes a kind
of dead heat between Muskie and me.”
With his well-worn skimmer now in the ring,
Humphrey is agin trying to preach the gospel of
party unity, suggesting taht all good Democratic
contenders should focus on Mr Nixon and refrain
from cutting each other up. Such sermons may
sound rather hollow to Muskie. who might have had
a tighter grip on the nomination if Humphrey had
not kept such jea ious reins on his old supporters and
worked so hard during 1971 to cultivate new ones.
Hut Humphrey insists that he is no "spoiler.”
On the contrary.” he said, "I think that I
delayed beyond what was smart for my pur
poses
The late start is only one of Humphrey's
problems Not a few AFL-CIO leaders were
chagrined at his vote against the SST last year after
allegedly indicating his support for the supersonic
project Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced
long ago that he had little use for Humphrey and his
(tost election complaints about the mayor's tepid
support in 1968
News Roudsp
frssi AF rep#rt*
VALLETTA, Malta — Demonstrators burst through
police lines and attacked British symbols in Valletta on
Wednesday night in a violent show of support for Prime
Minister Dorn Mintoff’s decision to order British forces off
this Mediterranean island by Midnight Friday. A group of 300
from a marching crowd of 2,000 stoned the building of the
Times of Malta, a pro-British newspaper leading the op
position to Mintoff. The crowd also smashed a memorial to a
former prime minister sympathetic to Britain, and spat on a
statue of Queen Victoria. A government spokesman declared
after the demonstrations that if the British remain past the
deadline they will be regarded as an illegal presence. Malta
“certainly will sound out the U.N. Security Council and the
Council of Europe in such a case, Information Director Paul
Naudi said.
BATON ROUGE, La. — Four members of an alleged
Black Muslin splinter group, who officials say provoked a
bloody shootout with police that left four men dead, are still
at large, it was revealed Wednesday. Dist. Atty. Sargent
Pitcher said police were searching for two men and two
women members of an alleged group of 16 touring Muslims
who officials contend came to this Louisiana capital city to
precipitate a violent confrontation with authorities. With the
exception of the four, the remaining members of the group
are accounted for, Pitcher said. Two deputy sheriffs and two
members of the alleged band died in the sudden volley of
gunshots on a city street Monday.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Ecology Director John Biggs
asserted Wednesday that economics, and not environmental
factors, prompted Weyerhaeuser Co. to announce closure of
its Everett pulp mill. “It’s an old, old mill,” Biggs told
newsmen. “It’s rapidly becoming uneconomic. The company
just decided the factor of obsolescence was so overwhelming
in light of the environmental considerations that a shutdown
was necessary .” But company officials blamed the shutdown
on the high cost of pollution abatement and the uncertainty of
federal pollution controls. The firm announced Tuesday its
plans to shut down the 36-year-old mill by May 1973 rather
than install $52 million worth of pollution control equipment
for treatment of waste.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Hundreds of
police and troops used small arms, bazookas and mortars in
a day-long battle Wednesday with suspected Communist
guerrillas that cost an estimated 14 lives. The shootout at a
cave outside the city touched off riots in this Carribean
island capital. A police captain, nine policemen and four
outlaws were reported killed, but the gang leader apparently
escaped The battle began at a house 14 miles east of the
capital in which the gunmen were hiding out. The assault
with bazookas and mortars was launched on a 1,600-foot-deep
cave in which the surviving members of the gang holed up
later in the day.
DALLAS Tex. — A hijacker demanding up to $1 million,
jungle survival kits and parachutes seized an airplane with
94 passengers and seven crew members Wednesday and
ordered that it be flown to South America. But he allowed the
passengers to de-plane in Dallas. Although he gave orders to
take off at 5:40 p.m. for South America, ground crewmen
said there was a fuel leak in engine No. 1 and it would take
hours to repair. The hijacker said he planned to parachute
over South American jungles and make his way to Bogota,
Colombia, where he had friends. Two hours after the 5:40
p.m. deadline, the plane remained virtually isolated on a
remote ramp at Love Field, the main Dallas airport.
LOS ANGELES — Mayor Sam Yorty, who is seeking the
Democratic presidential nomination, was asked to leave the
party in a sharply worded resolution approved by the Los
Angeles County Democratic Central Committee and made
public Wednesday. Yorty was en route to San Francisco for a
speech and unavailable for comment. Hie resolution, passed
by a voice vote late Tuesday, was not unanimous, said a
spokesman for committee Chairman Walter River. It was
addressed to voters in New Hampshire, where Yorty is a
presidential primary candidate. It said a "major portion of
his campaign and his personal funds come from the same
reactionary Republican sources that have served also to
finance such Republican figures as Calif. Gov. Ronald
Reagan and Max Rafferty.” who lost a 1970 election race for
reelect ion as state school superintendent.