Percy's Pace

From the moment last July when Chicago Businessman Charles Harting Percy, 44, announced that he would try for the Illinois Republican gubernatorial nomination, he ran as if he were pursued by a pack of bright young men and an angry board of directors. Years of high-speed climbing in corporate life had conditioned him well. At 23 he was a board member of Chicago's camera-making Bell & Howell Co., at 29 he was president, at 41 board chairman. As it turned out, Chuck Percy's pace was well suited to politics too. Last week he won the nomination for Governor going away.

At the outset, Percy rated as a distinct underdog to Secretary of State Charles Carpentier, 67, an old-guard G.O.P. workhorse with powerful party backing. Applying a hard sell to his hard run, Percy labeled himself a "dynamic conservative," pasted together an organization from young and energetic Republicans who had been disenchanted with their party after its poor showing in the 1960 elections. He picked up strong financial support from business friends, set out to cover the state in a bus dubbed the "Chuckwagon" that he filled with his wife, five kids and an eight-piece band. He plugged economic development as Illinois' most pressing need, argued that he, as a businessman, could best find ways to create 800,000 new jobs needed in the state.

"Mercy, Mr. Percy." By January, he was gaining on Carpentier -- but not much. Then Carpentier had a heart at tack, pulled out of the primary, and died a couple of months later. Percy's new opponent was State Treasurer Wil liam Scott, 37, who charged into the campaign avowing his all-out dedication to conservatism and his total support of Barry Goldwater for President. Percy decided to take a chance. Although Illinois was considered a bastion of Barryland, he hedged his commitments to Goldwater. Said Percy: "I have made it clear all along that I am running on state issues. I will cast my ballot for that candidate that has a majority of the elected delegates."

The Chicago Tribune backed Scott, gave Page One play to a Scott charge that Percy was tied in with Chicago Republicans who were controlled by the crime syndicate. A right-wing organization issued a scurrilous pamphlet titled, "Mercy, Mr. Percy," implying that Percy was soft on Communism. Percy retaliated with a strong position paper that served to rebut the charge.

Fighting City Hall. On election night, Scott conceded 31 hours after the polls closed, and Percy wound up with 615,686 votes to Scott's 383,462. In November, Percy will face Illinois' ineffectual Governor Otto Kerner, a cog in Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's Democratic machinery. Said Percy: "We'll be running against the White House, the Governor's mansion and city hall."/- But he felt a good deal of his own strength would come from his freedom to run for Governor as his own man. Said confident Chuck Percy after last week's win: "We haven't a single commitment of any kind."

/-Illinois Democrats got a piece of campaign ammunition the day after the election, when it was announced that former Republican Governor William Stratton, in office from 1953 to 1961, had been indicted the week before by a federal grand jury on charges that he had evaded payment of $46,676 in U.S. income taxes during his last four years as Governor. The indictment had been kept secret for a few days so it would not influence the primary campaign.

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