Not Me

Three months after the November elections Secretary of State Kevin H. White has finally submitted to Attorney General Brooke a list of 215 candidates who failed to comply with provisions of the state law requiring full disclosure of campaign finances.

Commendable though this prompt action may be, the Secretary of State's list, by ignoring all of the senatorial and gubernatorial candidates, has failed to include some of Massachusetts's best-known people. This may just mean that the legislature really was fooled when it defeated a resolution reaffirming its faith in the reliability of the campaign reports of Senator Edward M. Kennedy '54.

But a brief glance at official records in the State House would indicate otherwise. Although the disclosure law requires that candidates report television and radio expenditures every two weeks during their campaign, Senator Kennedy's reports include no such expeditures until the second half of November when he records the modest sum of $14,000.

It may be, of course, that Senator Kennedy didn't really use any more television time than he reported. This seems to be the attitude of both Secretary of State White and Attorney General Brooke, who claim responsibility only for enforcing procedural violations, not what they call substantive ones.

Of course, few self-preserving politicians in this state would presume to investigate the god-head. But Senator Kennedy, brother of the President and the Attorney General, is a figure of national importance. The Massachusetts press and politicians may not be able to hide forever from these details of his campaign.