Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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fnolei By Tom n».inp A Congressman The political hesitancy evident throughout the country won out in this California congressional race too. Of the two liberal candidates, both former Stanford students, the 12th district voted by a 2 to 1 margin to return to Washington its more conservative but nationally respected incumbent, Paul McCloskey. His opponent. Democrat David Harris, challenged him vigorously in one of the few races that most would consider was run between two real personalities rather than robot electioneers. They met in more than two dozen public debates, both building up that close personal contact with their constituents that characterized their strategies. On campus, the Harris campaign especially demonstrated the touch of a personalized campaign. Many student volunteers, besides doing the normal button boasting, took to combing residences to speak individually to other students about Harris. At voting time, however, university precincts showed that only 56 percent had responded to their persuasions. Yet those who so strongly believed in David Harris and so actively took his ideas and ideals to the student body did not easily give up on his chances to succeed in the political arena. Even after the election was all over, they were reported to be saving their bumper stickers for next time. 19

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ELECTION 76 A President Maybe Americans were too burned out by all the bicentennial fireworks and commercial gimcracks to reaffirm our political system by voting with enthusiasm in the elections of our country's 200th year. It wasn't that no one really cares, but just that no one could decide. In rooms and lounges throughout the campus, students trying to make up their minds tuned into the Debates. Those who paused to listen on any of those three evenings listened hoping that the two candidates, face to face, might reveal something, anything, about themselves that could command a vote. Yet few viewers actually sat out the whole hour, if they bothered to sit at all. Interest soon deteriorated into scepticism, as it tends to do around here. Derisive comments by scat- tered observers soon proved to be the only noteworthy ones, however. Except perhaps when important foreign policy secrets slipped out, as on the night the incumbent candidate assured the nation that Eastern Europe was free from Communist domination. Whether they stopped to catch Foot-in-Mouth Ford doing it again or to be dazzled by The Smile Carter, debate baiting was the most active involvement to be seen anywhere on campus before the elections. Even the number who watched the returns at Tresidder or came to down beer and champagne at the new American Studies House was relatively small. Probably the turnout would have been greater if election night didn't so inconveniently fall right in the middle of midterms. But even those attuned in any way to the democratic ritual seemed somehow detached. If any had much commitment invested in the outcome, not many showed it. Like the rest of America, they seemed tired of Ford's sleepy leadership. Stirred by Carter's energy, they seemed inclined to get up and follow him. Yet no one was at any one point certain of where he was going, or if his way was really the way they wanted to go. Perhaps Carter's campaign pledges to aggressively alleviate unemployment struck a responsive chord among today's job hungry students. Or maybe many here could readily identify with someone who admitted to lusting in his heart. For whatever reasons, Carter carried two thirds of university area votes, although they weren't enough to dissuade a more conservatively minded California from donating its bloc of electoral votes to the only president who had never before received either electoral or popular votes in taking the office. In the end, with 51 percent of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes going to the peanut farmer who was a nuclear engineer and former Georgia governor, just enough Americans had taken the chance and opted for a change in leadership. As state by state the votes added up for Jimmy Carter, never had it seemed so apparent that each person's vote counted. Yet never had each voter seemed less convinced about his or her choice. 18

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A Proposition Perhaps the most obvious, to the point of being obnoxious campus campaigning was the effort to stir up support for Proposition 14. A deluge of orange and black flyers and bumper stickers proclaimed Yes on 14. Pickets and the ex-horters that carried them strove to catch the eyes and ears of speeding bicyclists and otherwise busy students. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, leaders of the United Farm Workers that initiated and endorsed the measure, both visited the campus as part of their statewide effort to turn liberal sympathies into votes. Criticized by opponents for violating the bastions of private property rights with badly written legislation, the measure was advocated by supporters as a needed step toward protecting the rights of farm workers through a functioning system for organization and arbitration. Although the efforts of the labor sympathizers were largely successful among university area voters, the fight for Proposition 14 was nevertheless another one lost by the UFW to the greater influence of the farm owners, leaving still unsettled the bitter disagreements between these two groups, each determined to defend their immediate interests and rights at whatever expense of time and energy—and money. 20