The Kiss of Death

In line with their policy of offering "constructive alternatives" to Democratic legislation, House Republicans last week introduced an attractive, carefully reasoned substitute for the Administration-backed voting rights bill that has already passed the Senate. Whereupon segregationist Southern Democrats, seeking any way to destroy the Administration bill, embraced the G.O.P. alternative and, as it turned out, kissed it to death.

A Nationwide Bill. The Republican proposal was co-sponsored by Minority Leader Jerry Ford of Michigan and Ohio's William McCulloch, who played a key role in getting Lyndon Johnson's 1964 civil rights bill through the House. Its chief feature was a provision allowing federal examiners to go into any county or parish in any state in the nation on receipt of 25 or more complaints of instances of voter discrimination, to register those who wanted to vote, but to suspend literacy tests only if applicants had proof of a sixth-grade education.

The bill, said McCulloch, is "of uniform nationwide application," which the Administration bill patently is not. Under the Administration bill, an automatic "triggering" provision authorizes federal examiners to suspend literacy tests and begin registering Negroes in any county or state where less than 50% of the voting-age population was registered to vote or actually voted last November. The device will catch the states of Alabama Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia as well as 34 North Carolina counties. Thanks to such flukes as bad weather on election day, it will also net the entire state of Alaska, Apache County, Ariz., Elmore County, Idaho and Aroostook County, Me.

The trouble with the triggering formula is that it was admittedly contrived to catch only a few recalcitrant Southern states, made no room for future discrimination that might crop up elsewhere. As Georgia Republican Howard Callaway said in spoofing the formula: "Let us select all states which have an average altitude of 100 to 900 ft., an average yearly temperature of 68DEG to 77DEG at 7 a.m., average humidity of 80% to 87%, and a coastline of 50 to 400 miles. With this formula we en compass all the Southern states attacked by H.R. 6400 [the Administration bill], but have the added advantage of including all of North Carolina and excluding Alaska."

Suspicious Nature. With their substitute, Republican leaders hoped to attract nearly all of the 141 House G.O.P. members, plus enough Northern, Border State and Southern Democrats for the 218 votes needed to upset the Administration's bill. Then came the kiss. The G.O.P. substitute, said Rules Committee Chairman Howard Smith of Virginia, "lacks the vengeance and the dripping venom that falls from every paragraph and every sentence of the committee bill." Said Virginia's William Tuck, a Governor from 1946-1950: "The plain, unvarnished truth is that, if you vote against the McCulloch substitute, you are voting to foist upon your constituents this unconstitutional monstrosity."

While the Republicans blushed, California Democrat James Gorman said: "I must confess that when the venerable gentleman from Virginia espouses a voting rights bill, my overly suspicious nature raises questions." House Speaker John W. McCormack mused that the Southerners had put the Republicans "in a very untenable position."

In the vote on the G.O.P. substitute, a dozen Republicans broke ranks to vote against it, helped kill it 215 to 166. When the Administration bill itself came to a vote, 22 Southern Democrats and 112 Republicans lined up behind it, giving it an overwhelming 333 to 85 victory.

"I Contradict Myself." Next step for the bill is a Senate-House conference, where several discrepancies must be ironed out. In the final moments of debate, the House knocked out two provisions already in the Senate bill. One would have permitted individual counties in states affected by the automatic trigger to free themselves of federal scrutiny by proving that more than 50% of their voting-age Negroes were registered. Another would have permitted some 330,000 Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans in New York to vote, even though they did not know English, by showing proof of a sixth-grade education in a school operated under the U.S. flag.

The thorniest item, however, is one that is not in the Senate bill--a House-approved ban of the poll tax for state and local elections in Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia and Texas. Although such a ban was strongly urged by Teddy and Bobby Kennedy, the Senate rejected it. Under pressure from House liberals, Brooklyn Democrat Emanuel Celler, floor manager for the bill, supported the ban, though it caused him some embarrassment. Back in 1961, Celler opposed eliminating the poll tax by statute, proposed doing so by constitutional amendment instead. Last week Louisiana Democrat Joe D. Waggonner Jr. suggested that Celler was being inconsistent.

"Well and good -- I contradict myself," replied Manny Celler, still quick in the head at 77. "I remember what Walt Whitman said in the Song of Myself." Quoted Manny:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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