Looking for a Break

"What you do is build a good organization and then wait for a break," explained energetic John Grenier, executive director of the national Goldwater-Miller campaign. "That's what the Kennedys did in 1960, and when their break came -- after the" first TV debate -- they were ready for it. There are breaks in any election. If you're organized, if you've got a good team, when the hole comes along you can go through like gangbusters." A really big break is obviously what Barry Goldwater badly needs if he is to become President. And in Washington a team of tough tacticians, personally hand-picked by Barry to run the Republican National Committee, has developed a taut organization far better prepared to capitalize on the breaks than any G.O.P. team since the one that rushed Dwight Eisenhower into the presidency in 1952. "We're ready," says National Chairman Dean Burch.

"The gun is cocked, and we can handle any political ammunition we get." Every Sunday, in downtown Washington's Cafritz Building, Burch convenes a steering committee that includes Campaign Director Denison Kitchel and such experienced political pros as New York's Len Hall, Ohio's Ray Bliss and California's Bill Knowland, to review and plot progress. They study polls, preview ad drives, advise on policy, and discuss what to do about the chronic shortage of campaign funds. Already, the top advisers have analyzed past election returns in sufficient detail to assign every county in the U.S. (total: 3,131) a quota of Goldwater votes to deliver. Their three-phase plan for precinct-level activity: 1) canvass every household for Goldwater votes, 2) help those voters get to the polls, 3) watch the polling places so as to be sure that the votes are tallied accurately.

Saints & Sinners. Out where those votes are, local Goldwater organizations generally have far more volunteers to get the job done than the G.O.P. could muster in 1960. Nowhere are these torrid troops used more effectively than in the South, where Republican organizations are now far more efficient than the long-complacent Democratic groups there. In New Orleans, Texan LeRoy Ellis, 29, plots Goldwater strategy for Louisiana in a "war room" covered with 13 maps pegging population growth and political patterns in every parish. His precinct workers have assembled 600,000 IBM cards containing the name and address of every Louisiana urban voter, all of whom will be reached this month, either in person or from 50-telephone "boiler rooms," in order to determine their party, sex, age, occupation and race. That information, punched on the cards, will be riffled through just before the election to turn up the most likely Goldwater voters.

Tennessee Republicans expect to employ 20,000 volunteers to reach virtually all of the state's 1,100,000 voters. Under North Carolina's Republican Chairman J. Herman Saxon, G.O.P. registration in his state has jumped 100,000 in the past 18 months. In Florida's Duval County, Republicans already have canvassed half of the 148 precincts to tag voters as either "saints" (Republicans), "savables" (shaky Democrats) or "sinners" (unshakable Democrats). Tulsa Republicans, who had only 51 precinct workers for Nixon four years ago, now have 1,300 signed up.

The Goldwater drive is generally well organized, too, in the Rocky Mountain states, where most regular party officials were pro-Goldwater well before San Francisco. Under red-haired Los Angeles Lawyer Bernard Brennan, Goldwater has a strong organization in California, which turned out 15,000 workers in Los Angeles alone for the state primary. Brennan expects to field 200,000 Barry-hustlers throughout the state in November. Similarly, the party has developed strong cadres in Washington, Arizona, Minnesota, Connecticut, Iowa, Delaware and Wisconsin.

Lost in Translation. In much of the rest of the nation, however, those neat lines on national headquarters organizational charts do not translate into efficiency at the state level. There are great gaps in organization in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Predictably, Goldwater Republicans have only sputtering organizations in most of New England. In the traditionally safe Midwest, they are suffering to a surprising degree. The best a Goldwater director can say of the Kansas area is that "we've seen a switch from general carping about everything to constructive bitching." An all-day telephone drive in South Dakota got out fewer than 100 people to meet Bill Miller at the Mitchell airport. Indiana's Citizens for Goldwater has chapters in only about half of the state's counties. John Kennedy had a stronger Citizens group in conservative Nebraska than Goldwater has today. Illinois Republicans are working hard for Gubernatorial Candidate Charles Percy, but liaison with Goldwater forces is weak. Says Michigan's Citizens Chairman Creighton Holden: "Things couldn't be much worse. We haven't got the money. We haven't got the organization. We just don't have enough of the right people."

In sum, Republican organization is infinitely better than it was in 1960, especially at the national level. In many places in the field, it is a model of efficiency and effectiveness. But in the places where it counts--notably in the Midwest where the electoral stakes are high--Barry Goldwater's troops are as yet ineffectual. If Barry needs a break, that's where it would do the most good.

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