The Town Talk from Alexandria, Louisiana • Page 88

MO Town Talk, Alexandria-Pineville, Sunday, February 19, 1978 Pollster Has Special Tie to Carter vertising campaign. head of the Democratic Party, FHitnr'c Note Pat Caddell Caddell lives in fashionable Georgetown, drives a Mercedes 28USE and as a bachelor with administration connections is frequently sought as a dinner guest at Washington parties. But he's mindful of what Warhol said of fleeting fame. "I know that today you are important and successful and powerful and tomorrow you just might be nothing at all." the president will want to be involved." Caddell is doing polls for at least 12 candidates in the 1978 elections, including Sen. Floyd Haskell of Colorado, Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts and Sen. Wendell Anderson of Minnesota. His partner in many business deals is 43-year-old Jerry Raf-shoon, who planned Carter's ad THE HERMIT CRABS stitute substance for style." Caddell handled the ensuing press uproar with his usual self-deprecation and humor. He appeared at parties wearing a T-shirt showing his picture and the slogan "There's no substance here." Caddell says the quotation was "taken out of context and distorted. All I was saying was that the presidency had been battered so badly that one of the problems Carter had coming into office was how best to restore the credibility of the presidency and build up the kind of confidence in his leadership he needed to lead on important issues." Caddell was the mastermind behind suggestions like the use of fireside chats, town meetings, frequent press conferences and fewer "imperial frills" of the presidency, like limousines, to maintain public favor. Caddell's climb to the White House inner circle started when he was 17 and working for the speaker of the house in Florida. He made a model projection on how to predict election returns, called the results correctly and started his reputation as a political Wunderkind. While at Harvard from 1968 to 1972, where he wrote his thesis on the changes in Southern politics, Caddell and some friends formed Cambridge Survey Research, Inc. Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern signed Caddell, then 21, as his pollster. It was during that campaign that Caddell met Jimmy Carter in an Atlanta kitchen. Before long he was analyzing the mood of the nation for yet another long-shot candidate. Caddell's relationship and influence with the president is a source of continuing interest here. "I just try to be helpful and offer some outside perspective to what's happening," Caddell says. "A lot of the time he takes my advice. A lot of the time he doesn't. My influence is that if I feel strongly about something he'll listen to me if it makes sense "Carter uses surveys as a tool to help him understand how best to lead the country. The public really does want leadership. If coherent, real arguments are presented to them, they will follow." Caddell says he communicates with Carter about once a week, either by telephoning him directly, writing memos or going through Tim Kraft, the president's appointments secretary. "It's a very informal relationship these days," Caddell says. "It really goes in cycles. I think we'll really be busy this year because it's an election year and as Are BACK at Now $1" Alexandria Mall isn't officially on the White House staff, but he has Carter's ear. At 27. he's the president's pollster and adviser on how he might please the public. Some say if it hadn't been for Caddell, Carter might still be in Plains.) By Jurate Kazickas WASHINGTON (AP) On the russet suede walls of his office, two blocks from the White House, Pat Caddell has an Andy Warhol silk-screen print of Jimmy Carter. It's a souvenir of the man he helped get elected, of the man he continues to advise. It also reminds Carter's 27-year-old pollster of a Warhol comment that he finds appropriate: Everybody is famous for 15 minutes. "My favorite saying to everybody in this administration is that but for 10.000 votes in Ohio and Hawaii, where would any of us be?" Caddell says. He's had to answer that question as much as anyone, coping with accusations that he's profiteering from his Carter connection. His polling business expanded into "seven figures" by his own account in the last year with such clients as Exxon and Citicorp. And he's had to deal with his celebrity status as the whiz kid, the bachelor about town, the Carter confidant. The limelight was especially bright last May when a 51-page memo Caddell prepared in December 1976 was made public. There he warned Carter that "too many good people have been defeated because they tried to sub- Drainage Report V1LLE PLATTE The Evan-. geline Parish Police Jury Tuesday heard a report from the Department of Public Works engineer Robert Smith concerning the third year of the Duralde des Cannes drainage project. The jury accepted the recommendation to pay the contractor Rimmer Garrett Co. for unanticipated work on the project amounting to $6,000. The jury accepted a change of group insurance for its employees. The new insurance police is with Business Life Insurance and will take effect March 1. The jury accepted the low bid of Luna Drapery Shop of Mamou for curtains to be installed in the Mamou Neighborhood Center. The bid was for $1,104.20. The jury voted to request assistance from the State Department of Public Works for the Bayou Grand Louis drainage project. The expected cost of the project has been placed at Reporter Dies CINCINNATI (UPI) Cincinnati Enquirer investigative reporter Gerald White died Wednesday at Christ Hospital following a lengthy illness. He was 49. White, described by the newspaper as a "meticulous and tireless researcher," had been the paper's investigative reporter the past 10 years. Men, Women Children PRICES RANGE FROM $1 1 90 to