■ Wheelings and dealings on the third-party front. John Anderson has hired David Garth to get a reading on his prospects as a third-party or independent candidate. . . . Tom Matthews and Robert Craver, fundraisers and direct-mail men for Sens. Kennedy, Culver, and Packwood, Common Cause and ACLU, have put their heads together on Anderson fundraisers. . . . Evans and Novak think it’s 2 to 1 that Anderson will go Third. . . . Former Wisconsin Gov. Patrick Lucey, who threw up his job as Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to Mexico to work on the Kennedy campaign, says if Kennedy loses he’ll support Anderson. . . . Meanwhile, Anderson retired to California to think it over. He will not go third-party, he says, if that will help Ronald Reagan. Which means? That good party-man Anderson would prefer to see a Democrat—any Democrat—in the White House. . . . Some warning signals are up. Evans and Novak are predicting that if Kennedy “becomes truly visible” you can “look for the Left to abandon Anderson.” . . . And Washington Post writer Mary Meehan, in an open letter to Anderson, warns: “You may be a hero to the liberals just now, but you cannot count on them for the long haul. When the going gets tough, the tough are supposed to get going; but the liberals generally advance to the rear [back into the arms of the Democratic Party].”
■ Reagan, meanwhile, is looking good. He topped Carter for the first time, by 45 to 44, in the March 30 Yankelovich poll. . . . Mayor Ed Koch said, that same week, that right now Ronald Reagan would win in New York City—liberal New York. . . . The New Republic’s Morton Kondrake has warned its liberal readers that if Reagan is nominated he has a “good chance of being elected in spite of what Gerald Ford and John Anderson think.” . . . Gallup finds Reagan the choice of 61 per cent of Republicans, as against 15 per cent for Bush, 12 for Anderson. . . . Moderate Gov. Jim Thompson of Illinois—no Reagan fan—thinks that a) Reagan will get the nomination, b) he should choose Howard Baker as running-mate, but even so, c) he will not yet endorse Reagan. . . . Over in England, at Ladbroke’s, Reagan has become the odds-on favorite to win the election. The odds: Reagan 8 to 11 (you bet 11 to get 8); Carter, even; Kennedy 20 to 1; Bush 33 to 1; and bringing up the rear, at 50 to 1, John Anderson.
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