---------------- [Hunter Thompson excerpt] ----------------
But that high didn't last long. The site of Saturday's Caucus was the gym at Assumption College, across town, and the crowd over there was very different. The median age at the Caucus was more like thirty-three and the results of the first ballot were a staggering blow to McCarthy's newborn crusade.
McGovern cleaned up, beating McCarthy almost three to one. When the final tally came in, after more than eight hours of infighting, McGovern's quietly efficient grass-roots organizers had locked up 62 percent of the vote--leaving McCarthy to split the rest, more or less equally, with Shirley Chisholm. Both Muskie and Lindsay had tried to ignore the Caucus, claiming it was "stacked" against them, and as a result neither one got enough votes to even mention.
The outcome of the Massachusetts Rad / Lib Caucus was a shock to almost everybody except the busloads of McGovern supporters who had come there to flex their muscle in public for the first time. McCarthy--who had left early to fly back to Washington for an appearance the next day on Meet the Press--was seriously jolted by the loss.
He showed it the next morning on TV when he looked like a ball of bad nerves caught in a crossfire of hostile questions from Roger Mudd and George Herman. He was clearly off-balance; a nervous shadow of the rising-tide, hammerhead spoiler he had been on Friday night for the rally at Holy Cross.
To make things worse, one of the main organizers of the Rad / Lib Caucus was Jerry Grossman, a wealthy envelope manufacturer from Newton, in the Boston suburbs, and a key McCarthy fundraiser in the '68 campaign . . . but after the Rad / Lib Caucus, Grossman went far out of his way, along with Mudd & Herman, to make sure McCarthy was done for.
He immediately endorsed McGovern, saying it was clear that "Massachusetts liberals no longer believe in McCarthy's leadership quotient." What this meant, according to the unanimous translation by political pros and press wizards, was, "McCarthy won't get any more of Grossman's money."
Grossman ignored the obvious fact that he and other pro-McCarthy heavies had been beaten stupid, on the grass-roots organizing level, by an unheralded "McGovern machine" put together in Massachusetts by John Reuther--a nephew of Walter, late president of the UAW.
I spent most of that afternoon wandering around the gym, listening to people talk and watching the action, and it was absolutely clear--once the voting started--that Reuther had everything wired.
Everywhere I went there was a local McGovern floor manager keeping people in line, telling them exactly what was happening and what would probably happen next . . . while the McCarthy forces--led by veteran Kennedy / Camelot field marshal Richard Goodwin--became more and more demoralized, caught in a fast-rising pincers movement between a surprisingly organized McGovern block on their Right, and a wild-eyed Chisholm uprising on the Left.
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{Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson. Copyright 1973, Straight Arrow Books.}
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