For the Record

Presidential ups and downs. A U.S. News survey finds Jimmy Carter regarded as the “most influential American,” the White House as the nation’s “most effective” institution. Same survey lists only two non-government people among the top ten, George Meany of the AFL-CIO and Walter Cronkite. Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham is the only woman to place among top twenty influentials, but she outranks her counterpart, Arthur O. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, who makes it only into the third ten. . . . While both Gallup and Harris show a slight slippage in Carter popularity following the breakdown of arms talks in Moscow, columnist George Will comments that Jimmy Carter’s steadiness in the face of the Soviet rejection is evidence that the U.S. Government’s “detente drunk” has ended. . . . Jimmy Carter’s various electoral reforms, most particularly his call for instant registration, are running into heavy flak on Capitol Hill. Democratic Sen. James Allen —one of the most effective legislators on the Hill—opposes it and charges that the big city machines (all of them Democratic) would “clean out every skid-row hotel, every pool room, every beer joint and herd these people to the polls and vote them like sheep.” . . . In the House, the fight against instant registration is being coordinated by conservative Rep. Bob Bauman of Maryland. Nonetheless, the pols think quickie registration will make it. . . . There’s great doubt, however, that Carter will succeed in getting the Electoral College abolished. A bill to do so has popped up in Congress every four years, which is to say every year following a presidential election, since 1826. . . . That same poll that found the White House the most effective institution in America placed the Democratic Party 14th, and the Republican Party 29th, and last. . . . It is to keep the GOP from fading away entirely, says columnist Kevin Phillips, that Republican National Chairman Bill Brock plans to spend $1.7 million this year and next to develop attractive candidates for the state legislatures. His concern: with a new census in 1980, if the GOP doesn’t win back some of the state legislatures it may be redistricted to death.

In the early April elections, Mayor Thomas Bradley of Los Angeles, a black man and a moderate on busing and other racial questions, won re-election easily. There’s talk that Democratic leaders in California plan to groom him to run against Republican Sen. S. I. Hayakawa in ’82. . . . Paul Soglin, the so-called “radical mayor” of Madison, Wisconsin, won his runoff against conservative challenger Anthony Amato. Amato had run ahead of Soglin in the February primary when many Wisconsin students didn’t turn out; they turned out in droves for the runoff. . . . In Atlanta Wyche Fowler, a white man and the president of the Atlanta City Council, beat out black activist John Lewis to win Andrew Young’s 5th District congressional seat.

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Presidential ups and downs. A U.S. News survey finds Jimmy Carter regarded as the “most influential American,” the White House as the nation’s “most effective” institution. Same survey lists only two non-government people among the top ten, George Meany of the AFL-CIO and Walter Cronkite. Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham is the only woman to place among top twenty influentials, but she outranks her counterpart, Arthur O. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, who makes it only into the third ten. . . . While both Gallup and Harris show a slight slippage in Carter popularity following the breakdown of arms talks in Moscow, columnist George Will comments that Jimmy Carter’s steadiness in the face of the Soviet rejection is evidence that the U.S. Government’s “detente drunk” has ended. . . . Jimmy Carter’s various electoral reforms, most particularly his call for instant registration, are running into heavy flak on Capitol Hill. Democratic Sen. James Allen —one of the most effective legislators on the Hill—opposes it and charges that the big city machines (all of them Democratic) would “clean out every skid-row hotel, every pool room, every beer joint and herd these people to the polls and vote them like sheep.” . . . In the House, the fight against instant registration is being coordinated by conservative Rep. Bob Bauman of Maryland. Nonetheless, the pols think quickie registration will make it. . . . There’s great doubt, however, that Carter will succeed in getting the Electoral College abolished. A bill to do so has popped up in Congress every four years, which is to say every year following a presidential election, since 1826. . . . That same poll that found the White House the most effective institution in America placed the Democratic Party 14th, and the Republican Party 29th, and last. . . . It is to keep the GOP from fading away entirely, says columnist Kevin Phillips, that Republican National Chairman Bill Brock plans to spend $1.7 million this year and next to develop attractive candidates for the state legislatures. His concern: with a new census in 1980, if the GOP doesn’t win back some of the state legislatures it may be redistricted to death.

In the early April elections, Mayor Thomas Bradley of Los Angeles, a black man and a moderate on busing and other racial questions, won re-election easily. There’s talk that Democratic leaders in California plan to groom him to run against Republican Sen. S. I. Hayakawa in ’82. . . . Paul Soglin, the so-called “radical mayor” of Madison, Wisconsin, won his runoff against conservative challenger Anthony Amato. Amato had run ahead of Soglin in the February primary when many Wisconsin students didn’t turn out; they turned out in droves for the runoff. . . . In Atlanta Wyche Fowler, a white man and the president of the Atlanta City Council, beat out black activist John Lewis to win Andrew Young’s 5th District congressional seat.