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The party's old guard does not deny that the new young pols beat them at their own game, but that does not keep them from resenting it—sometimes bitterly and unfairly. Said Rhode Island State Chairman Lawrence McGarry: "McGovern's got draft dodgers going to Miami." The list of party veterans and major officeholders who were shoved out of their delegate seats in Miami Beach reads like a who's who of the Democrats (see box, page 12). Said Delton Houtchens, the Missouri state Democratic chairman who went to Miami Beach as a delegate-at-large: "I came through politics and worked my way up. We didn't do it overnight. These kids in Miami will be there for a lark, and that'll be the end of it." Beyond the anguish of power lost, however, many pros contend that they still know best what is good for the party and the country—and McGovern is not it. Or so it seemed to them before Miami. Later, with the campaign ahead and Nixon as the common enemy, some measure of party unity might become possible.
As the 35,000 delegates, alternates, newsmen and other observers descended on Miami Beach last week, the battle between insurgents and regulars was being fought furiously and appropriately on the issue of who would be the delegates from California and Illinois. All week long, the credentials question caromed from one court to another, leaving McGovern's delegate count an open question. The crucial issue centered on the ownership of California's 271 delegates. McGovern captured all of them on June 6 according to the state's winner-take-all rule—a rule curiously at variance with the spirit of reform. In the Democratic Credentials Committee late last month, a stop-McGovern coalition led by Hubert Humphrey's agents pushed through an after-the-fact change in the rules, parceling out the California delegation proportionately—a move that threatened to cost McGovern 151 delegates and prevent his victory on the first ballot.
Early last week, a federal district court judge in Washington upheld the Credentials Committee not only on the California question but also on the issue of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's 58 uncommitted delegates—a bloc that had been successfully unseated by a Mc-Governite challenge charging that Daley had violated the reform guidelines. Then, two days later, the U.S. appeals court in Washington affirmed the judgment on the Daley delegation but ruled against the Credentials Committee on the question of California. With that, George McGovern's delegate count shot back up again to within a few votes of the 1,509 he needed for nomination. Expelling 151 McGovern delegates from California, said the court, was "inconsistent with fundamental principles of due process."
Not so, said the Supreme Court, called into conference to decide the case. In a 6-3 vote, the court granted a stay of the appeals court ruling, contending that the matter was for the convention to judge. That in effect sanctioned the proportional allotment of the California delegates that the Credentials Committee had voted, and McGovern's total strength coming into the convention dropped once again by 151 votes. Thus the issue would have to be fought out on the convention floor.