Democrats: McCarthy’s Future

In the months since Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the presidency, Washington has been alive with rumors about the Minnesota Senator’s political and personal plans. The two, it was said, were entangled. Last week McCarthy, 53, made explicit an earlier ambiguous announcement by declaring he would not seek re-election to the Senate next year on any ticket in Minnesota. Columnist Drew Pearson primed Washington’s gossip-go-round by reporting that McCarthy “has decided to make a complete break with the past and leave not only the Senate but his wife Abigail.”

McCarthy ordered his staff to deny that he was seeking a divorce, but he did not repudiate Pearson’s report that the Senator’s marriage was “on the rocks.” The McCarthys have been married 24 years, have four children, and are practicing Roman Catholics. (At one time he was a Benedictine novice, and he still has a carved visage of St. Benedict in his Senate office.)

McCarthy’s announcement left his seat open to Hubert Humphrey, who feels a little underemployed in academe and is eager to get back into politics. Humphrey heard the political news while stopping at Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, on his way back from his visit to Russia. McCarthy’s decision not to run, said Hubert, “opens many possibilities.” No one doubts that the former Vice President will have an easy time returning to the Senate from Minnesota.

For Senator McCarthy, the decision to retire for the time being—regardless of his marital situation—was a practical one. He has lost standing in Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. Among the electorate, law-and-order seems to have become a bigger issue than Viet Nam.

Though he claims that the Nixon Administration has slipped back to where Lyndon Johnson was in 1967, he does not now appear interested in leading another crusade. It has been suggested —and McCarthy has not completely ruled it out—that he move to New York and run for the Senate in 1970 as an independent. But that might split the Democratic vote and ensure a victory for Charles Goodell, the Republican incumbent. As for the future beyond his present Senate term, McCarthy says: “I know what I want to do. Whether I’ll do what I want to do is another question.”