For the Record

■ Opposition to Ted Sorensen nomination as head of CIA building up in unexpected quarters. The Washington Post opposes it: “. . . It is not clear,” its editorial concludes, “how that [Sorensen’s] background would help prepare him to preside over the U.S. Government’s espionage agency.” . . . George Meany and high command of AFL-CIO also did everything in their power to block the naming of Sorensen in the first place, not because they feared what he might do to the efficiency of the CIA but because Sorensen has joined other radical chic types (Jane Fonda, John Kenneth Galbraith among them) in supporting the candidacy of Edward Sad- lowski to succeed I. W. Abel as head of the powerful steelworkers’ union. Meany and Co. support the candidacy of Lloyd MacBride. . . . That victory of Sen. Howard Baker over Sen. Robert Griffin to succeed Hugh Scott as Minority Leader in the Senate was not a Left-Right fight as might have been supposed. Baker, who is to the right of Griffin, was nominated by liberal Sen. Charles Mathias of Maryland, seconded by liberal Robert Packwood of Oregon, and got the votes of most of the freshmen GOP senators, who apparently agreed with Mathias that what the sorely pressed GOP minority needs is a “symbolic change” from the old leadership. . . . That much-ballyhooed drive by disgruntled Virginia Democrats to get Harry Byrd dumped from the Democratic caucus (Byrd runs as an independent) never materialized. . . . In the House, Rep. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland may be trying to replace Bella Abzug as the most liberal lady of them all. At any rate she’s hired Bella aide Marylyn Marcosson as her administrative assistant.

■ Before closing out the old year, a final word on Election ’76, how those minority parties did (the figures have just now been released): Eugene McCarthy got the most votes, 750,000, 1 per cent of the total cast, as many votes as all the other minority parties put together. Second came Roger McBride’s Libertarians (183,000); third and fourth the outgrowths of George Wallace’s old third party, Lester Maddox’s American Party (171,000) and Tom Anderson’s American Independent Party (153,000); then, in order, the Socialist Workers (Peter Camejo, Trotskyist, 90,000), the Communists (Gus Hall, 59,000); the People’s Party (Margaret Wright-Benjamin Spock, 49,000); and the bottom fringe, U.S. Labor (40,000), Socialist Labor (9,000), Socialist (6,000). . . . Another final note: Kevin Phillips reports that an unpublished CBS-New York Times poll on election day shows that Carter would have beaten Ronald Reagan also, but by a smaller margin: 51 per cent to 49 per cent as against 51 per cent to 48 per cent in Ford’s case. It also showed that Reagan would have done worse than Ford among Republicans, but better among Democrats and independents.

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Presidential Election

■ Opposition to Ted Sorensen nomination as head of CIA building up in unexpected quarters. The Washington Post opposes it: “. . . It is not clear,” its editorial concludes, “how that [Sorensen’s] background would help prepare him to preside over the U.S. Government’s espionage agency.” . . . George Meany and high command of AFL-CIO also did everything in their power to block the naming of Sorensen in the first place, not because they feared what he might do to the efficiency of the CIA but because Sorensen has joined other radical chic types (Jane Fonda, John Kenneth Galbraith among them) in supporting the candidacy of Edward Sad- lowski to succeed I. W. Abel as head of the powerful steelworkers’ union. Meany and Co. support the candidacy of Lloyd MacBride. . . . That victory of Sen. Howard Baker over Sen. Robert Griffin to succeed Hugh Scott as Minority Leader in the Senate was not a Left-Right fight as might have been supposed. Baker, who is to the right of Griffin, was nominated by liberal Sen. Charles Mathias of Maryland, seconded by liberal Robert Packwood of Oregon, and got the votes of most of the freshmen GOP senators, who apparently agreed with Mathias that what the sorely pressed GOP minority needs is a “symbolic change” from the old leadership. . . . That much-ballyhooed drive by disgruntled Virginia Democrats to get Harry Byrd dumped from the Democratic caucus (Byrd runs as an independent) never materialized. . . . In the House, Rep. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland may be trying to replace Bella Abzug as the most liberal lady of them all. At any rate she’s hired Bella aide Marylyn Marcosson as her administrative assistant.

■ Before closing out the old year, a final word on Election ’76, how those minority parties did (the figures have just now been released): Eugene McCarthy got the most votes, 750,000, 1 per cent of the total cast, as many votes as all the other minority parties put together. Second came Roger McBride’s Libertarians (183,000); third and fourth the outgrowths of George Wallace’s old third party, Lester Maddox’s American Party (171,000) and Tom Anderson’s American Independent Party (153,000); then, in order, the Socialist Workers (Peter Camejo, Trotskyist, 90,000), the Communists (Gus Hall, 59,000); the People’s Party (Margaret Wright-Benjamin Spock, 49,000); and the bottom fringe, U.S. Labor (40,000), Socialist Labor (9,000), Socialist (6,000). . . . Another final note: Kevin Phillips reports that an unpublished CBS-New York Times poll on election day shows that Carter would have beaten Ronald Reagan also, but by a smaller margin: 51 per cent to 49 per cent as against 51 per cent to 48 per cent in Ford’s case. It also showed that Reagan would have done worse than Ford among Republicans, but better among Democrats and independents.