Candidates Compete for Delegates in Three Primary Elections Today

Presidential primaries in North Carolina, Indiana and the District of Columbia today constitute the next stops on the way to the White House.

In the Democratic contests, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. will divvy up 178 delegates, while Republicans George Bush and Patrick J. Buchanan are fighting over 122. Clinton and Bush are expected to win the majority of the delegates.

Bush has mathematically eliminated Buchanan by racking up 1,122 delegates--more than the 1,105 he needs to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention this August in Houston. Buchanan has 56.

Clinton holds 1,591 delegates to Brown’s 322; former candidate Paul E. Tsongas still controls 536 delegates. The winner needs 2,145 to be nominated at the Democratic National Convention in July.

Even in North Carolina, where Buchanan had expected to do well, a recent poll showed him with 17% of the vote--a far cry from his high point of 37% in New Hampshire last February. The conservative commentator has yet to win a primary. He had hoped to change that in North Carolina, home of his friend and ideological soul mate, Sen. Jesse Helms. But Helms signed on with the Bush campaign.

Buchanan has campaigned only in North Carolina; he ceded the other two contests to Bush. He had planned to spend eight days campaigning in the state but headed for California in the wake of the Los Angeles riots and the not guilty verdicts in the case against four white police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King. Buchanan arrived in Los Angeles on Monday and headed for Koreatown, the site of arson and lootings.

“I think what we saw in the smoking ruins of Los Angeles this last week is the abject and total failure of Great Society liberalism,” he said.

Democrats Clinton and Brown have campaigned in all three places. Brown spent Monday in Washington, while Clinton toured Los Angeles. His first stop was the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, where he met privately Sunday night with the Rev. Cecil (Chip) Murray and other community leaders.

“I am convinced if we can heal the wounds of racial division in this community, then we can do it anywhere,” Clinton said Monday. “I am convinced that if we cannot do it here, then America can never be what it is meant to be in the 1990s.”

Brown had interrupted his Midwest campaign last week to return to his home state. He toured Los Angeles on Friday and said the government’s response to the 1965 Watts riots was 27 years late. In Washington on Monday, Brown pleaded for the government to help the cities. “The truth is there’s a continuing abandonment of our children, of our cities and of our future,” he said in the park across the street from the White House. “It is up to the President and the Congress and the leadership of the Democratic Party to act and to act now.”

Other electoral contests today include North Carolina’s congressional races, where blacks could win the Democratic nomination in two districts.