FOR THS RECORD
Watergate and Nov. 5: Wheelock Whitney, who looked like a very good bet in Minnesota as Republican gubernatorial candidate, has decided not to run, for WRR (Watergate-related reasons). … In Hartford, Republican Governor Thomas Meskill has announced he’s retiring at the end of this term. … In Texas, Republican Hank Grover, who was narrowly beaten by Gov. Dolph Briscoe in one of the most surprising contests in 1972, won’t even enter the GOP gubernatorial primary this year. No money, he says, plus no support from the Republican establishment in Texas. (Briscoe, incidentally, is the odds on favorite to beat liberal Sissie Farenthold in the Democratic May 4 primary.) . . . On the other hand, in South Carolina, Gen. William Westmoreland, who could have had the Democratic nomination for the asking, has announced he’ll run for governor on the Republican line (the last time the GOP elected a governor in S.C. was during Reconstruction). However, Westmoreland says he won’t ask his former C-in-C to campaign for him. . . . Pierre du Pont, Republican congressman from (natch) Delaware, takes National Chairman George Bush to task for making comforting noises about November. “1974,” says du Pont, “is going to make the Goldwater election look like a Republican victory.” . . . AFL-CIO COPE (Committee on Political Education) is holding seven conferences between March 8 and April 10 in New York, Boston, Omaha, Chicago, Albuquerque, Portland, and San Francisco to orchestrate big labor’s drive for what it calls a “veto proof Congress” in November, i.e., a Congress able to override Nixon vetoes. . . . Members of the Impeach Nixon Committee met in Chicago on March 8 to plan three major rallies April 27 in New York, Chicago, and an as yet unselected West Coast city. . . . Meanwhile the March 7 Harris poll found that 75 per cent of the people agreed with the statement: “[President] Nixon has lost so much credibility that it will be hard for him to be accepted as President again.”
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