Meanwhile, on the Carter Chase

Ted Kennedy did a lot of table hopping, but hardly any of the 1,800 Senators, Representatives and party faithful at last week's $500-a-plate Democratic congressional dinner at the Washington Hilton paid him much attention. They also ignored Presidential Campaign Dropouts Lloyd Bentsen and Henry Jackson, who sat glumly on the sidelines. But Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter were another matter. Followed by comet-like tails of photographers and TV cameramen, watched by everyone, they roamed the ballroom, shaking hands and chatting with party leaders.

Showing where their hearts lie, the politicians gave a standing ovation to never-say-die Humphrey and only polite applause to Carter, the David turned Goliath. Nonetheless, most of the party pros at the dinner reluctantly but realistically had their minds set on Carter as their almost certain presidential nominee. Nor were those expectations changed when the news came later in the night that Carter had been narrowly upset by Idaho Senator Frank Church in the Nebraska primary. Even with that setback Carter has won twelve of 17 primaries, drawn more than 4 million votes and locked well over 600 delegates (needed to nominate: 1,505). A recent Gallup poll showed rank-and-file Democrats prefer him to Humphrey by 39-30%; the remaining 27% favor other candidates. Democratic projections of where Carter will stand after the last primaries on June 8 give him from 1,000 to 1,300 delegates, v. fewer than 300 for any of his opponents. Says a top official of the Democratic National Committee: "The question keeps coming up, and there's no good answer: 'Who is going to beat him?' "

Pride and Power. If his opponents somehow coalesced to block him, they would make the whole primary campaign look like a charade and probably lose the South, which increasingly views the Georgian as the man who has brought pride and power to the region. Thus, the D.N.C. is already preparing for the July convention and the fall campaign on the premise he will be the candidate. Democratic Chairman Robert Strauss officially must remain neutral, but he also expects to avoid a deadlock or a bloodbath at Madison Square Garden. He told a party luncheon last week: "I made a commitment not to deliver a candidate to this party but to deliver a unified party to the candidate. And that, I assure you, is what I will do in the next 69 days."

Acknowledging that Carter is probably unstoppable, many Democratic leaders decided to back him. A full day of courting Democratic Congressmen and labor officials in Washington won him endorsements from 18 freshmen Representatives. Two days later, after telephone calls from Carter on three successive Sundays, Senator Thomas Eagleton and 33 other party leaders from Missouri pledged their allegiance, assuring Carter of ultimately getting at least 50 of the state's 71 delegates. Carter also won the support of Democratic leaders in Virginia, giving him 40 of the state's 54 delegates. Many other party veterans were on the verge of supporting him. But they held back to wait a bit after Morris Udall ran an unexpectedly close second to him in Connecticut, 33-31%, and Frank Church knocked a few spokes from the wheels of the Carter bandwagon in Nebraska.

Starting out as the underdog, Church outcampaigned Carter in the state by 13 days to one and outspent him by $135,000 to $45,000. Moreover, Udall made a deal with Church not to campaign in Nebraska to keep the anti-Carter vote from splitting. Even so, Church was flabbergasted by the skinny 39-38% win. In his victory speech in Omaha, he effusively thanked the people of Nevada, until Wife Bethine urgently whispered, "Nebraska." Carter played down the importance of the loss ("I can't win 'em all") and stepped up his campaign for this week's more important primaries: against California Governor Jerry Brown, who was generating much hopping-and-jumping excitement in Maryland (53 delegates), and against Udall in Michigan (133). Ahead lie a dozen more primaries, with 775 delegates at stake. The situation last week in the most important of the contests, which are clustered on two dates:

May 25. Carter seems headed toward easy victories in Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky (total: 118 delegates). Says Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane of Carter: "He's maturing like good Kentucky bourbon." He probably will lose most of Idaho's 16 delegates to Native Son Church and most of Nevada's eleven to Neighbor Brown. In Oregon, which has 34 delegates, Carter was narrowly ahead, but Church's strength was growing; he has spent eleven days so far this year in his next-door state, which Carter--spread thin--has not visited since 1975. The race gained another candidate last week when Brown began a write-in campaign.

June 8. Carter should run strongly in New Jersey (with 108 delegates) and Ohio (152). In Ohio, his chief opposition comes from delegate slates pledged to several favorite sons and a favorite daughter. In New Jersey, uncommitted delegates, their hearts with Humphrey, are still trying to mount an effective challenge. Humphrey encouraged them in three appearances in the Atlantic City area last week, insisting that "primaries do not always reflect what is happening in the party." Brown will also campaign for New Jersey's uncommitteds.

Nuclear Program. But Brown's main effort will be back home in California (280 delegates), where a Field poll last week showed him ahead of Carter by 45-22%. Still, even if Carter places second as expected, top California Democrats expect that under the state's proportional representation rules, he will wind up with at least 100 delegates -- enough to give his drive another push.

Carter took time out last week to explain his previous proposal that the U.S. work for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Before an enthusiastic audience at a convention on nuclear energy at the United Nations, he called on the U.S. and the Soviet Union to go beyond the current SALT talks and negotiate a step-by-step decrease in their nuclear arsenals. Said he: "The longer effective arms reduction is postponed, the more likely it is that other nations will be encouraged to develop their own nuclear capability." As part of his proposed "alliance for survival," he also wants the U.S. and Russia to ban "all nuclear explosions for a period of five years, whether they be weapons tests or so-called 'peaceful' nuclear explosions, and encourage all other countries to join." Carter further urged a voluntary moratorium by all nations on the purchase and sale of plants that enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear reactor fuel, both of which can be used to produce atomic weapons. As a substitute, he suggested the creation of "centralized, multinational enrichment facilities" to provide the fuel for all nations' nuclear reactors. In this way, he said, the nations of the world can limit the spread of nuclear weapons and thus lessen the danger of a nuclear war.

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