The Cavalier daily :: Thursday, February 1, 1973 :: University of Virginia Library

We were surprised to receive
the other day invitations to
attend the 10th annual meeting
of the Committee to Influence
Elections in Other States. The
Southern Rhodesian
chrome-embossed cards
directed us to report to the
penthouse of the I.T. & T
Building on Park Avenue.

Of course, we were puzzled
both as to the nature of the
organization and the reason for
our invitation. Sensing from
the gilded opulence of the
invites the possibility of
stepping up another social
rung, however, we donned our
black ties and hopped the first
Piedmont piper cub for New
York. After an unusually
smooth 11½ hour flight, we
crash-landed at the Garden
State's Newark International
Airport and grabbed a Carey
bus to the Port Authority.

We were dismayed to
discover that we had missed
both the smorgasbord breakfast
and the Women's Auxiliary
buffet lunch. However, the
theme of the Committee's 10th
annual meeting was
"Republican Politics: 1973,"
and we were relieved to learn
that the morning discussion
had been devoted to a topic of
absolutely no consequence –
the New Jersey gubernatorial
election.

Hefty delegates were still
snoring off their oysters
Rockefeller and lobster
newberg. A chairwoman
informed us that since the
subject of discussion had been
a populace, heavily-industrialized
state, the only qualified
speakers the Republicans had
been able to round up were
Frank Sinatra and Sammy
Davis, Jr.

The afternoon session
promised to be more
titillating: prospects for a
Republican victory in Virginia.
Wondering what we could
contribute besides money – we
had one subway token between
us – we asked a key punch
operator from San Diego, who
seemed to be programming the
entire meeting, as to the reason
for our invitations. She pulled
out our computerized dossiers
and announced that we had
been selected as random
representatives of Virginia
"young folk." (The
chairwoman subsequently
informed us that we were the
only students in the
Commonwealth who had taken
out life subscriptions to
Fortune Magazine before
graduating from high school.)

The keynote speaker for the
afternoon session was the 10th
District's Joel T. Broyhill, who
brought the meeting to its feet
with a harangue on "Mills E.
Godwin: The Politics of
Hope."

Full Circle

Broyhill carefully pointed
out how the party had come
full circle in the last four years.
He noted that the party had
seized the statehouse in an
unfortunate outburst of
progressivism under Linwood.
Holton. Now that these
"renegade dogs" had served
their usefulness, he gleefully
exhorted, the "real
Republicans" could carry on
the cause.

As if to illustrate his point,
a horde of rabid Young
Republicans, led by forty-ish
YR and sometime party
chairman Dick Obershain,
spontaneously hoisted former
Democratic Governor Mills E.
Godwin and former
Democratic, now Independent,
Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., to
the speaker's platform. The
three party leaders eagerly
clasped hands and waved to the
crowd, which by now was
obviously more interested in
the score of waiters serving a
third round of cocktails.

Broyhill drove home the
party's need to unify behind
the candidacy of Godwin for
governor in 1973. At this
point, a vexed and vociferous
Ray Garland was dragged from
the room, overturning a side
table of deviled eggs as be
went. One Puerto Rican
delegate, observing that the
former senatorial candidate
had failed to finish his
Manhattan, gulped it down.

Extolling Virtues

Extolling the virtues or
Generals Lee and Jackson
while excitedly stroking his flat
top, Dick Obsenshain
introduced Godwin with a few
typically irrelevant remarks. To
the aroused huzzahs of the
crowd, the former governor set
aside his mint julep, doffed his
white Panama hat, and
snatched the microphone,
knocking Obenshain's
turtle-shelled glasses off in the
process. With a snort into his
handkerchief, Godwin
launched into an inspired
acceptance of the Republican
nomination for governor in
1973.

Many of the western
delegates, unable to decipher
the Appomattox drawl, rushed
out into the lobby to buy up
the most recent issue of
Reader's Digest, which had just

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