Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk would like AFL-CIO to hold up on its endorsement of a Democratic candidate until at least primary time. But AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland isn’t listening. Fact is, Kirkland may well announce at big labor’s annual Bal Harbour, Florida, conference next month that AFL-CIO will pick both a Democratic and a Republican candidate this time round, since he feels 25 per cent of union members who are Republicans should not be left in cold. But given the party’s shift to the right under Ronald Reagan, what Republican candidate will Kirkland pick? Not Kemp, Robertson, or du Pont. Baker? Dole? Bush? Unlikely. Won’t labor have to go to darkest of dark horses—Kean of New Jersey, perhaps, or Thompson of Illinois—to find a Republican it can plausibly support? . . . Choice of Democrat will be easier. Gary Hart, rejected by big labor four years back, made valiant pitch to Left in New Hampshire a fortnight ago: SDI is a trillion-dollar mistake; Reagan blew chances for peace at Reykjavik; the U.S. should be building water-treatment facilities, not airfields, in Honduras; oh yes, and let’s sock it to the rich with a surcharge on high- income taxpayers. . . . It will be a new ballgame in ’88, with primaries in many big states concentrated early in the season. Super Tuesday, March 8, will see primaries in 17 states, half of them Southern and Border states. . . . New Jersey plans to move its primary from June to March, ditto Ohio and Indiana, which are expected to join Illinois and Minnesota in Great Lakes primary March 15. (Michigan votes three days earlier.) Virginia is going from a March 8 caucus to March 8 nonbinding primary. . . . Which will give large field of entrants very little time to get known. Dismaying ABC- TV poll in midst of ’84 primary season found 80 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds couldn’t name a single Democratic presidential candidate. . . .
This is why, says Ed Rollins (Reagan’s campaign chief in ’84, now working for Jack Kemp), any candidate who can’t raise $6 to $8 million in 1987 “is not going to be a player.”
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