BRING THE GIRLS

FOR the love of a man and the votes of 62 million women,* presidential candidates' wives this year are suffering tortures that would have given Martha Washington the vapors. Ethel Kennedy, three months pregnant, takes a fall on the ice as she and Bobby skim a rink for the benefit of photographers and the skaters' vote. Abigail McCarthy totters out of a sickbed to stump for Gene. Happy Rockefeller endures scores of bone-crushing handshakes daily. Pat Nixon makes her millionth airport arrival, to beam and greet the faithful. Only Muriel Humphrey, recuperating from an operation, has been spared.

More than ever, Americans vote for the family package, not just the man. From McCarthy's twelve-year-old daughter Margaret to Kennedy's 77-year-old mother Rose, wives, sisters, cousins, nieces, in-laws, daughters and family dogs are out there working the territory for their man.

"Awful Choice." The McCarthys are the newest national political family in the race, but they have come on with elan. Abigail McCarthy, 53, a matronly former schoolteacher, is as independent-minded as her husband. Though plagued by virus attacks earlier this spring and then by gallstone trouble, she has stumped valiantly through all the primary states, frequently on heavy schedules of her own. Even so, she candidly admits that she did not want Gene to run for President. "But I have an awfully bad record," she adds. "When he decided to run for Congress, I thought it was nice being a professor's wife. And when he talked of running for the Senate, I thought it was nice to represent a good safe district. When he decided to run for President, I said, 'Does it have to be you?' "

Then there is Mary McCarthy, 19, the Senator's intense, freckle-faced second daughter. A sophomore government major at Radcliffe until she took a leave of absence last winter to work in the campaign, Mary is more than campaign froufrou, as she proves at coffee conferences by ranging through the war, the gold flow, the draft ("First of all, eliminate General Hershey") and alternatives to her father ("It's a pretty awful choice"). Ellen McCarthy, 20, will pitch in after her exams at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. The youngest McCarthy, the Senator's self-styled "secret weapon," is Margaret, 12, who has already made her contribution by addressing a New York group called "Living Kids for McCarthy." When Mrs. McCarthy asked her daughter how the speech went, Margaret said disgustedly: "They didn't ask me about any really important issues."

Different Style. Republican family acts are more sedate than those of the Democrats. Happy Rockefeller clutches every hand in sight, but otherwise limits herself to staring raptly at Nelson during his speeches. Nancy Reagan dislikes travel, although she did fly last month to Cleveland and Chicago to take in part of non-Candidate Ronald Reagan's eight-city speaking tour.

The Nixon family has grown remarkably glamorous since the days of the Republican cloth coat. Pat, as svelte as she was in 1960 and considerably more chic, generally stays close to her husband rather than striking out on her own. "One spokesman in the family is enough," she says. But in years of campaigning with Dick, she has developed an easy grace with the voters. Daughters Tricia, 22, and Julie, 19, have blossomed into political charmers, paragons of wholesome comeliness in a nonconformist era.

From Rose to Freckles. For sheer spectacle, of course, no one outperforms the Kennedys, who, as Mother Rose remarked in California last week, "more or less inaugurated this business of family campaigning when John Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1952." Since Bobby's March 16 announcement, all the clan from Rose to Freckles, the Senator's Irish spaniel, has swarmed across the landscape to pursue voters. While Brother-in-Law Stephen Smith and Brother Teddy manage campaign logistics and strategy, Sisters Jean and Pat, Sister-in-Law Joan and Cousin Polly Fitzgerald descend upon the distaff electorate. Materfamilias Rose is one of the wonders of the campaign. "Look at those legs," marveled a 70-year-old man in Los Angeles. Bobby kids her by telling audiences: "My mother has worked in every campaign since McKinley."

It is impossible to judge the real political value of the Kennedy-family blitz, since as often as not the crowds turn out merely to meet celebrities. But Ethel Kennedy, for one, more than pays her way. Though expecting their eleventh child and terrified of flying, Ethel has covered virtually the entire primary circuit with Bobby. "I feel better when she is here," Kennedy tells friends. Small wonder. Her gaiety and energy are inexhaustible in the face of 18-hour campaign days, run stockings, demolished hairdos or even last week's Oregon primary. Not the least of Ethel's virtues is that she avoids making speeches.

*Who now outnumber the males of voting age in the nation by about 7,500,000.

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