Robert Strauss, former chairman of the Democratic Party—the man who put Humpty-Dumpty together after McGovern—says he’s sure Ted Kennedy will bow out of the presidential race in the next sixty days or so…. John White, who succeeded Strauss as head of the DNC, hopes Kennedy will…. Sen. John Glenn, a Kennedy buddy from way back, says the folks back home are getting tired of the Senator’s “coyness.” “They are saying it is getting beyond the joking stage.” . . . Against this is pressure from workaday Democrats who read the polls, and a number of endangered senators—Cranston of California, Ford of Kentucky, Culver of Iowa among them—who feel they’ll do a lot better in ’80 with Kennedy instead of Carter at the head of the ticket. . . . Martin Schramm, the shrewd Washington Post reporter on the White House beat, comments on Kennedy’s ritualistic response (“I expect Carter to be renominated and I expect to support Carter in 1980”) that those “expects” are “tossed into every comment, like raisins into fruitcake, and so they [the draft-Kennedy people] go right ahead with their plans.” Schramm, then Newsday’s Washington bureau chief incidentally, wrote what is probably the best book on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign.) . . . The Washington Post has canvassed over a thousand delegates to the 1976 Democratic convention and finds that 44 per cent of them support Carter for renomination as against 36 per cent for Kennedy and 4 per cent for Jerry Brown…. Among College Democrats—the youth wing of the Democratic Party—Carter’s still the man. Its executive board has endorsed him for re-election.
Interesting: New England Republicans, spurred by Gordon Nelson, the Massachusetts state chairman, will hold a three-day presidential caucus in October to meet with GOP hopefuls, hear their views, ask them questions. A vote will be taken when the caucus opens and at its close on presidential preference. So far John Anderson, George Bush, Phil Crane, John Connally, Robert Dole, and Harold Stassen have agreed to attend the caucus. The organizers think Ronald Reagan and Howard Baker—both of whom have yet to announce—will also be there. . . . Duns Review (June) confirms reports that corporate leaders are tending toward John Connally. It reports “widespread support for the Texan [Connally], just a smattering for California’s Ronald Reagan, and almost none for Jimmy Carter.” . . . For what it’s worth, Carter’s pollster Patrick Caddell has written John Connally off. “If it were legal, Td bet any amount of money against Connally—and give 3 to 1 odds” … In California, State Sen. John Schmitz (who ran for President on the American Party ticket in ’72) is leading the fight against the winner-take-all rule in the GOP primary. Lyn Nofziger of the Reagan for President Committee says it is “very clearly a ploy” by the Connally forces to pick up a few delegates. In a winner-take- all situation, Reagan would get California’s 168 delegates.
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