Reagan Juggles Birchers and Moderates While Brown Expects His Usual Miracle

No one wants to put money on this fight. Reagan leads Brown by three or four percent, with nearly 20 percent of the voters undecided.

As Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown's advance men hurriedly tried to round up a crowd for their man's imminent appearance, the elderly pensioners in the Long Beach, Calif. park watched impassively from their benches.

Dressed in the gaily-colored sports shirts that California males wear, regardless of age, the old men napped and talked with friends. But one 70-year-old, who had refused to halt his croquet match even to meet the Governor, spotted a reporter and seemed determined to put himself on record.

"I know what you want to ask!" he told the reporter. "You want to know if the Dodgers or the Giants are going to win the pennant.'

The pennant race, of course, was the overriding concern of most Californians this summer. Neither Brown, seeking his third term, nor Ronald Reagan, the political upstart from "Death Valley Days' who chaired Barry Goldwater's California campaign, is half as entertaining.

In a campaign where "image' counts heavily, both men have shown themselves to be soporific. Brown has never been much of a campaigner; he has an undistinguished platform manner, an unremarkable face, and a voice that shrills when he is put on the spot.

Reagan speeches, despite the man's pre-Labor Day build-up as an actor and the exaggerated Time Magazine reports about his fantastic charisma, are surprisingly dour and mechanical.

What Reagan has going for him that Brown does not is a new surface unity in his party and a fervent neo-conservatism among the voters that helped the Republicans elect George Murphy to the Senate in 1964.

The Reagan campaign machinery would never have made the mistakes Brown made that day in Long Beach. Every moment of Reagan's time is planned a week in advance; he goes only where he is assured large crowds and he depends on large doses of television to get his message across to the voters.

Brown, on the other hand, has tried "Hubert Humphrey campaigning." He likes to make 20 five-minute speeches a day, stopping off at amusement parks, beaches, and shopping centers to shake hands. He hopes that his advance men will be able to summon crowds for these impromptu appearances.

But what usually happens to Brown is that people pass him by without a backward glance. Then, he is likely to burst into a foot-stomping temper, as he did recently at the Los Angeles County Fair, in a much-publicized incident.

Unlike 1958 and 1962, when he came from behind to beat established political figures, Brown has not established a spunky, fired-up campaign organization. No matter what the polls show, he can no longer claim to be the underdog, as he did so winningly against Senate Republican Leader William F. Knowland and Richard Nixon.

This year, Reagan has subtly projected himself as the underdog; he ingenuously calls himself a "citizen politician," which somhow implies that Brown is merely a used-up, corner-cutting political hack.

The Democratic party has charged substantially since the last gubernatorial campaign, too. This year, Brown has suffered considerably from hostile elements in his own party, although in both 1958 and 1962 he had a fervent organization behind him.

In those campaigns, the Democrats, savoring the possibility of victory after being out of office for almost 20 years, were willing to forget old rivalries and personal jealousies just to get their own in office.

Symbolizing this new unity was the California Democratic Council, established at Fresno in 1953. The CDC -- an association of volunteer, issue-oriented young professional people -- provided door-bell-pushers and envelope-stuffers to any Democrat who needed help.

But, more importantly, the CDC issued pre-primary endorsements (which county and state party committees are forbidden to do), hoping to end the self-destructive internecine warfare of the previous decades. It was thought that candidates defeated at the CDC convention would quietly withdraw from the primary and for the party.

This year was really the end of this fairly-tale adventure in participatory democracy. In a roaring dispute over the anti-Vietnam war views of CDC president Simon Casady, Brown managed to alienate a good many members of the organization at its Bakers-field convention.

The 50,000 member CDC, no matter what eastern correspondents say about it, is pretty insignificant in California. Statistical studies done by James Q. Wilson, professor of Government, show that CDC-endorsed candidates do no better than unendorsed candidates in both primary and general elections.

What will hurt Brown is losing the volunteer help the CDC could have supplied; and, of course, the coverage the California newspapers gave the raucous CDC convention has convinced many Californians that the party is hopelessly split and incapable of running the state.

The party -- even excluding the CDC -- is in fact so badily splintered, that California reporters speak of it as if it were three parties: the Brown "loyalists," the Yorty "insurgents," and the Unruh "power brokers.'

Those closest to Brown are an assortment of businessmen for whom politics is a practical matter and moderate Democrats who find homey, hard-working Brown the safest choice.

Samuel Yorty, the Los Angeles mayor who is probably the least reliable yet most ambitious Democrat in the state, has yet to declare publicly for either candidate. In the primary, he showed surprisingly well against Governor Brown, picking up a million votes after little or no campaigning.

Although both candidiates are anxious to win Yorty's endorsement and have wooed him at much-publicized political lunches, a Yorty declaration for Brown would probably not have the effect Democrats hope for.

Californians who chose Yorty in the primary are real mavericks who have no party loyalties and would feel no compunctions about helping do Brown in. They are not likely to be influenced even by a word from Yorty; their votes for him were really anti-Brown votes.

They are likely to desert the party completely this year, just as Yorty, their insurrectionlist leader, is apt to desert the party in 1968 to run in the Republican primary against liberal Senate Minority Whip Thomas Kuchel.

Yorty may duck the whole question of endorsement this time around; he will leave this week on a tour of Japan with the Dodgers and will not return until after the November 8 election. He has applied for an absentee ballot.

Jesse Unruh, the speaker of the State Assembly is, at least on the surface, more cooperatve than Yorty. He is Brown's nominal campaign manager, and next to Brown, the most powerful Democrat in the state.

But "Big Daddy" Unruh would like to be Governor in 1970 and probably would not mind having Brown out of the way; he must figure that voters appalled by four years of Reagan Republicanism will be glad to have a Democrat -- like himself -- back in office.

What Unruh wants he usually gets. His allies include state legislators who depend on him for political favors and lobbyists and special interest groups who know he can get legislation through the two houses. He is recognized as a genuine source of power in a state where nonpartisanship has been the rule and patronage practically unknown.

Unruh himself will not be able to sit this one out, but his usual followers have been noticeably cool toward Brown this year. Foremost of course is Carmen ("Dragon Lady") Warschaw, who was odds-on favorite to win the Democratic state chairmanship at the state convention in August. Brown's aides quietly worked for Assemblyman Charles Warren, her chief opponent, and Brown himself, despite previous promises to Mrs. Warschaw, refused to endorse her publicly.

Mrs. Warschaw, a Harvey Aluminum heiress, has been muttering under her breath about Brown's treachery ever since her narrow defeat, and has withheld her considerable resources from the campaign.

Although the party is in disarray, Brown is at least in good shape financially. Last spring, the Committee on Political Endorsements (COPE) of the AFL-CIO voted to contribute $350,000 to the Brown campaign. Individual locals have protested ever since that that they had no choice in the matter, but last month COPE decided to pour even more money into the campaign.

Unlike the feuding Democrats, Republicans have closed ranks behind their man; even supporters of former San Francisco Mayor George Christopher, Reagan's opponent in the primaries, have taken positions of importance in Reagan's organization. Dozens of left-over Rockefeller-for-President fans have joined the fight, as have the more extreme Goldwater supporters in Southern California.

Only Thomas Kuchel, the Senate's Minority Whip, and Christopher have remained aloof. Kuchel backed Christopher in the primary and is quoted as saying, "I know where Christopher stands, which is more than I can say about Ronald Reagan."

Big-time Republicans -- Everett Dirksen, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford -- have offered to campaign for Reagan, but he has righteously declared that out-of-staters should not become involved in a California election.

He neglects to mention that protocol would require that Barry Goldwater be included in any appeals to outsiders. Reagan has quietly tried to dissociate himself from Goldwater, for fear of alienating any members of his newly put together Republican coalition.

Unlike Goldwater, who ran as Goldwater, Reagan has tempered his views considerably and even disclaimed stands he expounded when he stumped for General Electric years ago.

Yet Brown has said that it is his job to convince California voters that Reagan is a right-wing extremist, and Brown's staff has unearthed and made public every right-wing statement Reagan has ever made.

To some extent, Reagan makes their job easier. He has refused to repudiate the John Birch Society, as most other Republicans have done, and he has accepted funds and support from notoriously conservative Californians.

The money for his venture comes from many of the same sources that funded the Goldwater campaign: rubber magnate Leonard K. Firestone, Schick Razor president Patrick J. Frawley, former CIA chief John McCone (now a millionaire San Marino resident), and Henry Salvatori, co-chairman of Reagan's finance committee and member of Project Alert and the Anti-Communist Voters League. Reagan's father-in-law, Chicago neurosurgeon Loyal Davis, has also contributed heavily, and recruited support among right-wing friends.

Other members of his executive committee include Walter Knott and Walt Disney, who built amusement empires in Orange County and now dabble in politics. John Wayne and Ray Bolger, looking considerably down-at-the-mouth since "Hondo" and "The Wizard of Oz" respectively, have also taken to the stump.

Reagan has spent a great deal of money on television. For a candidate with his looks and long experience before cameras this is an excellent tactic. Months ago, just after Reagan opened his primary campaign with a masterful fireside chat, it seemed that he might win the election on the strength of his television appearances alone.

This has not proved to be the case. Reagan, stung by charges that he was avoiding the issues, seems to have lost his taste for folksy, luxuriantly-staged presentations most appealing to viewers. During his official campaign kick-off program he presented a long, rapdily-delivered, issue-load-