The Man From Scranton

As Barry Goldwater pulls into undisputed first place in the number of committed delegates to the Republican National Convention, a very distant second place is held down at the moment by the enigmatic governor of Pennsylvania. William Warren Scranton.

Scranton gained sixty-one of his sixty-three delegates in last Tuesday's Pennsylvania Presidential primary. (Two North Dakota delegates have declared for Scranton, and three favoring Goldwater were chosen in Pennsylvania.) The Scranton vote in his home state has been regarded by most observers as merely an expression of support for a "favorite son" who can "maintain the unity of the delegation." In any case, the governor's show of strength could be a significant force in San Francisco this July.

The vote in Pennsylvania is anything but an over-whelming endorsement of Scranton as a Presidential candidate, While forces backing the unwilling governor had conducted an intensive write-in campaign, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge added to his recent impressive victories by capturing about twenty per cent of the vote with almost no effort at all, and Richard Nixon outpolled Goldwater.

Scranton's 225,000 votes are far short of the 300,000 goal that some supporters predicted, but any analysis is marred by the conditions of the election and the voting procedure. In the first place, heavy rain and a paucity of real contests on their side kept many Republicans from the polls. In addition, more than half the precincts in the state have voting machines, on which it is difficult to register a write-in vote. (No candidate was on the ballot.)

Nevertheless, 225,000 votes set a record for Presidential candidates and non-candidates in Pennsylvania; this is a larger vote than John F. Kennedy amassed in the 1960 Democratic primary when he was already campaigning intensively, but it was a smaller percentage of the vote than Kennedy's was. Pennsylvania Republicans are obviously pleased with the Governor's performance during his first year and a half in office, and the growing size of the "Scranton-for-President Clubs" is indicative of their enthusiasm for offering his name as a nominee.

The "clubs" are ready to begin an all-out campaign, but the question remains whether or not Scranton is in fact interested in the Presidential nomination. At a recent news conference in Harrisburg he revealed that a vacation in Florida had convinced him to do absolutely nothing; only an "honest and sincere draft" could interest him in the nomination. The new solution to the flood of requests for interviews has been to refuse them, and on the surface Scranton seems to be discouraging publicity.

And yet, at the same time, much to the relief of his supporters, he has begun to act and speak like a potential candidate. He has fulfilled the hopes of many that he would begin to enunciate his views, so that there might be more reason to support him than his face, age, and clean record. In a speech for a Yale Law School award ceremony, he had indicated the failure of the Republican Party to lead the country over the past thirty years. The party, he said, should support a policy whereby Congress sets goals for programs and appropriates necessary funds, but gives "maximum authority for implementation to a strong, effective state government." This, he contended, is the "pragmatic way of actually getting this country moving."

In sharp contrast to Michigan's George Romney. Scranton has had remarkable success with his program as governor, with only his bid for a convention to revise the state constitution failing narrowly. Though he had militant opposition from organized labor, he managed to pass substantial revisions of the state's unemployment compensation laws in a special session of the General Assembly.

Scranton showed he is able to act quickly in a crisis in recent weeks, as he moved to settle the Chester, Pennsylvania, school segregation dispute. If the state Human Rclations Commission fails to come up with a satisfactory solution, Scranton will have an opportunity to put into practical acts his earlier pronouncements on American racial problems.

With each public denial and private step forward, people will continue to watch Scranton closely. Those sixty-three first-ballot convention votes may be extremely important, as a rallying point for a Scranton drive before or during the convention, a decisive bloc that could go any way in the case of a deadlocked convention, or the core for a vice-Presidential attempt. At any rate, Scranton will probably be without a job in 1966, since he cannot succeed himself as governor and no Senate seat will be available. Certainly he would want to be on good terms with any Republican administration.