Bentsen Out, Church In

In the muddled Democratic marathon, no candidate gained much ground as a result of last week's Oklahoma caucuses. At week's end, according to an unofficial tally, Jimmy Carter had 18.5% of the vote, followed by Fred Harris with 16.5%, Lloyd Bentsen with 12.5% and George Wallace with 10.5%; another 41% of the votes were uncommitted. Afterward, Texas Senator Bentsen looked hard at his bleak third place, which followed an even worse fourth place in Mississippi last month, and sensibly decided to pull out of the presidential race.

Particularly in Oklahoma, Bentsen had good organization, the support of some of the state's best-known politicians and plenty of money (nationwide he had spent more than $2.4 million). But his campaigning lacked force and personality, and his banal statements on the issues apparently persuaded many Oklahoma voters that he was a weak candidate. Bentsen will stay in the May 1 Texas primary as a favorite-son candidate, chiefly to demonstrate his home-state strength as a vote getter and enhance his prospects for re-election this year to the Senate. Thus, even before the first primary, the Democrats have lost two of their eleven declared candidates: Bentsen and North Carolina's Terry Sanford, who quit last month.

But the party will pick up another candidate: Idaho's Frank Church, 51, who has won splashy headlines as chairman of the Senate committee investigating U.S. intelligence agencies. He plans to announce in early March. Last week his campaign committee sent flyers to 35,000 Democrats in an attempt to stop Hubert Humphrey, the undeclared possible compromise candidate. Said the message in part: "Democrats must not turn backward . . . The American people won't accept a warmed-over New Deal or a rerun of the Great Society."

Liberal Church plans to push an independent position that aides call "Jerry Brownism." It calls for decentralization of power and cutting out some "Mickey Mouse" federal programs. An adviser said that Church will follow "a late strategy--we watch the others beat the hell out of each other and spend themselves to death." Then Church will offer himself as an unbruised new face in the late primaries in Idaho, Oregon, Rhode Island, Montana and California.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.