The Last Calls

By the time he got to San Francisco, Bill Scranton's machine was in full gear. In 48 rooms on three floors of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, scores of eager workers performed their appointed tasks--from drafting speeches to ordering cookie and fruit between-meals snacks for the candidate. A complex communications network had been in stalled--including a 15-circuit phone switchboard, and a special "hot line" system linking hotel headquarters to the Cow Palace convention floor and to two communications trailers parked outside. Code words were used in tele phone conversations to confuse possible eavesdroppers, and the whole headquarters area had been combed for electronic bugs that Goldwater gumshoes might have concealed.

Guards stood outside the locked door of Room 1202--"The Delegate Control Center"--where trusted Scranton aides worked diligently by phone to shake out new delegate strength. At their disposal were three separate and expertly cross-referenced filing systems, including boxes of index cards, fat black notebooks and large manila envelopes, all packed with vital information on each of 1,308 delegates, 1,308 alternates, and dozens of key politicians. Inherited from Nelson Rockefeller, the files contained names, ages, financial background, marital status, business contacts, clubs, fraternities, presidential preference, and the names of friends or associates who might put pro-Scranton pressure on the delegates. So precious were these files that Scranton's men had divided them into six sec tions for the trip from Harrisburg to San Francisco, packed a guard along with each segment on a different train or plane so no single railroad wreck or air crash could destroy the whole package.

All told, Scranton's San Francisco operation would cost some $200,000. But all the money and effort somehow seemed wasted. In the brief four weeks of his campaign, Scranton had covered some 20,000 miles, visited 25 states--including a second trip last week to Illinois, where he boarded a five-car Illinois Central Railroad train for an old-fashioned whistle-stop tour through cornfield country. But he made no notable impact, and in Springfield, Mayor Nelson Howarth sadly summed up the situation when he said to the Governor:

"Why didn't you come here in April, when the prevailing wind was out of the East, instead of July when a hot wind is blowing from the Southwest?"

And so, despite all his elaborate machinery, at week's end Bill Scranton was reduced to performing the most disheartening chore that can come to any candidate: making personal phone calls to delegates and pleading for help that he must have known would not be forthcoming.

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