Conversation 133-009

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Hello?

Yes, sir.

Well, I just hope you didn't buy any stock in your friend Mervyn Field's organization.

You finally got blown out of the water totally.

You know, the son of a bitch, Bob, you know the Kennedy people or the McGovern people who are now Kennedy people, were Kennedy, now McGovern.

They bought him without any question.

Jesus Christ, I mean, you can't be, have McGovern two to one and then have him win by seven or eight percent.

Huh?

But he was indicted.

Yes, sir, and he was indicted across the board.

He took that

stupid Proposition 9 on the Environment Act and had that winning by three to one and we beat that one two to one.

Did we beat that?

Yeah.

Thank God.

And, you know, I went out way out on the limb on that goddamn thing.

Thank God.

So, and it looks like Schmitz is going to squeak by.

Schmitz?

Oh, did we have a candidate against him?

Yep.

Good.

I probably voted for him.

He put in, you know, you've got a new one.

You've got Claire Bergner now.

Oh, good.

Who, of course, won handily.

Yeah, that was pretty good, didn't you think?

90-10 was neat or something.

Yeah, the only thing is they, of course, grew up the McCloskey thing.

He got in, huh?

He won rather handily, yeah.

Oh, I would expect that, though.

But it's interesting that, see, that whole issue on Schmitz down there was this assessor, this Hinshaw.

Again, Schmitz was, do you support the president or don't you?

And

Spitz went out and played the Agnew.

He had full-page pictures with he and Agnew and stuff like that to cope with this.

Why in the name of God and the hell did Agnew do that?

Well, we had Murray working with Agnew to keep them alive.

I can't believe that.

With Schmitz?

Yeah.

Oh, well, for Christ's sakes.

It's terrible.

All right, just a small point, but I mean the point.

Yeah, well.

Here is a relative unknown in that very conservative district who comes within 1,000 votes.

Of course, the third candidate.

2,000 votes.

So you can see that overall the anti-Schmidt's votes among Republicans was greater than what Schmidts got.

Yeah.

What do you attribute the fact that Humphrey closed the gap?

You know, everybody was telling me I didn't look at the debates that McGovern came through cool and calm and everything and that Humphrey looked old and tired and desperate.

But maybe it began to get true that McGovern is a radical.

I don't know.

Well, we didn't make that case as well as we'd like.

But by God, the Catholics stayed with Humphrey, and that's an area we can exploit.

They stayed with Humphrey?

Yes, sir, from everything I can gather.

That's probably labor.

What's left of organized labor was there and did what they could, but it wasn't a hell of a lot.

I mean, you know, the organization's a goddamn week.

And the combination of the

coalition hell to that extent.

He lost more than he expected among the blacks, and the old folks just didn't get out as well as he'd hoped for, because that's where he was running best.

I know, when you figure, though, a government can't be 51-25 or whatever it was.

and then end up 45, 38.

Is that what it was, finally?

But the stuff that's coming in now, of course, is closing that gap all the time, and it's going to be... Well, is it closing in?

Yes, sir.

It's now moved to 39, 44.

I'll be damned.

So I'm telling everybody here just to cool it for a while.

Don't say anything until we see.

And the other thing that's a big factor here, that Angela Davis thing really had a hell of an impact.

And he was on the wrong side of that, wasn't he?

He sure was.

I mean, the Wallace write-in vote, of course, that was a terribly difficult thing for a person to write in.

It'll take him two days to get all of that, and that's going to be a hell of a lot higher than 8%.

And also, I think it helped, frankly, to a certain extent, it helped Ashbrook.

But if Ashbrook, where he put all of his money and everything, got only, what is it, 10% now?

Yeah.

But you got that, Bob.

That's minuscule, don't you think?

Oh, sure.

I'm not concerned about that.

Our people should say, Jesus, you can run a... You guys, you remember what happened.

You remember Wardell.

Yeah.

You remember Wardell.

I'm going to do a couple of shows today and then a briefing tomorrow.

I'm going to say, hell, 20% is what anybody who gets on the ballot usually gets in California.

Anybody.

You're on a ring-tailed monkey.

Well, it looks, your prognosis is now that McGovern still is going to be nominated, huh?

Or do you think Humphrey can stop him?

Is that really what it gets down to?

Right now, I'd have to say Humphrey can't stop him.

Do you think Teddy will move?

You know, we're trying to, we're having to prop up Humphrey.

just to keep his dobber up.

Well, this will help his dobber, that California result.

Yeah, particularly if he can close the gap.

It's closed enough, 5%.

I don't think Kennedy can come back in because McGovern, he's got the heady success, and those people can't turn around that fast.

So to that extent, I think Teddy is preempted.

Can McGovern clean himself up?

Of course he can.

Goldwater tried the same thing, but Goldwater had the media against him.

McGovern will have the media with him.

That's right.

I wouldn't say this to anybody else.

My argument is that the people who say, well, this is a Goldwater syndrome, I don't buy that at all.

By God, Goldwater got pretty close to 90% of the Republican votes.

The governor is smart enough to put things together.

If he can get 60% of his Democratic votes, he's going to be goddamn tough.

Sure.

And, sure, I don't care.

The candidates will run from the incumbent congressman will run like hell to not be seen on the platform with him.

But the governor didn't fight his way up through South Dakota and so on without keeping his people together.

And even though he didn't handle it too well, the idea of his moving to that governor's thing was fairly smart.

I mean, he was a little class.

So I don't.

I'm going to address me as the son of a bitch.

And I'm disappointed that Humphrey didn't paint him further into the corner where he should have been.

He really didn't do that in the debates.

And he had everything in hand to do it with.

I would only suggest that, however, I think that Meany's and the others that are so violently anti-McGovern will take heart from the fact that Humphrey did as well as he did in California.

I mean, if it had been a landslide, it would have been all over.

That's right.

No question about it.

And he would have had a hell of a lot of momentum.

The only other thing I mentioned this morning when we were talking to John and

Clark and the others, and I feel very strongly about this.

The press, of course, having its little orgy and so on.

We've gotten out to, whether we do it in context of assault debates or whatever else, move quickly, and maybe we're going to take some pro-reaction.

We had so much coming off that Russian trip, we can't let this goddamn thing cut across that to too great an extent.

We've got to keep talking hard about the great accomplishments of that, and I mean all the aspects of it.

Mm-hmm.

sustained and not cut into any more than these guys playing with the McGovern thing.

That troubles me a little bit.

I haven't figured out quite how to cope with it other than all of us who are surrogates have to be pounding away at, by God, all the great accomplishments that that meant.

Yeah.

It'll be hard, however, I suppose, to keep

We can do it at local levels, but nationally the press has got to play the fight, don't they?

The fight for McGovern and the Democratic Convention.

That'll be our problem through the 15th of July.

But I don't, I think, looking at today's results, I think McGovern lost some momentum.

Good God in New Mexico for Wallace to get to...

That's no... And if Wallace continues to do as well on the right end, of course, as I said, that would take another 48 hours before they can count all those damn things, he'll still be fairly close, even with a million votes that McGovern has, because Wallace was ahead of him by a million votes in terms of all the popular votes cast.

It's still going to be nip and tuck.

We can play those kind of games, too, as to who got more popular votes than all the Democratic primaries and have to keep banging home points like that.

Yeah, the write-in, I understand, was terribly difficult, too.

Oh, Jesus, you had to go through a...

The reason I mention that Angela Davis thing is that they had floods of calls that came in after the particular shots of all those jurors celebrating that night at a big party, all of them drunk.

And one of them held up a closed fist, I understand.

Yeah, celebrating with Angela Davis at a nightclub.

It wasn't just at the courtroom or courthouse.

They all went to the party later on.

Of course, that goddamn woman, the foreman of the jury, was obviously already bought and paid for, and she just hand-tooled that jury until hell wouldn't have it.

Who is she, incidentally?

We're trying to find out.

And how in the world would our prosecutor let somebody like, well, anyway, must have been a lousy prosecutor.

But the after effect of that was just profound.

They were inundated with calls as to how they could write in for Wallace.

So, you know, that's had its impact.

And then that jerk,

call where they call in, and this proved to be remarkably accurate.

Only when they called my victory, for example, just in relation to calling.

Chris Wallace was running neck and neck with McGovern at that thing.

Is that right?

If he'd been on the ballot, he probably got 25, 30 percent.

At least, in my opinion.

Isn't that something?

But the Angela Davis thing, in a way, it's the best of both worlds, oh, Bob, for us.

Yes, for us it is.

I mean, we get the band.

It proves now that she's...

that you can have justice.

And second, everybody knows she's guilty as hell.

Right, and mad about it.

And, of course, all her talk about political prisoners and all that bullshit is going to be knocked down to some extent.

But we'd have had a lot of marching in the streets and so on if she'd been indicted.

I agree it is important to try to maintain the positive business on our own side.

We know from long experience, so it's terribly difficult to do, isn't it?

But we have more going for us now than we did after China because basically we have China and Russia together.

We have the agreements.

It's really a profound change in the world situation.

It's something that people can relate.

And the whole line should be, they say, what's the big issue?

Well, don't say, well, it's the environment or busing or whatever.

or you know all this crap or welfare the big issue is what man do you want to handle the problems of the world in the next four years and god damn it's no contest on that that's right and

And the thing is, people are terribly interested in what came out of that, and it was just so damn much substance.

I spoke last week in California to two or three groups.

When you start talking about the jobs that come out of that joint space shot, and you talk about the environment, so God damn much more was done just on the environment alone than will ever come out of this silly Stockholm conference, for example.

I mean, it's just that kind of stuff can be pointed to as really solid accomplishment, and it's well-received.

right so i think we just beef up our speak our speakers in every club and so on keep banging away at that not and i think i think for a while we can let the democrats keep chewing at each other and we don't have that but i think that the two is you just get across the one theme the great issue of 19 you remember the same thing we used in 52 with eisenhower the great issue in 1972 is we come into four years when the world will be changing and when the whole

peace of the world building a real peace is we have our greatest opportunity who's best qualified to do it you know and good god mcgovern isn't even in the league there you know he's best qualified in the record stewardship and the and the accomplishment and uh knows every knows all the world leaders knows the communists yet is yet can deal with them and all that they know i i could you think i think you could make a pretty fair pitch there

It's there and we're trying to get the thing polished and out.

Well, that's a very interesting situation.

the other congressional uh what happens on the five new seats in california there they did the district tell us did that finally work out i just didn't follow that or is it at large or what happened no sir uh no they they they carved them out on the basis pretty much the democratic plan but but we we come out it looks like about three to two but we pick up burger and of course your whole uh mccloskey which was really a separate new seat um

McCloskey, of course, is capable of switching.

Capable, and of course he will, in terms of I'm sure he'll vote to organize.

We didn't go out too badly on that as far as that split is concerned.

They pretty much took care of their own as always.

They took care of their own, but you figure we'll be about three to two.

How about our candidates for the Congress in California?

Do we have

decent candidates this time or the usual?

What would you say?

Well, they're pretty much the incumbents.

We picked up Moorhead and Smith's seat, the one that I was considering.

At least we slightly had a little McCall that had come back and was running pretty strongly.

Who's going to be the nominee there?

flashy, but he's a good, rational, conservative, and he'll be a good supporter of yours.

Are there any Democratic incumbents that could be knocked off there if we happen to get going?

Well, we haven't really got enough figures in yet.

Yeah.

What I meant is that Dick

Miller's almost, good God, he's 80 years old, you know.

I don't care what the district is.

You know, there's a lot of incumbents are going down, Bob.

A lot of incumbents are going down.

Well, with the... Allender, McClellan, Jordan are down.

Allender's probably going to lose.

McClellan may lose.

Now, this is age, that's all.

Well, when we get the rest of the figures in, that goddamn judge in

and ordered those poles to stay open another three hours.

That happened in Ohio, too, and that just really throws things all out.

Oh, you mean you don't know what the results are?

No, and when that San Francisco judge did that,

Then that goddamn Secretary of State, Pat Brown Jr., ordered all counting and all announcements to be held in all of the precincts.

So we're running about eight hours behind the usual cycle of getting returns.

So what are they projecting on our side?

They're still projecting, what, 90-10 or something like that?

Oh, yes.

San Francisco should be a little better for us than the other places if that's out.

Should it not?

I wouldn't think Ashbrook would be very hard there.

No, that's already in.

That's in?

Yes, sir.

From San Francisco.

Oh, I see.

What about...

I haven't got San Diego and Orange.

What about the situation on the McGovern-Humphrey thing?

How do you think that's going to end up, six or seven points between the two?

I think it will be closer to five.

You do?

I think it will be 45-40.

It's going to be that close.

Why is it creeping up because the more conservative elements, the write-in ballots, is that it, Bob, or what?

I mean, the usual pattern, the more conservative districts are coming in now, slower, and the machine count has already come in now.

And Humphrey was stronger in San Diego because he hit the defense issue so hard.

Right, and in Los Angeles.

And in Los Angeles.

Even Orange County, right.

and all that is not in yet.

So that's got to help him, according to the very fragmentary stuff we have.

Well, what we kind of, of course, want, we want McGovern to win it between the two of them.

But he will win it.

Yeah, but close.

But we want it close so that there will be one hell of a fight.

That's right.

Because the Meany crowd is really organizing behind Humphrey, you know, between now and the convention.

They're really good.

Meany...

daily all that crap they're they're petrified at the point of at this moment on mcgovern right and uh well while he can shift and affect voters very cleverly these old labor leaders and political leaders you know when a guy switches that doesn't help them one damn bit you know they're too tough too tough i think well they they

Yeah, they're tough, but what they can deliver is smaller and smaller.

That's right.

I'm talking about the boat.

I'm not talking about the dolly.

No, I was thinking, though, in terms of delegates at the convention.

I don't know.

I think in terms of boats, it's nothing.

I mean, it's a few dollars, but at the convention...

There will still be quite a few labor delegates, won't there, under the Democratic rules?

Those are the very ones that are going to be challenged, though.

If you look at the daily delegates, you look at some of the others.

Will they be challenged?

Oh, they're going to have more.

Won't that be fun?

That's going to be great.

That's just going to be keen.

Mm-hmm.

Well, it's too bad we have to go to Miami rather than California, isn't it, for our convention?

Well, I think that's going to cure itself when you kick it off from there.

The idea of the kickoff from there is going to be good, don't you think?

Yes, sir.

Will Larry Hall be ready by then?

It's ready now.

Of course, we won't, you know, the problem with air conditioning and a few other things.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's far different to do a single shot than it is to go through three days.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, okay, Bob.

I think out of this we came up pretty well.

Okay, bye.

Thanks, sir.