1970: Year of Decision
TYLER, GUS
Agenda for the Democrats??1 1970: Year of Decision By Gus Tyler The 1970 elections will be a weather vane for American politics, revealing more about the direction of our national life than the...
...and Howard Cannon (Nev...
...This chaos may very well make the otherwise beatable Lindsay unbeatable in 1969...
...When the "class" came up for reelection in 1964, it road into office on the Johnson landslide...
...They may also provide strong clues as to the identity of the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1972...
...The contest comes at midterm, a real help for the Democrats...
...Agenda for the Democrats??1 1970: Year of Decision By Gus Tyler The 1970 elections will be a weather vane for American politics, revealing more about the direction of our national life than the Presidential contest of 1968...
...it foreshadowed a new era of continued rule by the Democratic party...
...In addition, the senator is far more visible, hence accountable, than the relatively provincial and underexposed representative...
...The Court can sustain the complaint on either or both grounds...
...Despite their statistical armor, however, the gop representatives are vulnerable...
...The Republican objective will be to win at least seven Senate seats...
...In the search for seven seats the gop is likely to concentrate on New Jersey and Connecticut in the East, Florida and Tennessee in the South, North Dakota, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana in the Midwest, Nevada, Wyoming and Utah in the Mountain States, Texas and New Mexico in the Southwest...
...the second the Lincoln Era, beginning with the Civil War and ending with the Great Depression...
...In all of these states there are special circumstances to be exploited —in North Dakota, Indiana, Wyoming and Utah the traditionally Republican character of the state...
...Should the Court remain silent on the gerrymander, state legislatures chosen in 1970 may design districts alongside which any Rorschach blob would look like a neat geometric form...
...and Spessard Holland (Fla...
...In the marginal districts (where House members won by less than 10 per cent in 1968) the gop holds 28 seats, the Democrats 41, leaving the Democrats more exposed in hotly contested areas...
...And following the 1970 census these legislatures will be in a position to redistrict the constituencies of representatives to both the state and Federal governments in almost any manner they choose...
...John Pastore (R.I...
...if they lose seats it would be a disaster...
...As of this second month of 1969, the casual count shows 15 Democratic aspirants: congressmen, mediators, press agents, borough presidents, city officials, Federal officials, Jews, Italians, Irish, Puerto Ricans, wasps, and one "relative...
...For New York Democrats, it is not simply the mayoralty but the use of mayoral power to nominate the Democratic candidates for governor (against Rockefeller...
...Surely the availability of a congenial Congress would encourage the present White House occupant to remake America in his own image...
...Henry Jackson (Wash...
...merely to maintain current strength would be a defeat...
...Between now and 1970 the stakes are indeed high in New York: mayor, governor, senator, seven marginal Congressional seats, and a state legislature that may draw the lines for a willful design of the next decade...
...Gale Mc-Gee (Wyo...
...A Democratic gain of a few seats would be par...
...The first was the Jefferson-Jackson Era of 1800-40...
...In the Midwest, where Nixon did well, there are 14 marginal gop seats (half the total gop marginals), including seven in areas that are heavily rural and were once safely Republican...
...The Roosevelt span was interrupted by Dwight Eisenhower for eight years, but returned in the persons of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson...
...in Connecticut and New Jersey internal opposition to the incumbent...
...Of the 34 senators up for reelection, 25 are Democrats and only nine are Republicans...
...Stephen Young (Ohio), Philip Hart (Mich...
...The Supreme Court's "one-man one-vote" decisions are only a partial restraint on state legislatures that have traditionally used their power to redistrict for partisan purposes...
...Joseph Tydings (Md...
...In 1970 these Democrats, most of whom make up the core of effective and dedicated liberalism in the Senate, will be put to the test...
...Most of the states are overwhelmingly urban and industrial, compelling statewide candidates (senator and governor) to heed liberal sentiment...
...But in both states, as in most of the party nationally, there is internal disorder among the Democrats and their allies...
...In each of these periods (broadly definable by party and by socio economic patterns) there have been interruptions...
...The gubernatorial contests, meanwhile, will take on a dual importance: first, because their outcome in 1970 will provide another indication of political trends...
...They will tell much about whether Richard Nixon heads a new coalition that is to dominate the scene for decades to come, or whether his victory was merely a casual break in the continuing reign of the Democratic dynasty...
...The question is put in terms of the social forces he represents, not personal stature...
...moreover, Republican prospects are better in the upper house...
...Being aware of both the real and symbolic meaning of the midterm election, the Republicans will pour extra money and muscle into the areas where one-fifth the Democrats up for reelection are exposed...
...Since the South could be a special case, particularly if the Wallace people run Congressional candidates, this analysis applies primarily to the results outside Dixie...
...If they do, the upper house will be deadlocked on party lines, giving Vice President Spiro Agnew the deciding vote...
...Joseph Montoya (N.M...
...Amid the many successes of liberalism in the years 1932-68 there have been signal failures...
...Because the party has no decision-making center, each man acts on his own...
...By the law of averages, the gop ought to come out ahead...
...Consider New York City, for instance: Republican Mayor John Lindsay, as of Saint Valentine's Day 1969, has fewer lovers in New York City than at any time in his political career...
...Harrison Williams (N.J...
...Nor is it necessarily an expression of the citizenry's loss of confidence in an administration...
...To begin with, their outcome can confirm a trend...
...But there has been no clear order to end the gerrymander...
...The long reign of the gop was interrupted first by Grover Cleveland (a kind of Republican-minded Democrat), and then more significantly by Woodrow Wilson (1912-20), but continued after World War I for another three terms...
...William Proxmire (Wis...
...Similarly, a Republican victory in 1970 would be more than a refutation of a political theory...
...They are Edmund Muskie (Me...
...Republican candidates for Congress in 1968 showed no great strength...
...Both will signal the country's future direction...
...and for U.S...
...Only 14 per cent of the gop delegation is marginal, while about 20 per cent of the Democratic delegation is in the risk zone...
...In any event, with the Senate elections, especially the close ones, taking place in states fairly representative of the nation, the struggle for the upper house will have the same significance as the lower house referendum...
...But can the "outs" pull themselves together to push the "ins" out...
...As a result, the "outs" consistently advance...
...Thomas Dodd (Conn...
...In a sense, New York is the political microcosm that reveals the macrocosm of the Democratic dilemma in 1970...
...The midterm phenomenon has recurred too frequently to be a statistical accident...
...Is Nixon another Adams or Eisenhower, or is he another Lincoln or Roosevelt...
...Stuart Symington (Mo...
...This great exception to the midterm rule was more than a vote of confidence in Roosevelt...
...in Ohio and Florida the age of the candidate (Young is 78, Holland is 76...
...They were elected in 1958—a midterm contest sharply influenced by the economic recession during Eisenhower's second term...
...Vance Hartke (Ind...
...Does Nixon speak for a new coalition that will set the nation's course over the coming decades...
...In 1934 the cycle was broken because millions of people who had been voting Republican for decades, and had turned to FDR two years earlier in bitter and angry protest, were still reacting to the trauma of the Depression...
...second, because gubernatorial influence with state delegations at the national Presidential conventions is crucial, particularly in the Democratic party...
...Among the other Democrats up in 1970 are Edward Kennedy (Mass...
...Quentin Burdick (N.D...
...The geographic advantage lies in the fact that two key contests—the mayoralty in New York City and the governorship in New Jersey—take place this year in the northeast quadrant, where Humphrey and the Democratic party ran well in 1968...
...The main thrust of the gop, though, will not be in the House but in the Senate...
...Democrats lead Republicans 57-43, but liberals lead conservatives at present by barely a whisker...
...Mike Mansfield (Mont...
...Thus both parties enter the 1970 House elections with hope and with their hearts in their mouths...
...The one exception to this rule during the last century came in 1934, the halfway point in FDR's first term, when his party added nine House seats...
...There have been three great eras in American political life since the founding of the Republic...
...Lincoln and Roosevelt established major original paths...
...And such a public demonstration would strongly suggest that we are on the threshold of a Nixon era...
...Frank Moss (Utah), Ralph Yarborough (Tex...
...In 1970, the gop has an unusual opportunity to increase its Senate delegation...
...In the case of Wells v. Rockefeller, now before the Court, Congressional lines in New York are being challenged because they are of unequal population and because they are gerrymandered...
...Consequently, any Republican plans for a change from the past must include the de-liberalization of the upper house...
...the most recent was the Roosevelt Era that ran from 1932-68...
...Adams and Eisenhower offered only transient variants on the dominant political influences of their day...
...If not for his Liberal party backing, he would have received only 42 per cent of the total vote...
...The Republican party's control of the White House puts it at an historic disadvantage in the 1970 balloting...
...Again, the gop offers two men who can be defeated: Rockefeller did not win a majority of the votes in the last gubernatorial contest (1966), and Goodell, who was appointed to complete Robert Kennedy's term, is not considered a strong vote getter...
...In virtually every one of the 50 states there will also be elections of state legislatures that, in 1970, take on unusual significance...
...A rigid "rule" of politics states that in a midterm election the President's party loses seats in the House of Representatives...
...Statistically, if not historically, the chances of Republican gains in 1970 are good...
...Robert Byrd (W...
...Of the 35 governorships to be decided, the Democrats now hold 11 and the Republicans 24...
...But this subject I will leave for my next several articles...
...The cards were stacked in favor of the Democrats, therefore, and the men who went to the Senate did not have a chance to prove their vote-getting powers...
...The "outs," goaded by discontent, simply get a greater percentage of their followers to the polls than the "ins," who are inclined to stay home, safe in the knowledge that with their man in the White House all is likely to be well in the world...
...In preparing for 1970, the Democrats have one early advantage in 1969 (geography) and one serious disadvantage (themselves...
...Although the gop needs a net gain of seven for party control of the Senate, for a clear conservative majority the Administration can do with less...
...They went to the polls in large numbers to continue their electoral war against the gop...
...In 1968, the much more popular Senator Jacob Javits was elected without a majority of the votes?9 per cent...
...He is increasingly unpopular in the liberal community, labor is set against him, his nomination of Agnew has turned the "Fusion" mayor into a "Republican," and the sloppy handling of poverty funds has dismayed even many of his strongest supporters...
...The Democrats may be needlessly disadvantaged in these contests by elements having less interest in ousting Republicans or installing Democrats than in nominating a man who will strengthen their faction at the national convention in 1972...
...The gop lost 47 House seats that year...
...The Senate of the United States has in recent decades become the more liberal of the two houses...
...Outside the South, the Democrats hold six and the Republicans 22...
...No less important than organizational unity for the Democrats, though, is the matter of programmatic purpose...
...The High Court rulings require districts to be as equal in population as possible...
...Here the law of averages favors the Democrats...
...Weakest of the Democratic senators are those from the "class of 1958," about half the group that will stand before the voters in 1970...
...Eugene McCarthy (Minn...
...But since you cannot beat somebody with nobody, who is the Democratic somebody...
...It would prove that the American people did not fail the Democrats in 1968 out of pique or confusion, but rejected the party out of deep-seated anger...
...The "democratic" forces that emerged in the Jefferson-Jackson period were stalled in 1824 with the election of John Quincy Adams, but the voice of the people was reinvigorated with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Martin Van Buren in 1836...
...senator (against Charles Goodell) that is at stake in 1969...
...The Administration needs added seats in the Senate more than it needs them in the House...
...Should it fail to hold up, we will have further reason to believe a new era is in the making...
...As in 1968, in many states the Democrats may be defeated by Democrats, not by Republicans...
...The Presidential coattail carried just four additional Republican representatives—perhaps because the tail was short...
...Albert Gore (Tenn...
...Should the gop lose more than a handful of seats, the Administration would be embarrassed and the Democrats would get a lift for 1972...
...In 1970, without Presidential help and with the midterm handicap, the gop could be hard hit in its political heartland...
Vol. 52 • February 1969 • No. 3
