Page4--Thursday, March 30, 1978-The Michigan Daily
Looking t
WASHINGTON - When the pollsters ven-
tured out to take their first soundings on the
1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter's
name didn't even make the list of prospects.
That should be fair warning that nothing
counts until the competition begins.
Still, off-season surveys can point up
political problems, and a new Associated
Press-NBC News poll indicated that
President Carter has had his share - perhaps
more.
One of them shows up when people are ;
asked, in effect, what they would do if they
had the 1976 election to do over again. The an-
swer: they would still elect Carter over
Republican Gerald R. Ford, and by about the
same 3 percentage point margin.
IN A POLL of 1,604 adults conducted March
21 and 22, Carter was favored by 46 percent,
Ford by 43 percent. The rest said they wouldn't.
vote or didn't know.
That's a lot closer than the hypothetical
matchup has been since Carter defeated Ford
and entered the White House. Last Novem-
ber, for example, a similar poll showed Car-
ter with an 18 percentage point margin over
Ford. In January, Carter's margin was 12
points.
The narrowed gap between the Democratic
president and the defeated Republican is an
aDDarent reflection of dissatisfaction with
Carter's performance in office. The AP-NBC
News poll showed that 33 percent of the people
rate Carter's performance excellent or good,
while 64 percent say the job he is doing is only
fair or poor.
An AP-NBC News sampling of opinion
about a presidential primary match between
Carter and California Gov. Jerry Brown gives
the president a commanding margin among
Democrats. The numbers: Carter 58 percent,
Brown 23 percent, with the rest withholding
November, 1980
By Walter Mears
ANAL YSIS
r A
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t~ L
Eighty-Eight Years of Editorial Freedom
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
:Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 60
News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
The renewed interest In MSA
judgment and a few saying they'd prefer
other condidates.
THE MARGIN of error is 5 percent either
way, but in any event, Carter is comfortably'
ahead.
When people who identify themselves as in-
dependents are asked the same question, 42
percent prefer Carter, 31 percent favor
Brown. Overall, counting Democrats, in-
dependents and Republicans, 46 percent favor
Carter, 28 percent favor Brown.
Given the fact the presidents, historically,
fare worse in the polls in times like these - as
promises collide with problems - the num-
bers would hardly seem a lure to would-be
candidates to risk a challenge to their party's
incumbent.
But again, the time for such decision is far
away.
Among Republicans, every would-be can-
didate is a challenger, and the lesson of Car-
ter's marathon campaign is to start early, to
build up contacts and credits long before the
election season.
A SAMPLING of Republican sentiment, in
a poll which has a 7 percent margin of error,
shows Ronald Reagan atop the list of prospec-
ts for the 1980 nomination. Ford is close
behind.
That is to be expected. In such an early sur-
vey, name recognition is the single most im-
portant factor, and more people recognize the
names of the 1976 GOP contestants than those
of other prospects for 1980.
The AP-NBC News poll presented
Repubicans with a list of names, and asked
which they would support in a presidential
primary election.
The ranking: Reagan 43 percent; Ford 35
percent; Senate Republican Leader Howard
H. Baker Jr. 7 percent; former Texas Gov.
John B. Connally 5 percent; former Am-
bassador George Bush 2 percent; Sen. Bob J.
Dole of Kansas, the 1976 vide-presidential
nominee, 2 percent; others or not sure 6 per-
cent.
When Democrats and independents are
asked to rate the same list of prospects.
Baker's stock jumps sharply. Among all
voters, he is favored by 18 percent, still third,
but a lot closer to Reagan, who 'is supported
by 27 percent, and Ford; who gets 28 percent
backing.
Beyond those few portents, ablout all that
can be said of the rankings is that they are
almost certain to change markedly before the
1980 competiton really begins.
Three years before the 1976 election, a poll
among Democrats rated Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy of Massahusetts the preferred
presidential candidate by a wide margin, with
Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace econd and
nine, count 'em, nine U.S. Senator filling out
the list of prospects.
Just before that election year began,
another poll made the late Sen. Iubert H.
Humphrey of Minnesota the favorite, again
with Wallace second and, again, with no men-
tion of Carter.
Walter Hears is a correspondent for The
Associated Press.
T HERE MUST be a lot of smiling
people walking around the offices of
the Michigan Student Assembly
(MSA) these days.
When the deadline arrived to an-
nounce candidacy for the upcoming
MSA elections, a record number of
people had done so. Some 104 students,
representing almost every school on
campus, are vying for a mere 38 seats
on the Assembly.
.The overflowing slate of candidates
represents a remarkable recovery in
the level of interest for student gover-
nment on 'campus, even if it is only
immediately attributable to the
befalling of a major election.
In recent years, participation by
students in their government has fallen
to alarmingly low levels. As a rule,
fewer students have run for elective of-
fice and fewer students have voted in
elections for campus governments.
MSA members now in power, for
example, were elected by less than 10
percent of the students who make up
their constituency.
The surge in interest can best be at-
tributed to the new election procedures
just instituted in February. These
provide for the election of all represen-
tatives from the various colleges, as
opposed to representation-at-large.
Because this was the case, members of
MSA were able to concentrate their ef-
forts on recruiting new candidates.
Campus political parties - some of
them old and some of them new-were
instrumental in gathering new can-
didates, as well. Of the 104 new can-
didates, only 13 are calling themselves
independents. This could very well
mean that the various parties, each.
with their own- speciaLinterests, will,
have a.powerfvl role i the future MSA
Adding also to the spark in this
year's election is the reinstitution of
the direct election of MSA's president
and vice-president. Rallies and
speeches, which always seemed to be
missing from MSA elections of recent
years, may now come back into vogue.
The large field of candidates and
inevitable round of campaigning over
the next week and a half can have
nothing but beneficial effects on the
number of students who come out to
vote beginning April 10.
The people in the offices of MSA do
indeed have reason to smile.
The trick now will be to maintain the
students' interest in their govermnent
after the elections. And that, as many
current members of the Assembly will
testify, is a considerable challenge.
~C ploy Nerws Swoc
NOALL-
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - "It's
strange," observed a middle-
aged black woman, who said she
had taken part in lunch counter
sit-ins here in the early 1960s,
"but, you know, it looks like
South Africa is bringing us
together again, getting us tired,
old folk back on our feet. We just
have to do what we can to help
those poor, brave kids in
Soweto."
The sit-in veteran spoke as she
marched through the streets of
Nashville last weekend with
some 5,000 mostly black demon-
strators protesting the United
States-South Africa Davis Cup
tennis matches at Vanderbilt
University.
The three-day protest - spon-
sored by the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), and organized
locally' by black and- white
students .- mny transform the,
growing,,but most white student-
led anti-apartheid campaign into
a national movement coordinated
by black organizations.
AT -THE SAME TIME, the
Davis Cup protests suggested
that the South African issue may
be the spark that re-ignites a
black protest movement in the
United States after nearly a
decade of relative quiet despite
worsening economic conditions
for blacks.
Billed as the largest protest of
its kind since the civil rights
movement, the demonstration
recalled for many of the par-
ticipants the days of Martin
Luther King and SNCC - a
movement reborn.
"It's a new day today, the
beginning of a new era of
protest," black activist and
comedian Dick Gregory told the
cheering crowd, which had been
drawn to Nashville from as far
away as Chicago and rural North
Carolina. "If the American cor-
porations that invest in South
Africa don't listen to what's hap-
pening here today, and if the
universities don't listen, they're
gonna see a whole lot of trouble."
NAACP President Benjamin
Hooks promised, "We will lead
other marches in other cities, and
we will be raising not only the
issue of South Africa, but also of
unemployment and racism in this
country. This is not the end but
the beginning ... We shall march
on until victory is won and all
God's children are free."
The Davis Cup demonstrations
America's
movement
Apartheid and
By Steve Talbot
black
drastically cut attendance at the
games - the 9,000-seat capacity
stadium was never more than 15
percent full. The embarrassingly
low turn-out compelled the U.S.
Tennis Association to release
Vanderbilt, the host, from its.
financial obligations, and a local
over the country. The
organization decided to make the
Davis Cup a "symbolic protest,"
and Hooks told reporters he
would be pleased if 2,000 people
took part.
Furthermore, NAACP mar-
shals restrained marchers from
I f the imcan corporations that
invest in South Africa don't listen
to what's happening here today,
and if the universities don't listen,
they're gonna see a whole, lot off
trouble..'
- activist and comedian
Dick Gregory
ce later this year," -said TCAA
coordinator David Huet-Vaughn.
Regional conferences have
begun to bring cohesion and focus
to the campus movement against
South Africa. Students from 15
New England colleges will gather
at Yale University in New Haven
the first weekend in April for a
series of films, workshops and
speakers on the issue of South
Africa and U.S. ties to the apar-
theid regime. Students in
California held a statewide con-
ference earlier this year at Santa
Barbara.
Already anti-apartheid studen-
ts have succeeded in forcing a
number of colleges from the
University of Massachusetts at
Amherst to the University of
Wisconsin, to divest themselves
of stocks in corporations with
subsidiaries and ,ffiliates.in
SouthAfrica. Some of thecaippus
protests, such as those at Stan-
ford, the University '&f Califna
at Berkeley and the University of
California at Santa Cruz last ;
spring, have led to mass arrests.
Student anti-apartheid leaders
also want to link with people off
campustotbroaden their base and
increase their clout. In Califor-
nia, alliances have been
developed between students,
local activists and a black-led
Southern African caucus within
the International Longshoremen
and Warehousemen's Union. The
coalition has picketed a South
African cargo ship and collected
and sent 32 tons of clothing to
Zimbabwean refugees from
Rhodesia's white-minority
regime.
Other attempts to organize'and
unite the eclectic and scattered
anti-apartheid campaign have
failed. However, the national
conference proposed by Nash-
ville's TCAA - with its black and
white members, its non-sectarian
approach and, perhaps most im-
portantly, its success with the
Davis Cup protests - may be the
necessary catalyst for the
creation of a new national
movement.
Steve Talbot, an editor of
the Berkely, Ca. based bi-
weekly International Bulletin
and Internews Radio Service,
has travelled and reported
widely from Africa. He wrote
this article for the Pacific
News Service.
ISTt{ A
pRC FWKM clf
coal mine owner, Joe Davis, of-
fered to pick up the tab.
WITH THE ACTIVE partici-
pation of black organizations
from the Urban League to the
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, and white and black
students, the Davis Cup protests
also provided a major forum and
stimulus to the anti-apartheid
movement. But strains and dif-
ficulties - especially regarding
the NAACP's role - remain that
could prevent the formation of a
coordinated, large-scale,
national movement of black and
white Americans.
The Davis Cup was the
NAACP's debut in recent protests
against United States-South
Africa ties. Many rank-and-file
members applauded the group's
activism, welcoming Hook's an-
nouncement that he expected
40,000 demonstrators to show up
in Nashville. But after that initial
announcement, the NAACP-
decided not to go all out in busing
people into Nashville from all
joining local activists in on-site
picketing, and at the rally Satur-
day, Hooks appealed to the crowd
to ignore "those disrupters who
want us to act a fool over at the
gym.
A local group - the Tennessee
Coalition Against Apartheid -
and many black students from
Fish, Meharry Medical College
and Tennessee State University
said they had worked well with
local NAACP leaders and tried to
coordinate strategy with the
national office, but had run into a
brick wall.
TCAA said it will now move to
confronting issues of racism at
Vanderbilt, as well as university
investments linked to South
Africa.
"WE ARE GOING to try to
unite anti-apartheid groups in the
United States by starting a
working group with people like
Dennis Brutus, the exiled black
South African poet and sports ac-
tivist, to try to get people
together for a national conferen-
LETTERS TO THE DAILY
Vote to save Campus Legal A id
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To The Daily:
Sometime soon we U of M
students may lose one of the most
valuable services We receive at
this university - Campus Legal
Aid. The Office of Student Ser-
vices has recently announced
that because of budget cut-backs,
it may not continue funding the
Campus Legal Aid program next
year. There are however some
simple steps that students can
take to preserve this program -
ts are considered "low income" if
their yearly income falls below
established guidelines of several
thousand dollars per year with
allowances made for tuition and
other fixed expenses.
The office handles landlord/-
tenant disputes (roughly half the
cases are in this area), family
law problems such as divorces
and child custody disputes, con-
sumer and employment
mr-hlemg msdemeannr eaes.
dollars. For a student this can
literally mean a battle for
economic survival involving half
or more of his or her yearly
budget.
Realizing the importance of
legal services for students, the
Michigan Student Assembly has
developed a plan whereby legal
aid could be preserved and, in
fact, expanded to cover all
students at the university. This
would require a mandatory fee
per student per term to pay for all
MSA programs.
Please VOTE to support collec-
tion of this fee. It is vital to the
survival of legal aid. The elec-
tions will be April 10, 11, and 12.
Polling places will be all around
campus. Tell your friends to vote
too. And if you can spare some
hours near or on the days of the
election to work at the polls or
distribute leaflets and do cam-
Im
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mI M M1 1