Out Listening to the People

With the future of Richard Nixon and his Administration in doubt, Congressmen and Senators were back home last week practicing the ancient--and essential--political art of listening to their constituents, to their views on Watergate, energy and all the other Problems that must be faced when Congress convenes later this month.

To learn what the politicians were hearing, TIME correspondents followed a representative seven as they sought out their voters: struggling with squawking microphones in community centers, high schools and veterans' halls, stomping through the gathering snow in Vermont and Illinois, walking the black ghetto streets of Baltimore, attending a chic cocktail party in Santa Monica, strolling around a Georgia county courthouse in the warming winter sun.

Energy more deeply concerned the voters than some of the politicians had anticipated. Watergate and the future of President Nixon was a burning issue in some areas, only smoldering in others, and had been largely snuffed out in Georgia.

But underneath many of the issues and much of the discontent lay the corrosive effects of Watergate, a cynicism about the nation's political leaders of whatever stripe, and pervading doubts that the people were being told the truth about the bedeviling problems of the day. Portraits of the circuit riders:

ILLINOIS CONGRESSMAN EDWARD DERWINSKI. Making his way through the 10DEG cold from service club to kaffeeklatsch, the friendly and hefty (6 ft. 3 in., 235 Ibs.) Republican Congressman quickly learned that his constituents were worried, angry and frustrated over one basic issue: the energy crisis.

Motorists asked Derwinski if the price of gasoline would really climb 200 per gal., as the papers were saying. Over coffee, Steel Salesman Tom Erdmann wanted to know: "What are we going to do? I drive 30,000 miles a year." A school official wondered how many buses he would be able to keep running. And everyone was worried about rationing.

Fourteen months ago, Derwinski's blue-and white-collar district just southwest of Chicago went 71% for Nixon. Now the President is an embarrassment, a subject to be avoided. Watergate is also little discussed in places like Hickory Hills and Westchester, but the scandal has left its mark; voters are deeply cynical about what is going on in Washington. "People want to believe the worst about their leaders," said Derwinski. "They're looking for evil. They have chips on their shoulders." Indeed, the first question that Derwinski got at a Kiwanis meeting in Hillside was: "Is the energy crisis for real, or is it a red herring to cover up Watergate?"

Late one afternoon last week Derwinski was phoned by Republican National Committee Chairman George Bush, who wanted to know how the President was doing. Badly, reported Derwinski, and his advice went straight to the energy question. "Rationing must be avoided at all costs," he told Bush. Otherwise, Derwinski warned, the President would never achieve a majority of public support, even if he managed to survive impeachment proceedings.

VERMONT CONGRESSMAN RICHARD MALLARY. It was an astonishing scene. There, at a G.O.P. dinner in Montpelier, the capital of traditionally Republican Vermont, stood Republican Dick Mallary, 44, accepting handshakes and backslaps for criticizing, however cautiously, none other than that man in the White House.

Like many other conservative New

Englanders, Vermonters are losing patience with the President, so much so that Mallary, a prosperous former dairy farmer who hopes to reach the U.S. Sen ate some day, can make a name for him self by speaking his mind about Nixon.

One night last week Mallary showed up in Springfield (pop. 10,000) to field the questions of a group that calls itself Citizens for Honesty in Government.

After comparing Nixon to Herbert Hoo ver, one young man said, "I could never vote for a Republican now." acknowledged Mallary: "I'm sure elections will be run against Richard Nixon for the rest of the century."

Responding to a question about the secret bombing of Cambodia, Mallary said: "The misleading information provided to Congress on that is in my mind the most serious of the proven offenses now being investigated by the Judiciary Committee."

Even so, Mallary did not think that the sum of evidence now justified impeachment. Some of his constituents were not so cautious. "Most people here are ready to impeach; we're not waiting for the evidence," declared Edith Hunter, a reporter for the Weathersfield Weekly, as she expressed the seething frustration of Mallary's listeners.

An indication of how more conservative Vermonters are feeling about the President these days came at that Republican dinner in Montpelier. For laughs--and there were plenty--they auctioned off a 1972 Nixon-Agnew button. It fetched only $3.50.

CALIFORNIA CONGRESSMAN ALPHONZO BELL. Crossing his index fingers like drawn swords, the Republican Congressman says: "My relations with some constituents are getting to be just like this." The issue is the future of the President. Says Bell: "Many regard Nixon as their maximum political hero.

Many others take the direct opposite view. I'm trying to stay in touch with both sides."

It takes some doing. Although mostly Democratic, Bell's district in western Los Angeles County contains a large, articulate and wealthy minority of conservative Republicans. Today Nixon's future is so much the overwhelming issue that it was the subject of every question Bell was asked at a recent meeting --and he was speaking at a synagogue about the crisis in the Middle East.

There is good reason for the local high feeling about the President and Watergate. At one time or another, John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, Jeb Magruder, Donald Segretti and Richard Nixon himself have lived or worked in the area.

Bell, in fact, has been a loyal Nixon supporter and campaigner for years.

Last November he mailed off a piece to the Los Angeles Times saying that he would vote against impeachment. That very day, the White House disclosed the 18-minute gap on one of the tapes. "I felt sandbagged," Bell now admits. "I was wishing I could call back my article."

Bell's mail is now running 50 to 1 against Nixon, but he insists that he would pay little attention to the wishes of his constituents if it ever came to a vote on impeachment, and might go either way. Says he: "If there was ever a vote in which only the issues and the representative's conscience were the determining factors, this vote would be it."

MARYLAND CONGRESSMAN PARREN MITCHELL. "No," said Mitchell, "Watergate isn't the No. 1 issue here.

It's jobs. The first thing people tell me is, 'Get that man out of the White House before things get worse.' " A Democrat and Maryland's first black Congressman, Mitchell was walking through his district, which is 74% black and covers the western half of the city of Baltimore.

Last year a surprising 27% of the voters supported Nixon, but now no one has a kind word to say for the President. A hardware-store owner complained that because of the energy crisis he was having trouble selling electrical goods. A florist was bitter because the Government had canceled a Small Business Administration program he was attending at night to learn how to run his shop.

Summed up Mitchell: "Somehow all the country's troubles seem to rub off on Nixon. Now there's something personal about it. Watergate interests the people only because it is a vehicle for getting him out of office."

IDAHO SENATOR FRANK CHURCH.

As he spent ten days traveling around Idaho, visiting towns like Jerome and Fairfield, Democratic Senator Frank Church discovered that the oil and gasoline shortage -- and the damage it could do to the local economy -- was foremost in the minds of the voters.

But people were more than worried; they were deeply skeptical, openly doubting the integrity of the Government, the oil companies and even the conservationists in coping with the Problem. "What's more," says Church, "the majority of the people I've talked to don't believe Nixon on the magnitude of the crisis. The rank and file of the people really don't believe him any more.

Anything he says is suspect."

In the 1972 election, 64% of Idaho's voters backed Nixon, but, typically, a man at a meeting in Horse Shoe Bend (pop. 500) blurted out: "Senator, can you tell me who voted for Nixon in this state?

I've been asking around, and I can't find anybody who admits to it." The audience roared with laughter.

Idaho's citizens, says Church, are especially angered by two things: "They'll say, 'Nixon has made himself a million aire in office,' and then they'll say, 'But he didn't pay as much taxes as I paid.' And there isn't any way that can be justified to people, or explained or rationalized or excused."

As a liberal Democrat in a conservative state, Church, 49, has depended upon independent voters and maverick Republicans since he was first elected to the Senate in 1956. Now, to his surprise, some lifelong Republicans are beginning to tell him privately that they are thinking of deserting the party. Reports Church: "They say that what Nixon and Agnew have done has changed their minds."

WISCONSIN CONGRESSMAN WILLIAM STEIGER. When he came back home from Washington, Bill Steiger, 35, had expected to find a good deal of sentiment against Nixon in his district, a blend of dairy farms, small business and industry around Oshkosh. But when the liberal Republican began taking his own straw polls at the meetings he attended, he was surprised by the results. True, 40 out of 100 students in his audience at Kiel Senior High School were for impeachment, but virtually none of the businessmen he met wanted to go that far, few were for resignation, and most, in fact, supported the President.

Still, the issue of Watergate was clearly gnawing at some voters. When Steiger asked a meeting of the Sheboygan Kiwanis Club how many wanted the President to disclose more facts, every man raised his hand. They looked around and grinned at their own unanimity. The mood in the room was that if the President would just come clean, he would be forgiven.

Energy and the economy were mainly on the minds of the Wisconsin voters, and they were cynical about the Administration's performance on both counts. Said Steiger: "If this trend continues, and I expect it to, I don't think the impeachment will go through. The people show me that they think there are more important issues we should be worrying about."

GEORGIA SENATOR SAMUEL NUNN.

Strolling around Perry (pop. 8,500), the Houston County seat, Georgia's junior Senator asked his constituents time and again about Watergate and Nixon's future, only to have his questions brushed aside. As Nunn had expected from his regular soundings, Georgians were mainly concerned with energy, inflation and the country's economic future. The political scandal was a poor fourth.

"People tell me they wish I'd worry more about energy and the economy and less about Watergate," says Nunn, 35, a conservative Democrat. "This is not to say they don't deplore Watergate. But people down here want to keep things in perspective. They want the truth, but they don't want to kill the country. They don't want to wake up six months from now to be told, O.K., we've got all the truth about Watergate, but now we've got you a depression."

If the people are crying out for one thing from the Government, Nunn believes, it is leadership. The fact that neither Congress nor the President is currently providing such leadership has not disheartened the voters, he maintains. "Georgians don't have all that much faith in the people holding office," says Nunn. "But they do in the System."

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