Galbraith Named Head of Group Seeking to Dump Vietnam Hawks

A group of antiwar politicians yesterday launched a youth-oriented national campaign to defeat hawks in the 1970 Congressional elections.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, is honorary chairman of the group, which calls itself "Referendum '70."

Many of the group's organizers were campaign aides to Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy or Sen. Robert F. Kennedy '48. They vowed yesterday to use their political expertise to elect Republicans, Democrats, or Independents who share their concern over the war, hunger, poverty, and the alienation of the young.

Among the members of Referendum's advisory committee are Richard Goodwin, an aide to the Kennedys and McCarthy; Mayor Charles Evers of Fayette. Miss: writer Gloria Steinem; Andrew Young, vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Ted Van Dyk, a former assistant to Hubert H. Humphrey who has reportedly had a change of heart about the war.

Leaders of the Moratorium have also been active in planning the new group.

"What we want to do," Galbraith said last night, "is to go beyond the old liberal position-we will try to support established liberal candidates but we want to see as many districts as possible develop a liberal alternative."

"My role will be strictly honorary," he said, "But I will try to raise some money and to arrange something between two liberals who want to go against an incumbent."

Canvassing by students figures prominently in Referendum's plans. "We'd like to get the same kind of enthusiasm into this campaign that we got in New Hampshire and Wisconsin for Gene McCarthy," Galbraith said.

"The preliminary reaction by some Democratic time-servers indicates they're considerably worried we'll do just that," he added. "Nobody has realized how vulnerable Congressional elections are to carefully organized drives."

The new group was arranged in part at December meeting in New York. Last month, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak sharply attacked Galbraith, who was present at that meeting, for actively opposing hawks who are liberal on domestic issues.

In a letter released today to newspapers carrying the Evans and Novak column, Galbraith rebuts their report. They painted the New York meeting as "rampant cannibalism," Galbraith said. "They are distressed that anyone should seek the defeat of legislators who, if returned this autumn, can be counted upon to continue as pedigreed lapdogs of the Pentagon.

"The war and the military power remain the major issue in our time. We ask the young with great solemnity to refrain from violence and support the system. Should we also now ask them (as do your columnists) to stay out of elections?

"Voting against somebody who is wrong, a category which includes liberals who want liberalism while spending all the available scratch on weaponry and the war, may be uncouth. But some would call it legitimate protest," Galbraith wrote.