Creep Marches On

After the election last year, George McGovern's Washington campaign headquarters looked like one of the apocalyptically deserted buildings in On the Beach. That was not unusual. Most campaign organizations shut down as soon as the votes are counted and the thank you notes dispatched.

But almost nine months after the presidential election, the Committee for the Re-Election of the President is still humming along, rather eerily, in a second-floor sanctum at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue, less than a block from --the White House. Former Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans still reports for work as finance committee chairman, although he cut his own $60,000 salary in half after he was indicted last spring for perjury and conspiracy. Chief Public Relations Man DeVan Shumway still collects $36,000 a year. He sits in his private office watching the Ervin hearings on a portable TV and grinding out denials and explanations. Ten other employees, including a lawyer, research assistant and treasurer, are still at work, devoting their days mostly to cleaning up the leftover details of the campaign.

Among them: the $6.4 million damage suit filed by the Democratic National Committee after the Watergate breakin, and the Common Cause suit demanding disclosure of all contributions made to the Nixon campaign before April 7, 1972, when the new full-disclosure campaign law took effect.

The committee wound up with a well-publicized campaign surplus of $4.8 million but has certain expenses to worry about. Since the election, for example, it has dished out $300,500 in legal fees, much of the cash going to help committee officials like Stans, Jeb Magruder and Hugh Sloan in trying to extricate themselves from Watergate.

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