Democrats in the State of Nature

THREE YEARS AGO, when Birch Bayh, Morris Udall, Jimmy Carter, Henry Jackson, and a host of other Democrats tramped through snowy New England in search of elusive primary votes, the Harvard Democratic Club worked harder than a toy salesman at Christmas. This year, the lack of a national campaign has caused its members to turn on each other, and now all involved agree that the results have been just short of disastrous.

But the end may be in sight. The club leaders, who emerged from a raucous election last month scarred but smiling, think they can bring the club back together in time for the next round of primaries in February.

Before the club can hope to stop the petty infighting, it will have to revamp its methods of persuading Boston-area voters that the Democratic Party holds the answer to their problems. Club members would no longer be able to limit themselves to quadrennial Presidential campaigns. If the club is to stay together, its members will need to take a more active role in state and local politics. While they have preoccupied themselves with their own squabbling, a number of important issues have passed them by--from the drinking age to the construction of the Red Line, each of which presents an opportunity for lobbying and politicking.

But in order to look forward, Harvard Democrats must first look back.

The bickering started last year, when club secretary Brad Artson '81 ran for vice president against Daniel Esty '81. Esty, who had made an unsuccessful bid for club president earlier in the year, was generally considered an up-and-coming member of the club. But the first election was thrown out because the member who gave one of the seconding speeches turned out not to be a member at all--along with some of the voters. The club held a second election, which was also thrown out, this time because some members cast proxy ballots, which are not permitted by the club constitution. "By that time we had wasted the better part of the semester," Artson said last week. "The whole thing resulted in a lot of bad publicity, so we lived without a vice president until the new board was elected in February," he added. No one noticed the difference.

FOR ARTSON AND SEVERAL other club officers, the misfired elections were just a harbinger of worse problems in the new year. Dissatisfied with the relatively inactive club, a small group of freshmen organized with the intent of sweeping up all the executive positions in the club's annual election. In the space of a couple of weeks, John Driscoll '82, Jay Smith '82 and Michael Mills '82 registered over 75 freshmen for club membership and presented the dues to Artson just a few days before the election.

To the leadership of the club, especially to Artson, who planned to run for president, the new members posed a major threat. "If they had all showed up at the election meeting," noted one sophomore who ran for club office, "we would have been demolished." Some members even favored invalidating the new memberships. But the conflict between the freshmen and the older members never materialized. Both groups rapidly learned that they were on the same side of most of the issues. Everyone wanted more debates, more lobbying action, more money, and more activities--but neither side realized that a consensus existed until just days before the election.

WHEN THE MEMBERS finally got together, the freshmen leaders backed down, deciding to content themselves with one or two of the four positions and a few spots on the club's governing board. "They understood that it was ridiculous to run for high office in the club just a few days after they had become members," Tamara Stanton '79, the club president in 1978, said earlier this week. Since there was agreement on the issues and everyone had a rough idea of who was running for what, all involved entered the election meeting expecting no major battles over club offices. After all, they thought, everyone was in agreement on the issues, right?

Wrong. In the first vote of the evening, Artson won the presidency unopposed. Though this was not a major surprise, club members had expected at least token competition. Esty later told friends that he had not run because he had too many other activities and "did not enjoy being considered a politico" after the vice presidential controversy a few months before.

When Steve Rosston '81, with Artson's outspoken support, ran unopposed for vice president a few minutes later, the 60 club members assembled in Science Center B began to suspect the presence of a slate. "It definitely looked incestuous, but it wasn't planned that way at all," Artson said later. Suddenly, what had started as a quiet, almost boring election meeting exploded into a series of shouting matches, with members telling stories of secret meetings, hidden slates, and "freshman conspiracies."

"My roommate was railroaded out of running for treasurer," charged Clinton Collins '81, declined comment. Driscoll, who was running for treasurer, responded that no one was barred from running for any position and denied that any slate existed. "We walked in here not knowing what was going to happen," he told the group.

Nevertheless, what followed was two hours of charge-trading, screaming, and hurried conferences in the aisles. Most club members suspected that something was wrong, but lacking a plan they voted for candidates on the spur of the moment. Driscoll was destined to be the first victim of the angry club members. They quickly nominated and elected Skip Stern '81 who called Stanton "hopelessly ineffective as president" and said Driscoll "is a liar if he denies that a slate exists." He later withdrew his comments about Driscoll and nominated him for another position. Stern resigned his position as treasurer last Wednesday, saying he was too busy to do an effective job and "just ran to prove a point."

It was a long night, and most of the club members were embarrassed by the evening's laughable antics.

These days Democratic club members are doing a lot of post mortems on the club election, trading stories about how this member or that played both sides of the fence or proposing theories about the existence of hidden slates. None of that is new to student politics at Harvard, which is known more for its self-destructive tendencies than for its effectiveness.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN the post-election gossip, though, is the understanding among club members that most of their energies for the past eight months could have been channeled into more productive projects. "What saves us right now is that the club--like the Student Assembly--is not big enough to make a difference," Artson remarked recently. "But we have to build the group back up again in the right fashion." And Mills, new secretary of the club and the only freshman to emerge from the carnage with a top leadership position, is confident that the wounds are healing. "But I'm worried about next year's elections," he added, observing that most of the club officers are sophomores and might become embroiled in internal politics once again.

The happenings of this year could easily repeat themselves. About half of the club's members are freshmen; almost none in high positions is a junior or senior. If the freshmen members become disillusioned with the club's inactivity as quickly as their predecessors did, more internal turmoil can be expected. On the other hand, the new leadership of the club, combined with the upcoming Presidential primaries, could provide an unparalleled opportunity to make the club as effective as it was three years ago.

As an outgoing president who is busy writing her thesis, Stanton played elder statesman in the squabble. "We were a small, very involved group a few years ago," she said. "Now we are a large group of less involved people, which can lead to conflicts among the few who are very active." In the absence of the political direction provided by a national race, Artson says he will try to create special committees to stir up interest in Democratic causes around the University.

"I hope it works," a club member mused recently, "because for a few months they were fighting among themselves as much as the whole damn Democratic party does."