■ John Connally hasn’t become a Republican, Mills Godwin of Virginia may not accept a Republican endorsement in his race for governor and now hotshot Ken Rietz, appointed with much fanfare March 1 to head the GOP’s “New Majority” congressional campaign in ’74, has resigned. He handed his resignation personally to National Chairman George Bush April 24, said he had gotten an offer from private industry he “couldn’t turn down.” . . . Rietz’s defection could be body blow to presidential ambitions of Sen. Bill Brock of Tenn. Rietz managed Brock’s successful 1970 campaign against Sen. Albert Gore; his appointment had been regarded by party regulars as boost for Brock. . . . George Gorton, a former Rietz aide in the Re- Elect Committee (CREEP), quietly eased out of his job at the Interior Department (quietly, that is, until the Washington Post found out about it). . . . Washington rumor mill, in overdrive these days, indicates the stars of White House aides Leonard Garment and Patrick Buchanan are in the ascendant as Bob Haldeman’s star wanes, causing columnist Harriet Van Horne a serious case of the vapors (not only is Buchanan a hard-line conservative, he is also, says Van Horne, the man who ghosted Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” speech)… . Around the country, Republican regulars totting up the cost of Watergate (when was it last called a “caper,” incidentally?) to themselves, believe funds are going to be that much harder to raise for next year’s congressional campaign, given the use to which CREEP put some of its funds last fall. . . . Not unexpectedly, Ralph Nader got his headline with a demand that Nixon resign, but in Kenya, the Nairobi Daily Nation saw it all as a plus for America. “Americans have something to be proud of,” said the Nation, “they have a society in which scandals involving their
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