Harris: Radicalism in a Camper

This is the fifth in a series examining the candidates for the presidency.

The prairie. The Dust Bowl. The Tennessee Valley. Huey Long. Bob LaFollette. Woody Guthrie. All the images of an earthy, deep-rooted populism are evoked in Fred Harris' pungent, often spellbinding speeches. The best orator among the declared candidates, Harris, 45, is running a "people's campaign" against "privilege." The Oklahoman logged 6,300 miles on a cross-country trek in a 24-foot camper last summer, cooking over an open fire, speaking to any small group that would listen (and often the groups were very small indeed). He hopes to ride this camper-style politics to the White House.

George McGovern ran on a more or less populist platform in 1972 and was soundly trounced. Burned once, Democrats are wary of playing with this kind of political fire again. Among many liberals, Harris is the sentimental favorite. He speaks their language forcefully and eloquently. But after they cheer and chortle over his speeches, they have sober second thoughts. They want a winner in 1976, and Harris does not look like one.

No one is more aware of this dilemma than the candidate. He proclaims his ability to draw conservative blue collar votes as well as liberal ones, though this is yet to be tested. "He's George Wallace without racism," says Frosty Troy, editor of the weekly Oklahoma Observer. With his paunch and pendulous second chin, his hair parted down the middle, gravy stains on his tie, a beer bottle or a container of coffee in one hand and a badly chewed but unlighted cigar in the other, Harris can hardly be mistaken for a limousine liberal. "The difference between me and McGovern," he told TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud, "is that I never tell people that they ought to do something because it's morally right. I show how it's in their own self-interest. My dad used to listen to McGovern and then say, 'Well, it sounds fine, but when's he gonna start talking to me?' Dad was right, and that's what I try to do--talk a language that ordinary people can understand."

Harris is, if anything, more radical than McGovern. If Harris had his way, the U.S. would be much altered, perhaps beyond recognition. Before almost any audience he addresses, Harris says: "The fundamental problem is that too few people have all the money and power, and everybody else has very little of either--and that is not what Thomas Jefferson had in mind." Inveighing against "bigness" in all forms, Harris says he wants to chop down big Government and big business, but he is more reticent about big labor, since he needs its support. He would break up the automobile, oil and steel industries, corporate farming operations and one-bank holding companies. "These companies say they want free enterprise," warns Harris. "Well, I would give them a very, very strong dose of it."

Convinced that some federal regulatory agencies have become champions of monopoly, Harris wants to abolish many of them. Where it proved necessary, he would support outright government ownership of private industry. He would provide more steeply graduated individual and corporate income taxes to get "the rich off welfare" and "the big hogs out of the trough."

Leftward Drift. Many of the Democratic candidates are hazy on foreign affairs, and Harris is no exception. His proposals amount to a collection of homilies. He sweepingly condemns most U.S. policy initiatives since World War II. "Americans shouldn't impose themselves on the world," he observes. "Sometimes it seems we are willing to prop up any two-bit dictator who can afford the price of a pair of sunglasses." And he adds, using a favorite phrase: "We ought not to do that." He urges massive cuts in defense spending and he wants to restrict the CIA to intelligence gathering.

A genuine Okie, Harris was born in one of the nation's most impoverished areas in the Great Depression. His father, a land-poor, dirt-poor migrant farmer, went as far north as Canada to harvest crops. From the age of five, Harris accompanied him. To Harris, a bank was "more than a place to deposit and borrow money; it was almost a kind of religious institution." His father "was a different man, it seemed to me, when he went to the bank. He took his hat off the minute he walked through the door." Whenever Harris and his chums spotted a shooting star, they yelled "Money!" three times in the hope of some day acquiring some.

While at the University of Oklahoma, Harris married LaDonna Crawford, who is half Comanche, half Irish; she is now director of Americans for Indian Opportunity. The couple have three children. Harris earned his law degree from the university and briefly went into private practice. At 25, he was elected to the state senate, and in 1964, at 33, he ran for the U.S. Senate. Oklahoma Senator Robert S. Kerr had died suddenly, and Harris received the support of Kerr's powerful oil family. He narrowly defeated Republican Bud Wilkinson, the former Oklahoma University football coach. In 1966 Harris won a full Senate term.

At first Harris appeared to be a moderate New Deal liberal who was loyal to his home state's ruling interests, including what he now refers to as "the oil-and-gas crowd." But gradually he moved left, partly under the influence of the Kennedy family and then as a member of the Kerner commission on civil disorders. He was a principal author, along with New York Mayor John Lindsay, of the report's conclusion that America was heading toward two nations--one black, one white. Hoping to be on the ticket with Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Harris was given the consolation prize of Democratic National Committee chairman. He played a key role in making the procedural changes that brought more women, youths and minorities into the nominating process.

As Harris' Senate term was drawing to a close in 1971, it was apparent that Oklahomans were not happy with his leftward drift; he seemed headed for probable defeat. So rather than run for the Senate again, he astonished his constituents by declaring for the presidency. One stalwart financial backer, New York Investment Banker Herbert Allen, kept his campaign alive for six weeks. When it seemed hopeless, Harris withdrew.

Trying again, Harris has begun to move out of the camper phase of his campaign. As one among all too many relative unknowns, he needs to reach more places faster and to be on radio and television. But he is still cramped by lack of money. Cut off from large donations by the campaign finance law, he is far behind many of his rivals in raising funds from small contributors. His latest financial report in September showed a $12,000 deficit, though Harris claims he has raised $400,000 and is now $2,000 in the black. Out of 45 people working full time on his campaign in Washington, only seven are paid.

Harris must make a substantial showing in the early primaries or he will probably be finished. In the preprimary skirmishes, the results have been ambiguous. At the convention of the liberal New Democratic Coalition in Manhattan this month, he came in second and prevented Front Runner Senator Birch Bayh from winning the endorsement. In a caucus held by Massachusetts' Citizens for Participation in Political Action, a liberal group, he came in first. But he won only 38.7% of the vote after lobbying members for almost a year.

Harris insists that he is not worried. "All I have to do is show some strength and the thing takes off," he says. So far, he has not gained much altitude.

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