Premature Poll

In Florida, a battle of buses and ballots a yard wide

It was Detroit Mayor Coleman Young vs. Georgia's Julian Bond, Chip Carter vs. former Congressman Allard Lowenstein, Miss Lillian vs. all comers. It was White House clout against Kennedy cachet, a rush of federal block grants and prestigious appointments against a hint of similar largesse tomorrow. It was who had the buses and got enough of them to the polls. It was, alas, Florida and its distressingly premature launching of the 1980 presidential race.

In concrete terms, the weekend vote --held in 67 Florida counties, from the rural panhandle to the posh Gold Coast--was a meaningless preliminary to an equally meaningless straw vote that will be held in mid-November to sample presidential preference. None of the rivals will collect a single vote good for the 1980 nomination; the March primary will determine that. Yet the practical irrelevance of the exercise did not keep the forces of President Carter or Senator Edward Kennedy from spending extravagantly. "Florida for Kennedy" will have laid out $175,000, Carter $250,000. What they hoped to get in return was nothing more tangible than a post position and morning-after headlines. As one Florida official accurately described it, "Image becomes substance."

Pundits labeled the contest the Battle of the Buses. The two sides vied as fiercely for vehicles as they did for voters, since the turnout had been forecast at only about 40,000 of the state's 2.8 million Democrats and, as Kennedy Operative Diane Abrams put it, "One bus may well make the difference." Not only buses but vans, cars and even funeral-home limousines were chartered for the vote. The Carter team claimed an early victory: 500 to 600 buses to the Kennedy camp's 300 or so.

Getting there proved only half the fun. Some voters were handed accordion-pleated paper ballots a yard wide that listed as many as 841 delegates without offering a clue as to which candidate each was backing. In Dade County, voters had to check off no fewer than 141 names but no more than 188 for their ballots to be valid. In each county, an independent organized labor slate further complicated the options.

The prize at the end of the obstacle course was a mere 879 delegates. These plus another 838 officials and appointees will vote in next month's straw poll. Since nearly all of these delegates are almost certain to be for Carter, the President is the odds-on favorite to wind up with votes to spare in November.

Unwisely, Kennedy's fervent backers started out by making farfetched predictions of outright victory. But they steadily deflated those claims until, by last week, the chastened draft organizer, Sergio Bendixen, ventured: "We're hanging in there. We'll get 40% or 50%."

Carter and his supporters were more cautious, though they began to smell success toward the end. At his press conference, the President described the upcoming vote as "significant," and a Carter backer predicted that he would win 65% of the vote. But one staffer admitted: "We'll be happy with a victory of one."

As this week began and the vote counting proceeded at an agonizingly slow pace, it looked as if the President would get his victory--and by more than one vote. Carter did well in the northern Panhandle, next door fo his native Georgia, Kennedy in Gold Coast counties like Broward and Palm Beach; he also made a stronger showing than expected in central Florida. The big surprise was Dade County (Miami), where Kennedy strategists had been hoping for a clean sweep but Carter seemed to be holding his own.

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