Convention Image Key : Democrats Learn From Rowdy Past

After a week of fruitless balloting, speeches, name-calling, fistfights and seemingly endless demonstrations, some of the delegates simply quit and went home to escape the stifling heat and lingering smell of the circus lions that permeated New York’s Madison Square Garden.

As the voting wore on, other delegates worried how they would pay their hotel bills. Someone even suggested the proceedings adjourn and convene later in Kansas City. It took 103 ballots for the Democratic Party to pick John W. Davis, a distinguished Wall Street lawyer and former ambassador to Britain, as its presidential nominee.

The year was 1924.

A Coolidge Sweep

The verdict on Election Day: The donkey had made an ass of itself. Republican Calvin Coolidge easily was elected to the White House.

More than six decades later, the party’s most contentious convention remains a haunting nightmare as midway through the 1988 presidential primaries no clear front-runner has emerged. Only a few delegates separate Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, his nearest challenger. Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee, Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri all trail far behind.

The presence of no clear leader so deep into the process raises the distinct possibility that the Democratic Party’s nomination will be decided at its convention. The last time Democratic delegates took more than one ballot to choose a standard-bearer was July, 1952, when Adlai E. Stevenson defeated Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee on the third ballot.

Truman Plays Key Role

But there is an important difference between that July in Chicago and this July’s Democratic convention in Atlanta. In 1952, a powerful Democratic President, Harry S. Truman, occupied the White House. Truman served an important role in helping sway delegates to Stevenson, whom he had urged months earlier to run during a private meeting in Blair House.

“I told him what I thought the presidency is, how it has grown into the most powerful and the greatest office in the history of the world,” Truman wrote in a memorandum describing his conversation with the reluctant Illinois governor. “I asked him to take it, and I told him if he would agree, he would be nominated. I told him that a President in the White House always controlled the national convention.”

Finally, in July, Stevenson phoned the President and, in a curious turn of events, asked if it would embarrass the President if he allowed his name to be placed in nomination. Truman recalled in his memoirs that “I replied with a show of exasperation and some rather vigorous words and concluded by saying to Stevenson, ‘I have been trying since January to get you to say that. Why would it embarrass me? . . . I transmitted instructions to my alternate on the Missouri delegation, Thomas J. Gavin, to get behind the Illinois candidate.”

This July, any such Democratic phone calls to the Reagan White House surely would be a wrong number.

Over the years, Democratic delegates have proved far more contentious at conventions than Republicans, fighting 16 multi-ballot struggles vs. 10 for the GOP. The last time a Republican convention went past the first ballot was 1940, when Wendell L. Willkie, a moderate Wall Street lawyer and counsel for big utility companies, won on the sixth ballot in Philadelphia.

The night of his victory, Willkie’s supporters managed to pack the galleries early, excluding friends of other delegates who also had tickets. Their shouts of “We Want Willkie” helped wear down the opposition. (Willkie’s forces had managed to take control of the crucial credentials committee after the committee chairman died at the meeting table before the convention. Later, when Willkie’s representative on the credentials committee was asked if a second set of gallery tickets were printed, he would only smile enigmatically.)

Face Clear Pressures

The nature of nominating conventions has changed, and Democrats now face clear pressures to avoid a prolonged struggle. In 1952, delegates, alternates and guests were given a written reminder: “You will be on television. Eight television cameras will be covering every inch of Convention Hall, inside and outside. They can cover every person in the hall. They’ll pick up everything of interest--and everything out of the ordinary,” it warned.

Now, the power of television has produced an equally powerful desire by the political parties to present a good convention image to boost the nominee’s popularity.

“We cannot even imagine having a convention like the 1924 convention,” said Henry Graff, professor of history at Columbia University and a presidential scholar. “ . . . You have to anoint within 27 minutes plus three commercials.

“In the days that conventions were not on television, conventions could do real live business,” said Elaine C. Kamarck, an expert on convention rules and director of delegate selection for former Vice President Walter F. Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign. “Now what everyone wants to do is present a good image of the party. The reason we try to avoid brokered conventions is nobody likes to hang their dirty laundry out in public.”

‘Very Different Game’

“Democratic Party Chairman Paul Kirk doesn’t want all hell to break loose before 100 million people,” added Stephen J. Wayne, professor of political science and public affairs at George Washington University, a specialist in electoral politics. “ . . . There is no analogy. The game is a very different game.”

Many politicians predict the game really will be played during the six weeks between the final Democratic primaries in California and New Jersey and the opening gavel in Atlanta.

“I think there will be a brokered nomination before the convention, not a brokered convention,” forecast William Schneider, political consultant to The Times and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who predicts that the front-runner will be the nominee, even if he is Jackson. “You cannot take the person who comes in first (after the primaries) and say, ‘You have the most delegates, but we don’t like you. You will come in second.’ ”

“The candidates will make some deals before the convention and after the primaries,” Kamarck predicted. “The candidates will be the brokers . . . (they are the ones) who control the blocs of delegates.” Other well-know party figures “will not be brokering,” she contends.

Better Party Ties Cited

In 1984, after the California primary, Mondale still was short a majority for the convention. Hurried phone calls harvested the 40 or so unpledged delegates necessary for victory. But Mondale enjoyed an advantage today’s candidates do not have: a quarter of a century of relationships in the Democratic Party.

Four years later, the process is far more complicated and almost guarantees compromise. Dukakis, who holds a tight lead in delegates, would require about 80% of those remaining to be picked in primaries to reach a majority of the 4,163 delegates. If he keeps his current pace, Jackson could acquire 1,000 or more delegates by convention time. Add to that the uncertain strength of the other Democratic contenders and, in the words of Wayne, “We are really in uncharted waters.”

To win the nomination, a Democratic presidential candidate has to fish simultaneously in several delegate pools. First, he must win primaries and caucuses. At the same time, he has to hook significant numbers of the 645 so-called super delegates, designated automatically to the Democratic convention. This pool is made up of 26 Democratic governors, 252 members of Congress, five distinguished former elected leaders (former President Jimmy Carter fits in this category), plus 362 members of the Democratic National Committee.

Dukakis Keeps Contacts

Courting these delegates is very much a one-on-one selling job. For example, Dukakis regularly stays in touch with the other Democratic governors he met over the years.

Last June, his delegate hunters started to build a network of contacts inside congressional and senatorial staffs. Profiles of senators and congressmen likely to endorse the Massachusetts governor were compiled. Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation were recruited to act as liaisons with likely supporters. Democratic National Committee members from the Bay State started lobbying fellow national committee members. Mailings of favorable newspaper and magazine articles and other information regularly are sent to the super delegates.

As he travels throughout the country campaigning, Dukakis’ staff invites members of the Democratic National Committee to ride with the candidate on parts of trips and attend meetings. Each day, Dukakis tries to build into his schedule time to personally phone a number of the super delegates, pre-screened by his staff.

“A lot of the communication going on is for the purpose of establishing a foundation between the candidate and these delegates,” said Tad Devine, Dukakis’ chief delegate counter. “It is important that foundation has been laid and established so when he calls and strongly seeks their support, that call will not be out of the clear blue sky.”

Seeks Uncommitted Slates

In addition to wooing the super delegates, Dukakis has laid the groundwork to seek people uncommitted or pledged to candidates who already have withdrawn or may drop out of the race. Since Iowa’s caucuses on Feb. 8, the staff has continued to communicate with people pledged to former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt. The hope is these supporters will be Dukakis delegates by the time the statewide Iowa Democratic convention is held later in the year.

Other candidates have similar hopes. A major question is what will happen to supporters of Gephardt, who won the Iowa caucuses, should he withdraw from the race. Gephardt has been unable to duplicate his strong showing elsewhere and today’s Michigan caucuses are considered crucial to his candidacy. Technically, under Democratic convention rules, all delegates are free to vote for the candidate of their choice. No longer can a delegate be removed from the floor and replaced by a substitute if the delegate’s vote does not reflect what happened in a primary or caucus. Nevertheless, major pressures exist for loyalty. Traditionally, candidates are careful to pick very strong supporters.

Crosscurrents Noted

“There will be crosscurrents that cut across the candidates--labor, for example,” said Richard G. Hutcheson III, delegate counter for the Gore campaign. “Different (issue) caucuses will have their places at the convention. But they (the delegates) are all there by and large for the candidates, and they will be reasonably candidate-loyal.”

Nowhere was candidate loyalty so sorely tested than at the 1924 Democratic convention in New York, a struggle vividly portrayed by Robert K. Murray, a history professor at Pennsylvania State University, in his book “The 103rd Ballot.”

Babe Ruth was in a batting slump, Will Rogers was playing in the “Ziegfeld Follies” and Eddie Cantor in “Kid Boots,” when the streets near Madison Square Garden were swept clear of pickpockets and thieves to prepare for the delegates. Sixteen names were put in nomination. After the interminable demonstrations and nominating speeches, the actual balloting did not begin until the day the convention was scheduled to end.

The voting soon developed into a struggle between William Gibbs McAdoo, secretary of the Treasury in the Administration of President Woodrow Wilson and New York’s own popular Gov. Alfred Emanuel Smith.

Discomfort Mounted

Ballot after ballot, as the voting continued and the discomfort mounted, the country followed the saga. Each ballot began with the chairman of Alabama’s delegation trumpeting its favorite son Oscar W. Underwood. Soon, and with the power of radio, the cry “Alabama casts 24 votes for Oscar W. Underwood” gripped the nation.

Finally, James Cox, the titular leader of the Democratic Party, who had stayed home in Ohio listening to the convention on the radio but keeping in touch by telephone, traveled to New York and intervened. He had removed his own name from contention on the 65th ballot. With Cox’s help, the stalemate eventually was broken and Davis became the convention’s choice after 103 exhausting ballots.

“It was a nightmare,” Columbia University’s Graff said.

Times researcher Eileen Quigley contributed to this story.