RFK and McCarthy Map Strategies

LINCOLN, Neb., March 24--The McCarthy and Kennedy campaign organizations have come to life in Nebraska.

Johnson, Kennedy, and McCarthy will all appear on the May 14 Nebraska presidential primary ballot.

McCarthy leaders here feel that the two anti-war presidential candidates can gather more than half of the vote in this conservative midwestern state.

Administration forces control most of the party machinery--the Nebraska Democratic Executive Committee endorsed Johnson in December.

But party machinery is notoriously weak in this state where the legislature is non-partisan and in most counties voters were never registered until this spring. A county clerk in one town said there had been no reason to register voters because he knew all the people in the town.

The Kennedy forces under the leadership of former Lieutenant Governor Phillip Sorensen, brother of Kennedy advisor Theodore Sorensen, gathered in Lincoln today to hold secret strategy meetings. In the selection of delegates to the national convention--which is, like New Hampshire, separate from the Presidential preference section on the primary ballot--the Kennedy forces are at a disadvantage. There are only two names on the ballot pledged to Kennedy out of the 28 delegates to be elected.

Johnson and McCarthy forces have full slates for the 22 delegate-at-large places and nearly complete lists for the two ballot places at stake in each of the three congressional districts.

Michael Oldfather, one of the McCarthy leaders in Nebraska, said, "The New Hampshire primary is what really broke the log jam in Nebraska. Since March 12, things have really begun to roll."