Lukewarm at the Lake

It was a week of major milestones for Michigan's Governor George Romney. His 36th wedding anniversary fell on Sunday and his 60th birthday the following Saturday--but Romney didn't have time to make much fuss over them. Putting up in a grey-shingled cottage on the Lake Winnipesaukee estate of his friend Mormon Motel Magnate J. Willard Marriott, he spent four busy days testing the political waters in New Hampshire, well ahead of the state's primary on March 12, 1968. He found the waters at best lukewarm.

Meeting some 200 party workers in relays at the cottage, Romney told them, "I'm anxious to have your advice and questions." He did not come right out and mention what he wanted most--their support. The response was not overwhelming, even though Romney gingerly avoided offending anyone in the already bitterly split New Hampshire G.O.P. "I found him solid," said one Yankee, "but not overpowering in terms of personal magnetism."

Conscious of the distance he must travel, Romney last February hired Campaign Consultants Inc., a Boston-based firm operated by Lawyer David Goldberg and others who ran the masterly write-in campaign that gave Henry Cabot Lodge a surprising 12,000-vote victory in New Hampshire's 1964 primary. Goldberg's workers ceaselessly prowled the state for weeks in an effort to make contacts for Romney, and now, says Goldberg, "there's more organization for Romney than most people have two months before the primary." He may need it. Nixon for President Committee Chairman Dr. Gaylord Parkinson has been touring New Hampshire in a rented car, rounding up workers and seeking to widen the former Vice President's early lead. Moreover, there is talk that California's Governor Ronald Reagan, getting less and less bashful on the subject of the presidency, might go into New Hampshire. In his own state, according to Mervin Field's California Poll, Reagan still trails Nixon and Romney, in that order, among preferred G.O.P. presidential candidates. But after interviewing 1,021 California Republicans, Field concluded last week that Reagan's strength has doubled to 15% in the past two months. A move by Reagan into New Hampshire would cut deeply into Nixon's conservative following, but if write-in campaigns for Illinois Senator Charles Percy and New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller were to materialize, Romney's power among moderates might be similarly eroded. Meanwhile, it seems safe to predict that lakeside holidays with old friends, football weekends, foliage tours and church suppers in New Hampshire will be attractive to several out-of-state Republicans.

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