The Studds Campaign: A Postscript

A YEAR ago Gerry Studds was enrolled in a doctoral program at the Ed School, living on Garfield Street, and worrying that Nixon, in his November 3 speech on Vietnamization, had succeeded in diffusing antiwar feeling.

Today Studds, a 33-year-old former prep school teacher and McCarthy delegate, spends most of his time on the phone at his parents' home in suburban Cohasset, trying to figure out how to pay off a debt of nearly $20,000-all that's left of a nine-month campaign that ended on election day leaving him 1700 votes short of becoming the first Democrat since 1912 to represent Massachusetts' 12th Congressional District.

In the course of his campaign-which began last February when he decided six-term Republican incumbent Hastings Keith could be beaten-Studds emerged from complete obscurity to a point where potential presidential candidates sought to win his favor and local organization Democrats, who laughed heartily when he first declared his candidacy in late March, assured him they had been working privately for him all winter.

By November 3, Studds had spent more than $125,000 and had enlisted over 1000 volunteers in his attempt to represent the state's most populous Congressional district, which includes the South Shore suburbs, Cape Cod and New Bedford. The success of his campaign so unnerved Keith, a lackluster former insurance agent whose only distinction is the most conservative record in the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, that he brought in Senator Edward Brooke and HEW Secretary Elliot Richardson to campaign for him, had his aides investigate Studds' past, accused him of lying about his previous jobs, and strongly implied that a Keith defeat would be a victory for long hair, student radicalism and drugs.

Studds did not win, though he came much closer than a lot of people expected. His strategy called for him to cut slightly into the Republican majority on Cape Cod, break even in Plymouth County, and then come out of the Democratic strongholds of Weymouth and New Bedford with a large enough majority to offset the Cape, and win. He lost because he did not break even in strongly Republican Plymouth County, where Keith's smear attempts-distributed by local Republicans in "Studds Sheets"-undoubtedly had an effect.

Studds did, in fact, do very well in New Bedford, the old whaling city of 100,000 which has the second highest unemployment rate in the country. As Studds remarked to a reporter the day after the election, "There's no excuse, in a city like that, for anyone to vote for Keith."

Nevertheless, it is unusual for a peace candidate to do so well in a working class area which has produced some of the most reactionary politicians in the state. Studds worked hard in New Bedford, campaigning tirelessly at factory gates, shopping centers and social clubs, and building an organization that conducted the closest thing to a professional campaign the city had ever seen. The peace issue was played down in New Bedford, with more emphasis placed on the need for "new leadership" and Studds' identification with Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Since he was an easy winner in a four-way primary in September, Studds never had the problem with embittered conservative Democrats that brought another more publicized peace candidate, Rev. Robert F. Drinan, so perilously close to defeat. Throughout his campaign, Studds sought to disassociate himself from the image many politicians have of liberals-not entirely unjustified-as hopelessly naive "screamers." His success in avoiding this stereotype was attested one day this summer when a union official whose local covered plants in both the 3rd and 12th districts told him, "That fucking priest Drinan is out of his mind," and asked if Studds wanted Representative Phillip Philbin to campaign for him.

With Cambodia and Kent State and the student strike in May, Studds waited expectantly for the onslaught of student volunteers said to be flocking to congressional campaigns. The tip-off should have come one day in late May, when organizers for Movement for a New Congress (MNC) promised 200 volunteers to canvass, and five showed up. But throughout the spring and summer Studds coordinators diligently sought out the students with little or no success. During the two-week break of the Princeton Plan, exactly five students showed up to work. Only on November 3 did students from the Boston area really turn out, and they played an important part in getting out the vote in New Bedford.

Somehow organizations such as MNC and Referendum 70 managed to keep themselves busy all summer, though it certainly wasn't by dispatching college students to campaigns. Referendum 70 was particularly imaginative in finding things to do, swamping Studds headquarters with suggested media campaigns, organization charts and, what proved most popular, a "pert" chart detailing procedures for canvassing and election day (Sample: "Many elections have been won or lost on election day").

According to the local press, the Studds campaign was the most "issue oriented" the 12th District had ever seen, and I suppose it was. What this usually involved was reading the paper, selecting the latest outrage perpetrated by the Administration, and issuing a press release attacking it.

But this was heavy stuff indeed compared to Keith, who stated early in the campaign that a congressman shouldn't have to an opinion on everything, and his primary opponent, State Senator William D. Weeks, whose principle achievement in a six-year legislative career was sponsoring a bill making cranberry juice the official state drink, and who stated as one of the three reasons he ran for Congress the need for an electronic vote counter in the House chamber.

The local press did not exactly distinguish itself either. Initially it had great trouble with the candidate's name, which admittedly provides endless possibilities for exploitation. (The last name especially has good possibilities. Local high school students proved the most imaginative in this respect, trimming bumper stickers to read "Stud," and pasting them on their purple VW dune buggies.) Sometimes it came out Jerry, sometimes Gerald, and one paper used to call him Harry Stubbs.

The Fourth Estate's finest hour came during the long wait for returns the day after election day, when it was apparent-but not definite-that Studds had lost. Surveying the despondent group that was waiting for the returns in a motel room with Studds, a Boston reporter said, "I don't understand why everyone's so unhappy. Why don't you stand up and cheer and say, 'Let's win one for the boss?'"

1970 may have been a good year for the Democratic Party, Richard Nixon to the contrary notwithstanding, but it was discouraging for those who hoped to substantially change the temper of Congress. But even in losing, candidates who had been involved in the McCarthy campaign, such as Studds and Duffey in Connecticut, demonstrated a political realism painfully lacking in the past. In their efforts to create a constituency larger than just suburban liberals, through emphasizing issues such as unemployment and inflation, and in attempting to beat the opposition at a game it very often knows very little about, organization, a much-needed note of reality was injected into the new politics.

Duffey, Studds and a lot of other people lost last month for a variety of reasons, not all to do with the war or campus radicals or Spiro Agnew. Just maybe this year's setbacks will provide valuable lessons for 1972. At any rate, there is an election in two years and something has to be done again.

"The trouble with you kids," said the wife of a New Bedford politician well-acquainted with losing and winning, "is that if you lose once, you give up and quit. What do you ever expect to accomplish?"

What, indeed?