Will McCarthy Matter?

When Eugene McCarthy joined forces with Lester Maddox last week in an attempt to gain inclusion in the crucial TV debates between President Ford and Jimmy Carter, his action was not entirely unexpected. McCarthy, 60, has, since his 1968 campaign, made the quixotic gesture his hallmark. Indeed, his challenge over the debates was an outgrowth of his most recent attempt to reach the White House--via an unlikely independent ticket.

To many observers, that foray is the most peculiar yet for the former Minnesota Democratic Senator with the poet's mane of white hair and the cool wit. McCarthy's Washington headquarters currently has all of five staffers. National Campaign Director Jerry Eller, a former administrative assistant to McCarthy, allows as how his best workers in California are "Gary and Michelle ... um ... I don't know their last names. We don't use last names much around here ... and then we have, um, Mark and Randy in ... uh ... other states." Even after two earlier runs for the presidency, McCarthy can walk unrecognized down streets in major cities and draws far fewer students at universities than he once did.

McCarthy insists that his candidacy "is neither a protest movement nor an educational campaign. It is a serious effort to win the presidency." He argues that he has deep appeal to the one-third of the electorate who call themselves "independent," to disgruntled liberals and to the "roughly 60% of the people who didn't vote in the 1974 election." He calls Jimmy Carter "the incarnation of compromise," and to warnings that he might be ruining the Georgian's chances, he responds, "I don't see why the Democrats have to win; they don't stand for anything anyway." Speculating further on his role as a possible spoiler, he asserts, "The issues we are raising are so important that this is a risk we will have to take."

What issues? Last week he described some to TIME Correspondent David Wood: creating jobs for the unemployed by shortening the work week or work year; controlling inflation by "conditional wage-price controls and by ending wasteful, inflationary spending in the automobile industry and in military and space programs"; regulating the weight and speed of cars to reduce fuel consumption. He insists that he has not stirred much attention because national press coverage has been niggardly. Says he: "We deserve at least as much attention as Walter Cronkite gave to the boy he thought for two days had been raised by apes."

So far, McCarthy's campaign has been mostly a struggle merely to get on the ballot in various states. About a dozen top-flight activists have collected nearly 500,000 signatures and have all but qualified McCarthy on 25 state ballots. McCarthy's lawyers expect to win challenges to election laws in seven states that bar independent presidential candidacies. They have already won legal battles in five other states that have prohibition statutes. By election time, McCarthy hopes to be on between 42 and 47 state ballots (the most troublesome are Arkansas, Georgia and North Carolina).

McCarthy's strategy is to focus on some 20 states--eight in the Northeast, seven in the Midwest and five in the West. His support will draw partly from Carter's liberal electorate and could hurt the Democratic nominee in a close election. A nationwide Gallup poll, taken from Aug. 6 to Aug. 9, gave McCarthy 6% of the vote. That figure could be larger in some crucial Northern states--enough to tilt them out of the Democratic column. In California, a Mervin Field poll, taken between July 24 and Aug. 3, gave McCarthy 7% of the vote.

More than a few liberals, remembering the lesson of 1968, are shunning McCarthy. Says Jim Wall, Carter's Illinois campaign chief and an ex-McGovernite: "Most of our people recognize that a McCarthy vote is a Ford vote, and they're not going to do that." Some Republicans, however, fear that McCarthy might nab their independent votes. Says Tom Kean, the New Jersey Republican Assembly minority leader and the head of Ford's campaign in the state: "He could take votes away from both sides."

Still, the Americans for Democratic Action has found McCarthy's candidacy sufficiently worrisome to issue a statement noting that "it would be irresponsible indeed for liberals to cast their votes for McCarthy and thus make possible the election of Ford and Dole." Like the cinematic Road Runner, McCarthy is a factor in the race--at least as far as creating a lot of mischief along the way.

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