Gary Orren: From Podium To Practitioner

"It's like the English professor who gets to sit down and write his novel."

For years, Gary Orren lectured on politics; for the last six months, he's lived it, as chief pollster for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.).

"It's been the perfect job for learning--pollsters have a window on the campaign, and I've had very big eyes," Orren, who will return to Harvard next year to teach at the Kennedy School, said last week. Orren left an associate professorship in the Government Department.

When Orren takes to the podium in the fall, he will have plenty of stories to tell--like the one about a campaign that started out invincible, soon found it had more Achilles heels that a baseball team, and finally, last week, began to click again.

After a New Hampshire drubbing, after failing in the South and in Illinois, Kennedy still had the resolve to continue--it wasn't just a line. It became an important issues crusade, standing up for positions that needed to be expressed," Orren said.

But crusades, especially ones down two-to-one in the polls, are never easy. "Funds were drying up... half the staff was relieved. People started doing multiple tasks." In Orren's case that meant training volunteers to poll, instead of hiring outside firms.

"It was a C-Ration kind of situation, a 'lean and hungry' staff," Orren said. "We were living off the land in a more guerrilla kind of way. But then, those kind of campaigns have been successful in recent years."

Extra sweat couldn't buy some things. "If you want the air time, you have to pay the bill to NBC, and that's it," Orren moaned. But here, too, necessity mothered effort if not invention. "When you're rich and fat, sometimes you don't really grovel.... We became far more tenacious about unpaid media," Orren, who will teach on the press and politics next year, said.

"The last week of the New York campaign was beautifully choreographed--the visit to Metropolitan Hospital, the session with the Hasidic Jews, speaking on the same spot in the South Bronx where Carter made his promises four years ago, the visit with Cardinal Cooke."

Kennedy staffers shored up another weakness for New York as well, Orren explained. "For the first time, we made effective use of surrogates," he said, citing endorsements from Carroll O'Connor to Carol Bellamy that paid off on election day.

"One of our failings was the tendency to have the Senator out on the trail himself, a sort of Lone Ranger--if you have the spotlight on you five, six times a day, it just gets too much. That's what happened with the Shah statement," Orren said.

The list of surrogates didn't include political leaders like New York Gov. Hugh Carey or Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.), who urged Kennedy to enter the race last fall. But Orren says the endorsements will come quicker now that the Bay State senator has some momentum.

"When you need endorsements the most, they're the hardest to get. In politics, people are like sniffers--they move the way the tide is going," Orren said.

And for now, he adds cheerfully, the tide is going Kennedy's way.

"For a long time the name of the game was survival--we were treading water, and we didn't know if we were going to drown. But we came out of the Hudson River, and now we're doing the crawl, not the backstroke."

Some observers, including those looking on from the White House, called Kennedy's New York win a local phenomenon. Orren, who's been polling in the Empire State and elsewhere, disagreed. "It's an expression of strong disapproval of the President from people who want to send him a message," he said.

Along with Jews upset over Carter's handling of a United Nations vote on West Bank settlements, there was also "the vote upstate, the vote in Polish wards, the vote among Catholics." And, on the same day, there was the vote in Connecticut. "There are two main constituencies, Catholics and Yankees. Kennedy had not been doing well with those groups, but in Connecticut he ran phenomenally--he won almost every precinct in New Haven," Orren said.

The dual wins, however, have not prompted Kennedy to shift his speech writers to drafting his inaugural address. "They do demonstrate a greater receptivity to Kennedy, as well as a rebuke to Carter, though," Orren said.

Exit polls in New York and Connecticut showed voters trusted Kennedy more, an unusual position for a politician still suffering from a personal image shaped in large part by the accident at Chappaquiddick.

When voters say they trust Kennedy, "they don't mean he's a person of better character. I think Carter still beats us on the high moral standards," Orren said. "Instead, we're getting the professional trust as opposed to the truthfulness, better person aspect," he added.

"There's the contrast--Carter is now on his sixth version of where he stands on the budget. He's on a roller coaster, lurching from left to right.... People are starting to say, 'I'm not sure I trust Carter.'"

Orren's polls show "the public has never believed that Carter is an extremely competent leader. He was getting some high marks at the height of Iran, mostly for restraint.... But even then, people understood that he had failed his way into that."

And with that mistrust of Carter's issue stances and ability, another side of the character issue may be starting to emerge, Orren said. "Kennedy has taken his knocks and stood gallantly. It's the kind of admiration John Anderson is getting so much of on his side of the fence. You pay your price for a while, but it may end up helping you."

Orren's optimism is tempered by reality. "Chappaquiddick is not something that's going to disappear.... A certain portion of the population will never vote for Kennedy because he doesn't meet their standards of moral rectitude.

"If he's going to win, other factors will have to come to dominate," Orren predicted. "Now you are starting to see people weight those sorts of issues against competency questions.... We haven't had that before--instead there's been intense scrutiny on Ted Kennedy the man. Up till now, people have been voting up or down on Ted Kennedy's history."

Kennedy and his staff made a conscious decision to start stressing the issues, especially stances like gas rationing and wage-price controls where Kennedy stood apart from the President beginning with the early-winter Georgetown speech, Orren said.

"Earlier on, there had been a lot of general talk about Kennedy being the stronger leader.... There were a lot of position papers and discussion of the issues, but a campaign creates its own emphasis." Kennedy said "nothing new in the Georgetown speech, except for rationing and wage-price controls We had discussed coming out for those things before, and tried to figure out what the timing was," Orren said.

The strategy paid off just in time for Kennedy. Pointing to California, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey as must states, Orren predicted the race would probably go down to the last primaries. Outside factors--especially cross-over voting for Rep. John Anderson (R-Ill.) might affect tomorrow's voting in Wisconsin. But by the time the race reaches Pennsylvania, it should be a "showdown," he said.

"Pennsylvania was the most important primary in 1976, and it probably will be again in 1980.... There's plenty of time for a very intense campaign. And the state is fascinating--it is northeastern, but it has lots of rural areas, big cities and many suburbs. It's a great stage for the showdown."

Carter aides said last week that despite the wins in the Northeast, Kennedy was too far behind to ever catch up. "It's not all over," Orren insisted, adding that the New York results may force Carter out on the campaign trail.

"He's caught between a rock and a hard place--he said he wouldn't leave the White House until the hostages were free, but he's churning at the bit to be campaigning. The Rose Garden is starting to get a little bit thorny," Orren chuckled.

"He can't cross Rte. 495 or he's broken his promise to the American public," Orren said. "We'll see if he edges across the thruway."

Despite Carter's promises, Orren said Kennedy staffers would love the chance to confront Carter head-on away from the White House. "It's very hard to wage a campaign as a monologue.... You've got to deal with a whole pack of reporters, and you're out there all alone, so they're all out after you," Orren said.

And should Carter venture forth, his appearance will win votes for his challenger, pollster Orren predicts. "If Carter gets out there, people will see this cold cucumber of a guy, and they'll see Ted Kennedy as just the opposite."

"We haven't done enough to communicate early on a sense of biography," Orren said. "The public knows all the bad things about Ted Kennedy, but they don't have the good sides fleshed out in their minds--the fact that he is a good family man, he has a great sense of humor, a zest for life, a wide circle of friends." In contrast, Carter "has no sense of humor. He's Spartan, he has a contempt for politics, a narrow circle of friends," Orren said.

Right now, things are brightening in the Kennedy camp. "I tried to talk with the people in fundraising thise week, and I couldn't get through. That's a good sign," Orren said. But the real message of the last week's primaries is that the election is far from in the bag for any candidate. "One half the delegates have been selected. Look how tumultous it's been up to now," Orren said. "Who is to think the second half would be any less wild?"

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"When you need endorsements the most they're the hardest to get. In politics, people are like sniffes-they move the way the tide is going."