D-Day for Two

DEMOCRATS

By coincidence, both Massachusetts' U.S. Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Minnesota's U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey had chosen Jan. 2 as their D (for Declaration) Day. When Hubert got the word from Jack that the Kennedy announcement for the presidential nomination would come on that day, he gallantly moved his ceremony forward three days. After all, everybody and his brother by this time knew that both men had for months been rushing headlong for the nomination, and the worst thing they could do would be to blanket each other's announcement headlines.

Humphrey. At midweek Hubert Humphrey, in a grey worsted suit, TV-blue shirt and red tie, bounced into a news conference in a Senate Office Building committee room to Declare. In a bub bling mood, he made it plain that he was just about the last of the dyed-in-the-wool liberals, and a poorboy (see box) "spokesman" for the "plain people." Adroit Campaigner Humphrey based his pitch on the claim that Vice President Richard Nixon can be beaten only by a nominee who can "carry the fight, campaign vigorously, unafraid, defend the record of his party, [and who can] start out with the props whirling, full steam ahead . . . and even prepare for some turbulent weather." But first there was the matter of getting the Democratic nomination: he would enter the primaries in Wisconsin and South Dakota (where he has his best chance of beating Jack Kennedy), in Oregon (where Favorite Son Wayne Morse will muddy the results anyway), and in the District of Columbia. His fondest dream is to pick up 150 to 200 delegates (needed to win: 761), and then hope against hope for a deadlock that calls for an all-out liberal.

Kennedy. Wearing a handsome grin and a deep tan (he was just back from a two-week rest in Jamaica), Jack Kennedy packed the stately caucus room of the old Senate Office Building as a front runner should. Millionaire Jack (see box) made no mention of money, called himself a "liberal Democrat," spun out a list of global questions that would require "crucial decisions" in the years ahead (arms race, emergent nations, U.S. science and education, farm policy, moral purpose).

Walking up to the question of his religion, Roman Catholic Jack Kennedy observed that there is only one issue: "Does a candidate believe in the Constitution, does he believe in the First Amendment, does he believe in the separation of church and state . . . ? I have given my views fully . . . The subject is exhausted." Trying to head off talk that he would make a dream-ticket Vice President for Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy flatly turned down any thought of accepting a vice-presidential nomination. ("I will not accept under any condition.") He managed to needle Fellow Democrats Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson--neither of whom has shown any desire to announce for the nomination before convention time--by suggesting that candidates ought to show themselves off to the voters by mixing in a few state primaries; Stevenson, he said blandly, has run twice and is familiar to the voters. For his part, Kennedy plans to run in the New Hampshire primary on March 8, and pick his battlefields after that. His strategy is to win so many primaries that he will be able to convince doubting Democratic bosses at the Los Angeles Convention that he is the one Democrat who can win in November.

Critical questions: Will he challenge Humphrey in Wisconsin, enter Ohio against the frowns of Governor Mike Di Salle, and California over the objections of Governor Edmund G. Brown? Clearly the season's first two formal candidates had picked the hard way. D-Day was over, but the battles still lay ahead.

CALIFORNIA

The Word from Pat

One week after the Governor of the most populous state bowed out of the Republican presidential race, the Governor of the second abandoned any pretense that he was seriously running for the Democratic nomination. Said California's Edmund ("Pat") Brown in a West Coast paraphrase of Nelson Rockefeller's withdrawal (TIME, Jan. 4): "To be a candidate for the presidency of the U.S. takes aggressive, active work, and they're not going to take a freshman Governor of California who has been in office a year, unless he does do some of the things that Rockefeller did. All I want to do is to take care of, to the best of my ability, the 15 million-plus people that we have here in this state."

But Democrat Brown did not echo Republican Rockefeller's refusal of a vice-presidential nomination. If the Democratic Convention should select virtually anybody except Roman Catholic Jack Kennedy, then Catholic Californian Brown, with his 81 convention blue chips, might become attractive as the second man on the ticket. And if any of the presidential candidates had ideas of taking those 81 votes away from him in California's June primary, Favorite Son Pat Brown issued a fair warning: "Then I might to some extent change my position . . . But that's the only possible chance there'd be."

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