Election '72: Before and after the fall a A * * * * * * Primarily Democrats: The vote that made Milwaukee famous 4 '4 By EUGENE ROBINSON The only ca "Milwaukee: The city that's a like a winner week behind the world," Govern, that -Daily reporter Ted stein, before from South Da the Wisconsin primary ing thousands WE WERE walking down Mil- even more tb waukee's main drag, Wiscon- volunteers to sin St., trying to sort it all out paign. through a menacing haze of hang- overs and lack of sleep. We were No one rea searching desperately for a copy seriously, at le of the New York Times, to see if sumption was they had been able to make more massacred in out of the primary mess than we politely bow could. Hell, they were making race to the pr enough money; at least they ought The Hump w to be doing some work for it in.. and everybody stead of carousing every night and paigns, I susp trying to make CBS's Michelle some sort of t Clark, had taken a n As we walked we were, repeated- the Wisconsin ly stung by strong whiffs of cho- hoping to hold colate and hops. Milwaukee has the George was c distinction of being the only city Gert wasd in the world blessed with two cho- Hubert was colate factories, God knows how demon, loggint many breweries, and a strong wind over the state that blows both stenches directly and bitching into the center of town. private about The combination of the smells paign. was instantly overcoming; our nos- Muskie atterr trils clamped shut and refused to He looked lik function until the wind died down. ready to give Pollution we could deal with, but hole. Muskie k mocha beer on a hangover was hit; he was much too much. the motions, We hit six or seven newsstands, efforts at ge each carrying the Times, each with votes. McGov its most current issue a day to a candidate with week late. We were finally told face. He saw that the Times never reaches Mil- and le liked i waukee on the day of publication, a WALKING fact which fits right in with the " streets of character of the city. It would be April afternoo up to a week before Milwaukee drop in on th knew as much about the results of paign's central the primary as Long Island did the tially out of j( morning after. but mostly in EVERYONE KNEW that Wiscon- from chocolat sim would be a crucial pri- ed the dilapida mary, but nobody could figure out building. exactly why. It was so confus- The place w ing, this jumble of candidates. maze of corri Lindsay couldn't win; and neither campaigners. could Jackson. Wallace might do central room, v well. Humphrey and Muskie were Governites we both claiming to be winners. But the now-famou they looked like losers, despite canvass. the polls that said one of them We talked fc would be victorious. Southwick, M The race andidate who looked r was George Mc- tall, strange man akota who was draw- at each rally and housands of student work on his cam- ally took McGovern east at first. The as- that he would get Wisconsin, and then out and leave the os. But Muskie and vere in bad shape, knew it. Their cam- pect, had contracted terminal disease, and osedive right before primary. They were on long enoughbto ory in Wisconsin, but clearly gaining. campaigning like a g 18-hour days all e, smiling in public like a madman in his sagging cam- mpted no false front: e a man defeated, in and crawl into a :new the crunch had just going through making perfunctory tting a few token ern was the only za real smile on his what was coming t. THROUGH t h e Milwaukee on that on, we decided to he McGovern cam- headquarters. Par- ournalistic curiosity, search of a haven e and beer, we enter- ted four-story office was a madhouse, a dors full of manic We arrived at a where dozens of Mc- re busy conducting us Wisconsin phone or a while to Tom cGovern's student coordinator who had dropped out of Harvard for a year to cam- paign. Southwick was no dummy; he laid on the line George's weak- nesses and strengths, and predict- ed a McGovern victory. Few people who visited the Mc- Govern camp could have disa- greed. Everyone was working, ev- eryone was excited, everyone was optimistic. The question no longer was "How could McGovern win?" Now we asked how he could lose. THAT NIGHT we spied Frank Mankiewicz, McGovern's dirty old elf of a campaign manager, in the bar of McGovern's hotel, the Milwaukee Inn. He consented to an interview, half because we were student journalists and half be- cause he was soused. Mankiewicz explained that de- spite what the polls and the New York Times were saying, his can- didate would win. Mankiewicz is a political pro, and as such rarely tells the truth. But I got the feel- ing that the figures he was giving us were real ones, and when I talked to The Daily that night I announced, much to the disbelief of many that McGovern would win Wisconsin. We went back to the bar, laid the groundwork for the next morn- ing'shhangovers, and went home for the night. LAST WEEK I dropped into Mc- Govern HQ here in Ann Arbor. Staffers sat at their desks and worked quietly, pausing frequently to bitch about some noisy machine or why more canvassers had not come in. The campaign was put- ting along, with everyone doing his job but only a few really ex- cited about it. I don't think the overwhelming odds against McGovern were re- sponsible for the lack of enthusi- asm. McGovern's chances in April were at least as slim as they were last week, and in fact he stands a bigger chance of cleaning up in Ann Arbor that he ever did in Milwaukee. To the campaign work- ers, McGovern's still their candi- date, and a damn good one. The difference is that last week no longer was he a saviour, no longer -}. L 3 a Daily Photo by ROLFE TESSEM St. George. So the McGovernites were in somewhat less than good spirits. They explained how McGovern would take eight out of every ten votes in the city, and how his ma- jor hope lay in his slim chances of victory through the Electoral Col- lege, and how they had been can- vassing for weeks in outlying areas trying to cut into Nixon's do- main. But nobody told me what I ex- pected to hear: How MeGovern, faced with impossible odds, would surely win the Big One. The only real consistency in the senator's entire campaign had been blind, almost unwise, optimism. Without it, the whole thing seemed hollow. The campaign workers realiz- ed that the American public will get what it has paid for, what it deserves They had tried too long to enlighten a nation, and they were butter because the American peo- ple refused edification. They, like me, sat transfixed last night, beer in hand, waiting for the shit to hit the fan. They feared even more intensely what it makes us all cringe to think about. Four More Years. AAARRRGGGHHH. Daily staff writer Eugene Rob- inson, his tight-lipped eerie smile incongruous with his loose-fitting skin, stalked Democrats across the face of Wisconsin. Nixonettes and Nixonites: On the Beach for the candidate's face lywood set. The buildings were immense and gaudy and they made me sick. 'HE NEXT DAY I hit the campaign trail, determined to enjoy myself. My most pleasurable experience w a s following Hubert Humphrey to San Fran- cisco. Happy Hubie's campaign was notor- ious for running hours behind schedule. His incompetent staff routinely allowed twen- ty minutes for plane trips that were esti- mated at an hour by the airlines. Moreover at each campaign stop he would always stop to shake a few hands- like a thousand - and his staff would des- perately drag him away yet another thir- ty minutes late. It was in this setting that I, along with the rest of the press corps, journeyed from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The previous day, Humphrey was so late that newsmen never got a chance to eat. They vowed not to let it happen again. The newsmen could not eat because at all times they have to be with the candidate - especially the network camramen. It would be more than a tactical error if a cameraman was munching on a hotdog and some loony decided to blow a candi- date's head off. So: no stop, no eat. As we arrived in San Francisco, Hum- phrey announced to the delighted news- men that we would not miss lunch - even if all campaign appearances had to be can- celled. And that is exactly what happened. In San Francisco, the caravan drove di- rectly to a Chinese restaurant. The report- ers and candidate sat down to lunch. Forty- five minutes later, we finished. Humphrey walked outside, shook about a dozen hands, climber into his car, and we left. Twenty minutes later we were in an airplane fly- ing back to Los Angeles - just about in time for dinner. NHE DAILY wanted me to salvage some- thing useful out of the trip - if only a picture with me and a candidate for a promotional ad. But how to arrange it? I asked McGovern's press aide for a thirty second appointment. To my shock and dismay, he refused, saying that the candidate was too busy. But I was not to be stopped. For the next twelve hours I personally shadowed George McGovern, hoping that our photographer would capture a picture of the two of us. Everywhere he turned, there was my smiling face looking into his. Once, while climbing into his car, he turned around and asked me where his wife, Eleanor By SARA FITZGERALD jMIAMI BEACH hotels are all the same. Garish hostels for hyped-up convention- eers. Rococo palaces of bawdyness and ballyhoo. Fun-in-the-sun freedom for $50 a night. But the Doral Hotel is different. Or rather, the Doral Hotel, July 10, 1972, was different from the Doral Hotel, August 21, 1972. And the difference was George McGov- ern. ONE OF my jobs during the convention was to search out "brights"-the un- the unintentional pun in a campaign poster. usual delegate, the humorous anecdote, They went into a column we called "Un- conventionals" for the Dems; "Elephant Tales" for the Nixon convention. The Doral offered the best buy of "brights" per $1.50 parking fee. Plenty of space to go elevator riding, celebrity trail- ing, wastebasket searching. . That's what I was doing the morning of July 10 - looking through wastebaskets and following a maid around on the 12th floor. "Are Democratic delegates' rooms dir- tier than most hotel guests?" "Heh? " "Have you found anything unusual in any of the rooms you've cleaned this morn- ip g?" "No comprende," she replied apologet- ically. "Mind if I watch you clean up a room?" I said, following her into a run-of-the-Doral suite. "Say, you're not supposed to be wan- dering around up here," an official-look- ing woman delegate said, poking her head into the room. Realizing I wasn't getting anywhere on my "trash" story, I smiled, popped out of the room, down the firestairs to a 11th floor garbage can. But the only thing I found there was a pair of pantyhose. SIX WEEKS later, I didn't even make it to the elevator, much less to the 12th floor. I did, however, manage to get to the mezzanine. My editor wanted me to find out why 3,000 Nixon freaks would pay their own way just to cheer "We Want Pat" in the Con- vention Hall one night. What were they like? Where were they coming from? Whlat were they doing here? So I was sent over to the volunteer of- fices of the Committee to Re-elect the Pre,- ident, on the mezzanine of the Doral. But the guy there wouldn't speak to me until I'd been "checked out" by Powell Moore, down in the Mediterranean Room East. Moore, a bespectacled, short-haired, black-suited Nixon man, was the flak in charge of press relations for the commit- tee. He's gained a bit of fame since the convention as the man who issues "no- comment" comments on the Watergate ca- per. Back then Moore was just another Nixon gnome in the bureaucracy that filled up the Doral Hotel-even without the Nixon and Agnew clans. So I was annoyed when he pointedly pretended not to see me, sitting across the desk from him. It was sort of sad, though, sitting across the desk from Moore in the Mediterranean Room East. Six weeks earlier - the high- ceilinged room with the green carpet and the paper mache waves on the ceiling had been the room for press covering Mc- Govern, not the room for the dedicated underlings who keep the press from Nixon. There had been a high-speed UPI ma- chine, an open bar, Pepsi girls, typewrit- ers and TV sets. I'd been there to watch as the Illinois delegation said, "Illinois casts . . ." and to watch Eleanor McGovern lean back and kiss her daughters when her husband won. We'd also sat and watched McGovern come downstairs and talk to the demonstra- tors camped in the lobby of the Doral. He was only 50 feet away, but the bodies were. so thick the pencil press had to resort to watching it on NBC. SIX WEEKS later, the only young people you could find at the Doral were the "Nixonettes", young girls dressed in red, white and blue with a touch of silver and "Nixon" emblazoned in banners across their chests. They were there, according to a -recruitment letter, to "provide much- needed glamour to the Nixon campaign. And to usher wandering reporters into the Mediterranean Room West. That room was for press conferences- filled with chairs, dirty coffee cups and the "eternal light" of the television kleigs. There Frank Mankiewicz had announced what the UPI had speculated minutes be- fore: that a semi-obscure senator from Missouri would be McGovern's choice for the vice presidency. The newspapermen had scurried to the telephones, forgetting that the networks had already beat them on it - forgetting that you could really cover the convention by sitting in front of a television set. But then why should they have known? For the "new politics"' of McGovern had at least and at last provided an "old-style" conven- tion. You know, delegate fights, ho- tel room caucuses, convention ses- sions that lasted until all hours ofthe night, oblivious to the mass t audience that only watches from 7 to 11. 'IX WEEKS after Mankiewicz - had stood at the podium in the Mediterranean Room West, it was Clark MacGregor's turn. He was affable, genial, obviously in con- trol. Someone asked him about a new development in the Watergate af- - fair. . MacGregor poo-poohed it, said ho cnltn't really comment be- 1 . Daily Photo by DAVID MARGOLICK THE TIE IS mussy, the focus a mite fuz zy, but Bob Barkin got his man. A By ROBERT BARKIN Coming in from A', into the coast Flying in a big airliner ilor d'oeuvres passed along the aisle Could we ever be much finer? Coning into Los Angeles Breathing hard, beginning to wheeze Get me out of here please, Mr. Daily man -sung to Coning into Los Angeles TWENTY-FOUR HOURS earlier, I had little expectation of viewing the ugly Mississippi River from 10,000 feet in the air. But here I was, gazing down at that wind- ing mudhole trying to comprehend why I was flying to L.A. on a Wednesday after- noon, My saga began three weeks earlier when several Daily reporters asserted to the portunity to visit the Golden Coast at the Daily's expense. I did too, but since I had gone on a lesser junket to Wisconsin my chances were slim. But events turned my way. One by one the others dropped out because they could not afford to take the trip. But I had my ace-in-the-hole: my relatives. Those neces- sary beings that you rarely see, but come in handy when you need them. Conven- iently stationed around the country, I could depend on them when I needed them - and I needed them now, True to form they invited me out to the coast with open arms, only too anxious to see their darling nephew. I was all set. Two photographers (they were splitting watering and my chest was lurching spas- modically, gasping for air. My God, I thought, am I having heart failure at the tender age of 20? In a panic I gazed out the window. We were enveloped in a blanket of yellow air and I knew. "Welcome to Los Angeles," said the flight attendant. * * * IT WAS A wonder of technology that got me to California in four hours. But it was technology gone wild that greeted me in L.A. Hlurrying out of the airport, we left for my relatives'thouse. Los Angeles literally left me breathless - both from pollution and wonderment. 4 . i U