Avoiding Another Chicago

...To their profound dismay, the 20 or so commission members who took their task seriously discovered that: • In more than 20 states, there were no rules about who could go to the convention or the guidelines were so vague as to mean nothing...

...In Chicago one in eight delegates was female, one in 20 was black, and less than one in 20 was under 30 years of age...

...In fact, dnc Counsel Joseph Califano, whom LBJ had filched from Bob McNamara, told one and all that the guidelines were not guidelines at all but hard-and-fast rules, and the state party that broke them risked exclusion from the convention...

...For one thing, the Democrats are still about $9 million in debt from their 1968 debacle...

...The biggest transgressor in this category is California, which will send a monolithic fifth of all the delegates necessary to win the party's 1972 nomination...

...Blacks, youths and women were scarce among the delegates— much scarcer than they are in the general population...

...Meanwhile out in Daleyland...

...O'Brien's gamble is that the desire to defeat Nixon is so pervasive that the reformers and regulars will mute their quarrel at the critical point...

...Still, the commission has had some impact around the country, particularly in the Deep South, where the greatest abuses in the delegate hunt have traditionally occurred...

...It's inhuman to expect one man to work with all the states...

...Patti Knox, a commission member from Michigan...

...But Hubert Humphrey blocked him from the chairmanship because he could neither forgive nor forget Hughes' early loyalty to Bobby Kennedy and support of Gene McCarthy at the 1968 convention...

...But in the South, the price of reform can come high: For his pains, McGovern is now described as a "jerk" and a "knucklehead" by J. Marshall Brown, Louisiana's Democratic National Committeeman...

...The dnc has assigned one man to pursue the reformers' work, Robert W. Nelson, the McGovern Commission's former staff director...

...MORE IMPORTANT, however, is the fact that party democracy is becoming much less of a burning issue to the large stable of Democratic Presidential hopefuls — including such reform-bred types as Hughes and McGovern...

...where the rage would be felt on the convention floor instead of on the streets...

...But realists in the Democratic hierarchy know that the boys and girls, the blacks and whites, the Old Crowd and the New, will have to grapple a bit before they hit upon the Next President of the United States...

...This kept late-blooming candidates from getting a piece of the action and prevented late-blooming issues from affecting the selection of delegates...

...The Presidential candidates hope O'Brien is right because, more than anything else, no one wants another Chicago...

...He wants to keep the number of Massachusetts delegates who will be selected by party caucus at 40 per cent of the total...

...allowed Mrs...

...But Teddy appears to be playing a sharp game on his own turf...

...What happens if such key states as California, New York, Illinois, Texas, and Michigan fail to take the guidelines to heart...

...The Commission's guidelines called for: proportional representation for women, blacks and young people at the next convention...

...The reformers also thought (but did not insist) that the states should no longer hold "winner-take-all" primaries...

...Fred Harris, the national chairman who picked up the pieces after Chicago, put together a reasonably balanced assembly—representing, as it turned out, all the major Presidential candidates except Washington's Scoop Jackson —to argue over reforms...

...Efforts to reform the party structure are rooted in the Chicago disaster of 1968, and the subsequent absence of a Democrat in the White House to tell all the little fish in the provinces how to swim...

...Even as the candidates look to their own fortunes, can National Chairman Lawrence F. O'Brien have anything more important on his mind than insuring that the Democrats have a fair and open convention...

...If there's a choice between delegates and reform...

...Many state delegations were bound to a single candidate regardless of whether individual delegates liked the setup, or of the support other candidates may have had in the state...

...It wasn't so long ago that these senators were raising coffee-and-biscuits money for the commission so it could take testimony on the road...

...The process is making some people cynical once more...

...Similarly, Teddy Kennedy would seem to have the most to gain from reforms that kept delegates loose until near the end of the game, or prevented party bosses from committing blocs of convention votes in advance...

...More than a third of the dele-gates were chosen a year or more in advance of the Presidential election...

...That will leave the remaining delegates to be elected through primaries, and some think the senator hopes out-of-state contenders won't risk offending him by coming in for a chance at only 60 per cent of the action...

...Washington-USA AVOIDING ANOTHER CHICAGO BY ANDREW J. GLASS & JOHN COTTIN WASHINGTON MANY DEMOCRATIC politicians look forward with such zest to the exciting prospect of heaving Richard Nixon from the White House that they have all but lost interest in the problems which helped cast them into darkness...

...according to the Chicago Tribune, front runner Edmund S. Muskie said there were already enough Presidential primaries and he, for one...

...The reformers assumed they would control the credentials committee, which would be as pure as Ivory soap and stop unreformed delegations from getting past the door guards...

...Not long ago, the way to line up Georgia's Democratic delegation was to make your deal with the governor as far in advance as possible...

...The question of who comes to that sort of national convention—¦ and who is seated there after the steam settles—thus becomes a matter of some significance...

...rules for picking delegates, written in language that does not require a lawyer's interpretation...

...That's all over," Charles Kirbo, the Georgia State Democratic Chairman, told us, not without some regret...

...The McGovern Commission began its work in a mood of "enthusiastic skepticism," to quote one participant, feeling that reform efforts are to party professionals what slums are to Spiro Agnew...

...And it is quite possible, of course, that a candidate will emerge from the long string of winter and spring primaries with so many victories under his belt, with such rave notices from the Gallup and Harris polls, with so many rooms in his mansion, that he will be simply irresistible...

...But things haven't quite worked out that way...

...and abolition of the "unit rule," requiring bloc voting by delegations...

...This, of course, is exactly what Mayor Daley wants...

...The McGovern Commission Hexed its muscles, took a couple of deep breaths and, with a surprising degree of unanimity considering its diverse origins, proclaimed what must be done before 1972...

...They thought committee agents would roam the country, seeing to it that old party pros and new coalitionists alike lived up to the guidelines...

...When the McGovern Commission ended its work about a year ago, the members thought the Democratic National Committee (dnc) was going to take up its cudgels...

...This in effect left the choice of delegates up to the man with the most clout in the state party: usually the governor, sometimes the state chairman or a U.S...

...Yet in time this initial cynicism wore off...

...His solo performance elicits sympathy...

...wouldn't mind if Illinois passed in 1972...

...A solidly united Democratic camp could then plausibly go on to hold a jolly-up national convention at some contemporary Arcadian oasis where peace freaks and cops are unlikely to rise and do battle...

...Reform in the Democratic party was Harold Hughes of Iowa, who has since gone on to bigger things...

...delegate selection in 1972, not beforehand...

...Probably...

...His Honor has run into a bit of trouble keeping Chicago's Polish wards in line and is counting on Muskie to deliver them...

...Or would there be, in Mixner's words, "an inside Chicago...

...We're not acting as an enforcement agency...

...You know what Muskie is counting on...

...At its head he placed George McGovern of South Dakota, later to emerge as the one Presidential candidate whom the pros agree has absolutely no chance of obtaining the nomination...

...An aggressive staff (including some bright young people who had been soiled in Chicago after having been Clean for Gene) probed deeply, and went on the road for field hearings...

...Nobody really knows for now...

...Could the reformers really get away with excluding all these delegations...

...Whatever Nixon's sorry lot in the polls, Democratic party reform—or the lack of it—may well be at the very center of things when next summer rolls around...

...Such contests prevent the losers from receiving any delegate support even if they win a hefty slice of the total vote...

...Our job is to aid the states," he says...

...It is not unreasonable to suppose that in some instances a delegate's badge will be bait for a big check...

...Bayh will take delegates, and I don't think he'll be the only one," David Mixner, a Denver-based ex-McCarthy coordinator told us...

...Now they are more interested in raising money— and delegates—for themselves...

...Indiana's Senator Birch Bayh served with Mixner on the McGovern Commission...

...For another, O'Brien is a graduate of a tough political school where one stopped being a reformer the day one threw the bastards out...

...senator, or maybe a potpourri of political pals who divided the spoils...

...At the time, Mr...

...They have prudently scheduled the convention for early July 1972, leaving time for the wounds to heal...