Nixon Wins Landslide Victory; Democrats Hold Senate, House

The election ended a campaign that began last winter with the largest field of candidates in recent history and dwindled to one of the most desultory contests.

No less than 11 Democrats were running active campaigns when the primary season began in New Hampshire and Florida last March. In addition, two Republican congressmen challenged Mr. Nixon from the opposite wings of his party.

The President ignored his intra-party critics -- liberal Rep. Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey of California and conservative Rep. John M. Ashbrook of Ohio -- and their challenges melted in the glow of Mr. Nixon's successful Peking and Moscow summitry.

Meantime, the Democrats were beating each other with regularity, while the field of presidential aspirants dwindled slowly.

It was not until the fourth primary in Wisconsin in April that McGovern managed to come out on top. Two of the first three contests -- in New Hampshire and Illinois -- went to the pre-primary favorite for the nomination. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine. But Muskie's unimpressive margin over McGovern in New Hampshire and his fourth-place finish in Florida (won by Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace) severely dimmed his luster.

With such lightly regarded contenders as Sen. Vance Hartke of Indiana, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, ex-Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota and New York Mayor John V. Lindsay sidelined by the end of the Wisconsin primary, it became essentially a four-man struggle among McGovern, Muskie, Wallace and Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, the 1968 Democratic nominee.

A double loss on April 25 -- to McGovern in Massachusetts and to Humphrey in Pennsylvania -- finished Muskie, as far as active participation in the primaries was concerned.

Wallace continued to run a strong race, despite lack of formal organization, exploiting the current of public protest with the slogan, "Send Them a Message." After his Florida win, he came north and finished second to McGovern in Wisconsin, won North Carolina and Tennessee and scored his most impressive victories on May 16 by capturing both Maryland and Michigan.

The previous day, however, Wallace was cut down by a would-be assassin while campaigning in Laurel, Md. The bullets fired by Arthur Bremer ended Wallace's campaigning for the year and left him a cripple in a wheelchair.

McGovern and Humphrey fought a series of inconclusive battles -- Humphrey winning in Ohio, McGovern in Nebraska -- an then in the crucial winner-take-all showdown in California on June 6, McGovern won by a margin of 175,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast.

The California victory was a costly one for McGovern, however.

Already a subject of some suspicion among party regulars because his support came primarily from students, peace movement activists and other "amateurs," he was put on the defensive by Humphrey on two issues that were to haunt the rest of his campaign.

McGovern had proposed in #31 billion reduction in the defense budget, which Humphrey said would "cut into the very muscle of our defense." He also had proposed a $1,000-per-person income grant to all Americans as a substitute for the existing welfare system -- a plan which Humphrey denounced as a "compounded mess" and whose cost, McGovern was forced to admit in debate, he could nor accurately estimate.

Although McGovern completed a sweep of the late primaries in New Mexico, South Dakota, New Jersey and New York, he was on the defensive from the time of those California debates with Humphrey.

Strongly pressured by George Meany and other union leaders who opposed McGovern's nomination, Humphrey sanctioned a challenge to the California winner-take-all rule that awarded McGovern all 271 delegates for his plurality victory.

A coalition of Humphrey-Muskie-Wallace backers on the convention Credentials Committee voted to strip McGovern of 151 of his California votes, putting his nomination in jeopardy, but after a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the issue was left to the convention itself to decide. On the opening night of the Miami Beach meeting, the McGovern forces -- aided by a series of parliamentary rulings by party chairman Lawrence F. O'Brien -- prevailed by a 380-vote margin and his nomination was thereby assured.

The convention, however, was marked by a series of rebuffs to the "regular" Democratic elements that had opposed McGovern's nomination, symbolized by a vote to unseat Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, most powerful of the surviving big-city bosses, in favor of an insurgent group.

What came to be seen as the crucial decision of the convention was made by McGovern on the afternoon after he had won the nomination by a one-sided margin over Wallace and Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington, who inherited the labor-Southern-"regular" support after Muskie and Humphrey withdrew from the race.

McGovern repeatedly pressed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to be his running mate and when Kennedy gave his final refusal, just an hour before the deadline, the new nominee turned to Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri, a little-known freshman senator whose chief asset was that he was a border-state Roman Catholic acceptable to party elements that had opposed McGovern's nomination.

Ten days later, on July 25, McGovern and Eagleton jointly disclosed that -- unknown to the public and to McGovern at the time of selection -- the Missourian had been hospitalized three times between 1960 and 1966 for what Eagleton called "nervous exhaustion and fatigue."

Eagleton said the therapy had included shock treatment. McGovern said the disclosure in no way affected Eagleton's status, volunteering in a comment that was to echo from then to election day that he stood behind his choice of Eagleton "1,000 per cent."

Within 72 hours, while Eagleton was proceeding to campaign as if nothing happened, there was a crisis in the McGovern camp. Newspaper editorials and leading Democrats were questioning whether Eagleton -- on the basis of his medical history and his efforts to conceal his condition -- was fit for a job that put him in line of succession to the presidency. After a series of uncomfortable days in which McGovern himself and his top aides plated stories with newsmen suggesting that Eagleton should "voluntarily" resign from the ticket, the two men met again on July 31 and announced they had "jointly agreed that the best course is for Sen. Eagleton to step aside."

In the following days, McGovern offered the nomination to Kennedy, Humphrey, Muskie and several other Democratic senators- -- all of whom publicly refused -- before picking Sargent Shriver, the former Peace Corps and anti-poverty director who had never run for public office.

By this time, with a month of campaign time squandered and the problems of reunifying his divided party incomparably increased, McGovern was facing an obviously uphill struggle against the incumbent President. His deficit in the public opinion polls increased from 10 points in May -- just before Humphrey began his assault in the California primary campaign -- to 34 points by the end of the Eagleton-Shriver affair in August.

Meantime, Mr. Nixon was doing nothing to disturb political trends that appeared to be moving in his direction.