Divided Democrats May Fight At National Party Convention

Major disputes over party rules and procedures may erupt this weekend when more than 1600 rank-and-file Democrats and some 300 Democratic officeholders assemble in Kansas City, Mo., for the party's first mid-term national convention.

The goal of the convention is to ratify a charter or constitution of a sort no American political party has tried to write before. For several high-ranking party leaders, a primary convention goal will be to avert serious conflicts among party factions so that the party may begin to shape a united front for the 1976 presidential elections.

The final agenda for the convention will be drawn up today and tomorrow by the party's rules committee, which will hear arguments from various party groups for and against changes in the draft charter that will go before the full assembly of Democrats Friday through Sunday.

The rules committee today will also consider arguments for the inclusion of comprehensive policy meetings among leaders and delegates during the convention.

To Discuss 'Women's Issues'

Ann Lewis, special assistant to Boston Mayor Kevin White and a leader of the National Women's Political Caucus, said yesterday she intends to campaign for a "full discussion of women's issues" at the convention. She left yesterday afternoon for the rules committee meetings, also to be held in Kansas City.

"I understand we can get possible support from members of liberal labor, who also want some discussion of national issues," Lewis said. "If there's a coalition that succeeds in getting issues on the agenda, we [the caucus] want to be included."

National Democratic Chairman Robert S. Strauss said in a recent CBS News interview, however, that any attention to national issues at the convention will be secondary to ratification of the party charter. "This wasn't really written to be a policy conference," Strauss said.

A full-scale discussion of pressing national issues such as inflation and civil rights could turn into factious debate that would cripple the party in front of network television cameras, Strauss said.

Strauss and other high-level party leaders have expressed hope eight panel discussions scheduled for Friday will appease segments of the party calling for platform-like policy measures.

The panels, to be chaired by party leaders and aspiring presidential candidates like Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) and Sen. Lloyd M. Bentsen (D-Tex.), will cover topics such as the economy and natural resources.

Reports of the panel discussions will go to the convention floor Sunday, but the party leadership will adopt no specific party positions nor solicit votes.

Strauss this weekend may find himself in the middle of a titanic battle over proposed charter rules on two matters:

* Programs of "affirmative action" to encourage participation by blacks, women, youth and American Indians in all party affairs, and a ban on mandatory quotas; and

* The use of proportional representation in selecting national convention delegates--a process that bans winner-take-all primaries and unit-rule caucuses and, instead, allots delegate votes according to shares of a candidate's popular support.

AFL-CIO political leader Alexander Barkan has led the fight to amend language in the charter to ban "implied" as well as "mandatory" quotas. His chief opposition has come from party caucuses of women and blacks and the Democratic Planning Group that comprises the McGovern-McCarthy-Kennedy wing of the party. Barkan's opponents see a wholesale ban on quotas as a threat to greater minority group participation.

Kansas City Compromise

A party commission set up to establish rules governing the 1976 presidential convention, chaired by Baltimore City Councilor Barbara Mikulski, earlier this year reached a compromise on the matter of quotas and affirmative action. The Kansas City convention, with the encouragement of Strauss and party moderates, might adopt the compromise language of the Mikulski commission for the permanent party charter.

That compromise requires all state parties to implement affirmative action plans to encourage minority group participation and bans only "mandatory quotas." The state plans must be submitted to the national committee for approval.

Strauss has said he will push for the compromise to avoid splintering the party over what he calls a "minor semantic problem." But Barkan already has threatened to pull his labor support out of the party. Late last summer, the black caucus threatened to walk out of Kansas City if Barkan succeeded in amending the rules.

Other potential conflicts, over various rules that may increase the authority of the national party over the state parties, could surface this weekend and would pit state chairmen and most governors, particularly George Wallace, against party reformers and liberals of the McGovern camp