Back-Gavin Committee Opens Regional Office

Citizens To Draft Gavin this week opened a Northeast Regional Office in Cambridge to press the candidacy of General James M. Gavin for the 1968 Republican Presidential nomination.

"The move was a result of the snow-balling response to our nationwide appeal for support," Dr. Hershel Jick, chairman of the Draft Gavin group, said yesterday.

Donn S. Mitchell, staff director of the Draft Gavin organization, added that three other regional offices--in the Southeast, the Midwest, and the West--will open by January.

"In the first eight weeks of the campaign, we have collected $30,000 and 12,000 signatures in support of General Gavin," Mitchell said in an interview in the new Green Street office. "The job has gotten much too big for any one central office."

Since October 30th Gavin has been touring Southeast Asia. He returns to the country later this week and will appear Sunday on NBC's Meet The Press. Although Gavin has given the Citizens' committee no verbal encouragement, Jick reports that "he was quite visibly moved" by the work of his supporters.

Mitchell denied that the Draft Gavin group might campaign for some other Republican moderate. "We already have 65 volunteers at work in Cambridge," he said. "Our aim is to get General Gavin to run.