Bitter Withdrawal

Sitting beneath an ornate gold chandelier in a House office building, Missouri's Representative Richard Boiling set his jaw, faced the TV lights across a highly polished table, and said: "I am withdrawing as a candidate for Democratic floor leader. I do so because developments in the last few days convince me I do not have a chance to win." Reporters waited for a loser's usual call for party harmony and the conventional congratulations for the winner--but they did not come. Boiling was frankly bitter in conceding to Oklahoma's Carl Albert, the party whip for the last seven years, the leader's post being vacated by Massachusetts' Representative John McCormack, who was already all but sworn in as Speaker.

Only a fortnight ago, Bolling thought he had a chance to win, was busy attracting liberal pledges by calling Albert a lip-service liberal who was weak on civil rights. To make telephone calls on his behalf to Democratic leaders, Bolling had enlisted a notable Democrat from his home district: Harry Truman of Independence. But just before New Year's, Bolling and his manager, New Jersey's Representative Frank Thompson, caucused over lunch at Washington's venerable Occidental restaurant and decided that the fight was hopeless. Needing at least 128 votes to win, Bolling's effort had peaked at 78, and his strength was already slipping away.

Stung, Bolling made his brusque formal statement, then told reporters what he had been saying privately for weeks: that the White House had been wise in staying out of the race "so long as I wasn't very close." The implication was clear that he would have expected White House help if he had needed only an extra boost to put him over. "Just because I'm defeated in a fight," said Boiling, "doesn't mean that I won't continue to be interested in the things for which I have fought in the past." Nor could he resist striking Albert a last blow. He called attention once more to his differences with Albert on civil rights, and for good measure mentioned Albert's "certain natural district problems with the oil industry," thus insinuating that Albert, a onetime oil-company attorney representing an oil-producing state, would be beholden to oil interests as majority leader.

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