Carter's Plan to Scoop It Up

As the long primary season moved into its final week, TIME National Political Correspondent Robert Ajemian learned that Washington Senator Henry Jackson is ready to support Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. Jackson had won 249 delegates in the primaries through last week, and Carter will capture a sizable chunk of them. The Senator's move will lift Carter closer to the winning figure of 1,505 delegates, and Jackson hopes by his action to help Carter sew up the nomination.

Jackson's decision is based on his judgment that Carter would make a stronger Democratic nominee and President than Senator Hubert Humphrey. Only a few months ago Jackson had hard feelings about Carter, but after several personal talks with the Georgian, his attitude has softened. In addition to accepting the inevitability of Carter's nomination, Jackson has come to respect his skills. At the same time, he remains bitter that Humphrey kept insinuating himself into the primaries.

Jackson's decision was bound to be well received in Carter's Atlanta headquarters, where his staff has been busily at work rounding up delegates. Throughout last week Ajemian sat in on strategy sessions there and observed a young, disciplined group casting its political lines across the country. His report:

"What's doing?" the man repeated his caller's question into the phone. "Your husband is going to be President, that's what's doing." It was well past midnight in the empty Jimmy Carter headquarters in Atlanta, and Hamilton Jordan, the campaign director, was talking to Rosalynn Carter, the candidate's wife. She was sitting alone in a motel room in Dayton, concerned about her husband's recent primary defeats. So was Jordan, who was dead tired but sounding cheerful.

Slumped down in his high-backed swivel chair, his brown boots propped on his typewriter, Jordan, 31, looked like a young man--with his pink face and shiny black hair--speaking to a late date. As he talked, his fingers riffled through a sheaf of unanswered telephone slips, and every so often he rolled one up and tossed it across the room at a nearby wastebasket.

"Jimmy's got an image problem, Rosalynn," Jordan said gently. "We used to be the new face. Now we're the old face, the Establishment. Jimmy's got to get off this tactical stuff, all this talk about how many delegates he's got. He sounds too political.

"But Rosalynn," Jordan went on, his voice now more reassuring," these stop-Carter people have no place to go; they've got no candidate. And no muscle, no big names, no Senators or Governors. Don't worry. We've got delegates all over the place; this thing is all set now. I'd say it's a hundred to one."

When he hung up, Jordan, in the night stillness of the office, began to reminisce about 1968. He had just returned from Viet Nam where he served as a civilian volunteer in refugee relocation. He came home to Albany, Ga., and took a job in a local bank. Within three months he was bored and began driving over to Plains, 40 miles away, to visit with Carter. A political science student at the University of Georgia, Jordan had worked as youth coordinator in Carter's losing 1966 gubernatorial campaign. The two of them started driving around the state: the toothy politician with huge ambitions and the eager 22-year-old helper who was more easygoing but had the competitive zeal of his mentor. They drove the Georgia roads to towns like Rome and Moultrie talking to voters. Jordan jotted down all the names and did the necessary follow-up work.

When Carter won the governorship in 1970, he made Jordan his executive secretary, but within two years the Carter sights were already higher. He asked Jordan to write him a memorandum on what it would involve to become President. The young aide delivered this extraordinary document to Carter only a few days after the 1972 presidential election. It was 70 pages long and had chapter titles like "Establishing a National Image," "The Years in Between," "George Wallace," "Edward Kennedy." One of Jordan's suggestions was that Carter plant a man on the Democratic National Committee and, when the moment came two years later, Carter picked Jordan for the job. The chunky fellow who wore denim jackets and no neckties went to Washington for a year where he collected and stored political information for future use. Near the end of Carter's term in 1974 Jordan produced another memo. This time the new chapter titles assumed a big success: "The Announcement," "Relationship with Robert Strauss and the National Committee," "The Carter Presidency."

Now, as the final week of primaries began, with the four-year mission almost complete, resistance to Carter was suddenly becoming stiffer and more visible. Carter had lost five of the last nine primaries. But somehow his forces had to keep getting delegates. And the man at the center of the delegate roundup, as he had been at the center of other Carter struggles, was Jordan. The last three big primaries--California, Ohio, New Jersey--were upon them. The possibilities seemed clear. If Carter won any of the three, the stop-Carter movement almost surely would collapse. But if he lost all three, it could mean a tough fight to pressure pockets of delegates to join a candidacy that was drifting.

The day following his talk with Rosalynn Carter, Jordan called his staff together for a meeting. The group around the table looked awfully young, but they were tossing around big names: Mayor Abe Beame was aboard, one said, and that would help with the Jewish voters, and Chicago's Dick Daley was issuing compliments. Staffer Rick Hutchinson, who at 24 looks like one of the painters of Tom Sawyer's fence, spoke of Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton being the key to that state's uncommitted bloc and the chances he would deliver its nine delegates. There was talk about Alaska's Mike Gravel endorsing, and the need to work on Hawaii Senator Dan Inouye. Perhaps Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge, a close friend of Inouye, would help there, one of the young men suggested. North Carolina Senator Bob Morgan was already working on the Wallace delegates in his state.

Then Jordan talked of the three big targets: Scoop Jackson's 249 delegates, Daley's 88, and George Wallace's 200. If Carter has 1,200 delegates or more after the last primaries, any of these three Democratic leaders could certainly help clinch the nomination for him. Predicted Jordan: "We'll find someone out there who wants to be a hero." Even before Scoop's decision, the Carter group believed the Jackson delegates might well wind up with them. Carter, at the same time, has been calling Daley every ten days or so. And it was expected that the Wallace bloc, once released, would stick with a Southerner.

Southern Power. The heart of the Carter strength, of course, is the Southern delegates. Of the 3,008 who will convene, about 750 are from the South, and Carter already has 500 of them. They represent almost half his present total and have put him in the position to bargain for the rest he needs. But the true power of the South is revealed in still another Jordan memo to Carter, written only last week. It points out his probable strength in the electoral college: well over half the required 270 votes could come from the South. A new field survey Jordan has just ordered reinforces the conviction about Carter's overwhelming regional strength. In Tennessee, the poll shows Carter defeating Ford 60% to 32%, and Reagan 57% to 35%.

The strategy conference over, Jordan was back in his small cluttered office and his secretary, Caroline Wellons, had a whole new batch of calls for him. Staff people kept sticking their heads in the closed door. "Shall we send Daddy King to L. A.?" someone asked about the elderly minister who has been so active in Carter's campaign for the black vote. A few minutes later another person wondered whether it was O.K. for Cyrus Vance, former Secretary of the Army, to go to a New Jersey fund raiser. A bulletin from the field reported that Senator Abraham Ribicoff might be ready to endorse Carter, and Jordan, welcoming it with some relief, ordered that if that happened a letter about it should be sent to all the Jewish delegates.

On the phone, Jordan explained to some nervous field people why Carter seemed so snappish lately. "This thing about being fuzzy on the issues is really getting to him," he told one man, "and it shows." Someone popped in to say he had some information about Daley, and asked who on the staff was supposed to talk to the Chicago Mayor. Jordan said abruptly: "Jimmy talks to Daley, nobody else." The man quickly retreated.

The possibility of a last-minute Ted Kennedy move keeps coming up, though Jordan appeared entirely unworried. At one point, Political Director Landon Butler came into Jordan's office with a grim look on his face, holding a copy of the afternoon Atlanta newspaper. With some agitation he reported: "Jimmy says here that Ted Kennedy can kiss his ass." Jordan grinned, but at the same time reached for the newspaper with a trace of concern. Then he looked up, laughing in relief. "Landon, you've got this backwards," he said. "Jimmy says he's not going to kiss Ted Kennedy's ass to get the nomination."

After a day's trip to Ohio to check in with the boss, Jordan lumbered back into the Atlanta office, throwing out gags, cutting up with the staff. But when he turned serious, so did they--instantly. Within minutes, he was back on the phone, calling one of his friends in Washington in the liberal labor coalition, which has been supportive of Carter. He had heard that one of their staff had attended a stop-Carter meeting, and Jordan wanted to show his annoyance. "Hey, good buddy," he opened with the familiar greeting, and then he made his point. "I assume you guys don't know about this man," he said, "but I just want you to know that I do."

The Jordan net was out everywhere. A call came from the top aide of a Governor who controls about 20 delegates. The aide was shopping for favors, and Jordan went along. "I don't know what your boss's ambitions are," he said, "but we need his help now, not later."

By late Friday night, the candidate himself was back in Plains, and on Saturday morning he called in to talk to Jordan. He told his campaign manager he had been over to Brother Bill's gas station eating some mullet. Yes, he would cut a day off his weekend, as Jordan and Rosalynn Carter had suggested, even though he did not want to. "I figured that was one fight you weren't going to win," Jordan needled the candidate.

To the Hilt. As Jordan was talking, one of Carter's longtime friends, a businessman named Philip Alston, broke into the room. He was distraught. "Doesn't this party realize," he said loudly, "that the whole South will be furious with the Democrats if they take this nomination away from Jimmy? The whole damn South." Jordan tried to calm Alston down, and when he left, Jordan remarked: "Phil is dead right about that one. If they try to take this away from Jimmy, we're ready to use the Southern argument to the hilt. We've got the votes, and if the South is rejected, it will tear up this party."

There was an edge in his voice. The young man who had written the prophetic memo for Carter, who was now writing another about the fall campaign and the transition to the White House, who had predicted that a massive regional change in American politics was at hand, abruptly looked different. He looked less the likable prodigy and more like a tough and seasoned political operator.

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