‘New Democrats’ Will Back Liberal Slate

A fledgling faction of the Democratic Party is organizing as the “New Democrats” and plans to back liberal candidates in coming elections.

The group claims the support of former presidential candidates Eugene McCarthy and Gary Hart in its self-declared mission of wresting control of the party from “political managers, technocrats and media consultants.”

McCarthy, whose early success in the 1968 Democratic primaries led President Lyndon B. Johnson to abandon his bid for a second term, is director of the New Democrats’ steering committee.

He said he hopes that the group can help counter the notion that being a liberal is a political liability.

Democrats, not the Republicans, must shoulder the blame for liberalism’s evolution into the dreaded “L word” of the last presidential campaign, the former Minnesota senator said in an interview.

“Gradually, the word began to take on the characteristic of a noun. At that point, it was subject to all kinds of attacks by the conservatives,” McCarthy said.

“But then in the ‘80s, liberals began to attack liberalism and admit that it had these serious faults. I think (New York Mayor Edward I.) Koch said he was a sane liberal--the implication being that all other liberals were insane.”

Hart, a former Colorado senator and the favorite Democrat in the 1988 presidential campaign until public disclosures about his private life took him out of the running, has given his blessing to the movement but declined a leadership position, the New Democrats say.

The group’s founder, Jesse Yoder, is a philosophy professor at the University of Lowell in Massachusetts who worked in McCarthy’s 1968 campaign. He said the group plans to field its first candidates for congressional and other political offices in 1990.

Darcy Richardson, a political activist and sports handicapper in the Philadelphia area, said he plans to be the first New Democrat to run for Congress, and will begin his campaign next month.

“I think the New Democrats label will draw some attention. It’ll make people look twice and at least give us a hearing,” said Richardson, who has his eye on Pennsylvania’s 13th congressional district seat, currently held by Republican Lawrence Coughlin.

The New Democrats will try to join the Woodstock generation with the later ones who were politically weaned on Reaganomics, Yoder said.

The group stands for rolling back tax breaks for the wealthy, immediate reductions in automotive and industrial pollution levels and higher pay for teachers, he said.

“People who were around in ’68 are the decision-makers today, and I think those are the people we will appeal to, but of course we’ll also be appealing to new people--the students and others within the party who see the merit of emphasizing the environment, the economy and education,” Yoder said.

James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, is one of the skeptics who doubt that the neoliberal wing will ever put a Democrat in the White House.

A faction trying to rescue the Democratic Party should be appealing to Southern conservatives such as Sens. Charles Robb of Virginia and Sam Nunn of Georgia, not liberals, he said.

“They will not be able to pull from the South. If you cannot pull from the South, you lose the election,” Thurber said.