Campaign Oddments

For those wondering whether post-Watergate politics have become notably cleaner, a lamentable answer emerged last week: not much. The Washington-based Fair Campaign Practices Committee, a nonpartisan election-watchdog group formed in 1954, has received 49 complaints about the 1974 campaign thus far. Said the committee's executive director, Samuel J. Archibald: "There were so many Democratic challengers tasting victory this year, and so many Republican incumbents tasting defeat -- both were tempted to use the knee in the groin."

> Quipped California Governor-elect Jerry Brown: "Some people think I got here because of my father. Actually, it was my mother." Brown's father, the state's popular onetime Democratic Governor, stepped to the microphone with a cheerful rejoinder: "I just want to say I had something to do with it too." Indeed he had. Political nepotism -- aboveboard, unashamed and unabashed -- was in fashion again. In Massachusetts, Democrat Thomas P. O'Neill III, the 30-year-old son of House Majority Leader "Tip" O'Neill, went from the state legislature (and a seat once held by his father) to become the commonwealth's Lieutenant Governor. In Connecticut, Christopher Dodd, 30, son of the late Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd, garnered a seat in Congress. Bruce Smathers, 31, son of onetime Democratic Senator George Smathers, was elected Florida's secretary of state.

> Viet Nam, for so many elections a burning issue, seemed barely to touch voter consciousness this time out. Four former P.O.W.s who ran for office each met with defeat. South Dakota Republican Leo K. Thorsness, a Medal of Honor holder who spent six years in a North Vietnamese P.O.W. camp, seemed to threaten Senator George McGovern at the outset, but faded as the campaign wore on. In California, 32-year-old Republican David Rehmann, six years a P.O.W., lost his bid for Congress to Santa Ana Mayor Jerry Patterson. In Georgia, Republican Quincy Collins, 43, an ex-Air Force colonel and a seven-year P.O.W., battled Democrat Larry McDonald for a seat in Congress and lost. Maine Democrat Markham L. Gartley, 30, a onetime Navy lieutenant who spent four years in a P.O.W. camp, had no chance to unseat Republican William Cohen of House Judiciary Committee fame.

> Blacks continued their advance into and up the political ranks. By 574 votes, Tennessee Democrat Harold E. Ford, 29, upset Republican Congressman Dan Kuykendall, bringing the number of blacks in the House of Representatives to 17. In Colorado, Democrat George Brown was elected Lieutenant Governor, and State Senator Mervyn Dymally gained the same post in California--the first blacks to win that office in any state since Reconstruction. Most impressive, however, was the hold blacks maintained on elective offices they already occupy and the dramatic increase of black officials in the South. Across the nation, nearly all black state legislators were reelected, and blacks picked up additional seats in such states as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and California. In the eleven Southern states, the number of black state senators and representatives jumped from 54 to 84. A total of 118 blacks sought state or federal office in the South, and a remarkable 72% of them won.

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