1910 K Street

© Neil Scott 2006

Nineteen Ten K Street rested among a handful of 50s era buildings on Washington, DC’s power corridor. Tucked in among glinting glass and steel structures, they looked like old men wearing suits with frayed cuffs.

To the left of 1910 stood a two-story building that was a doll house by comparison. Inside, one James McCord, employed by the White House, occupied its top floor. He was installing wire-taps for 1910 K Street, or “bugging” the presidential headquarters of U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie.

The wire taps, which were used to gather political intelligence for the purpose of sabotaging Muskie’s 1972 Presidential campaign, were unnecessary. Muskie flamed out.

There came a time in the New Hampshire primary when William Loeb, the arch conservative editor of the Manchester Union Leader (Loeb labelled Nixon’s historic trip to China, “immoral, indecent, insane"), and a constitutionally rude human, editorially attacked Muskie’s wife, Jane, as a drunk who told dirty jokes. It was bait, made out of whole cloth. Muskie leapt.
The Maine Sen-ator rented a flatbed truck and directed an aide to drive it to the Guardian. There, he boarded the flatbed, and with his head lowered, reviled the editor before network news cameras, choking back his rage as snow flakes swirled around him.

The television networks endlessly re-played their videos of Muskie struggling to control his emotions, and losing. Concluding, he said, “And maybe I [have] said all I should on it…” But, Muskie continued. He spat out his words, calling Leob “a gutless coward.”

Voters viewed Muskie’s outburst (as they did Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 over-exuberant election night pep talk) as a lack of emotional control. Inexplicably, Muskie had engaged in behavior that was out-of-character. This highly regarded man, destined to be Secretary of State, deserved better. But his candidacy plummeted.

It marked the end of establishment party rule in the Democratic party, and the beginning of the citizen involvement in decision-making. Senator George McGovern’s candidacy ascended as quickly as Muskie’s fell. After clinching the Democratic Party nomination, McGovern made 1910 K Street his National Headquarters.

A giant sign that spanned the second and fourth floors, hung on the front of 1910. It impacted the eye. Campaign artist Leon Rotner had painted a two-story high McGovern rainbow button. Today, the Smithsonian Institution owns it. More, on this later.

Nineteen Ten’s facade was graceful, modest, and dignified. But, inside, it felt as small as a phone booth. People mentally hunched their shoulders as
they crossed the threshold into a tiny lobby that, in turn, led to a narrow hallway.

To the left was a reception room, smaller than a studio apartment. On the right were two self-service elevators that, we always suspected, were run by hamsters laboring on a treadmill.

John Kennedy’s longtime pal and pol, Lawrence O’Brien and his staff—the establishment of the Democratic Party—took over 1910’s top floor. They were consummate professionals. They looked the part. The campaign chairman would emerge from his limousine, cigarette first, wearing a designer shirt and a tailored suit.

McGovern’s national campaign staff filled the other seven floors. The majority ranged in age from eighteen to their early thirties, and dressed as the young dress worldwide: blue jeans, t-shirts or soft sports sweaters, casual shoes. Mixed in among this staff were unpaid volunteers. Maybe three of the volunteers went barefoot. Different fashion code.

Together, the staff and volunteers reflected the campaign’s rainbow button, the symbol of diversity. They were an inclusive amalgamation of American youth: every skin shade imaginable; ethnically, racially, economically diverse. They were the 70’s equivalent of Andrew Jackson’s frontier supporters, and they reveled in their youth and idealism.

In style and dress, O’Brien was to the McGovern staff what Beverly Hills bank president Milburn Drysdale was to Jed Clampett and Granny. There was a bit of a cultural gap. Graffiti written on the wall of the basement stairs asked, “Is there intelligent life on the Eighth Floor?”

There was indeed very intelligent life on the eighth floor. There was culture too—just from a different era. When the Campaign Chairman listened to music, it was the tunes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. Everywhere else, the Rolling Stones and Cat Stevens ruled.

The basement of 1910 was home, literally, for the photography staff. Keith Wessel, 18, was freshly graduated from high school, and was one of four full-time campaign photographers. Keith, who had spent his youth in the city of Ames Iowa, used his farm state self-reliance to build four bedrooms, and a photography darkroom.

One campaign summer evening, Keith, who wore a ponytail, stopped by my home. He lamented that he had been ordered to cut it off if he wanted to continue to ride the Zoo Plane. That aircraft followed the candidate’s plane in the skies and flew the support staff to the next rally. In the absence of the candidate, they were uninhibited. Hence, the name.

For fun, I showed Keith a wig that a colleague, a Broadway actress with Hollywood culture, had talked me, with a full head of hair, into buying. After explosive laughter, Keith asked if he could have it. His plan, he said, was to tuck his ponytail inside the ‘rug.’ It might have worked. But Keith chose to cut his ponytail.

Volunteer Headquarters was located at the end of the first floor hallway. Joan Schwartz and Lael Stegall during the day, and at night, I with co-directors Betty Penzner and Lynn Gore, ran the all-volunteer effort of the Headquarters.

We provided workers to the 1,000 plus paid campaign staff in five locations. These volunteers did eighty percent of the campaign’s ‘grunt’ work: typing, faxing from first generation fax machines, filing, mimeographing, chauffeuring, even babysitting. During the last month, we emptied the trash so the campaign could have the money the cleaning company was being paid.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Theodore White, who pioneered a new breed of writers, visited 1910 K Street during the last week of the election. He was appalled. White talked about a barefoot male who got on his elevator, peeled a banana, and tossed the skin on the elevator floor.

I was at headquarters the day White visited. Like everyday, I rode the elevators countless times. Yet, I saw no banana peel. I believe White. I believe it happened. And it also must have been picked up immediately by up a staff member, very likely someone sharing the same elevator ride as White.

We were ordinary Americans. Our values included putting garbage into the trash can. Still, just one person, who may have been a visitor—the front door was open to all, no security—handed White a stereotype that was applied to all our volunteers and staff, by a single half-second careless act.

In fairness to White, that event was able to happen because the McGovern campaign was the most egalitarian campaign since Abraham Lincoln’s. Across the country, at every level, campaign headquarters were wide open to all comers.

In fact, that’s how the McGovern campaign hooked me. I went to 310 First Street, SE, the campaign’s second headquarters, to get a feel of the organization. Teresa Petrovic, a young, attractive brunet, greeted me from the front desk.

“I need to look around to see if I want to join the campaign,” I said.

“Help yourself,” said Teresa. She waved a hand toward the hallway by the desk, while answering a call with the other. “Go down the hall, and look around all you want.”

Lined with four offices on either side, the hallway opened up into a larger room, about one-quarter the size of nearby Folger Park. Besides each wall was a column of desks for Field Directors, schedulers, etc. I picked three Directors out at random (Ted Pulliam, Barbara McKenzie Holum, and Judy Harrington). Each of them took time to talk unrushed; every one of them friendly. I felt at home.

The banana incident would never have happened at Nixon Campaign Headquarters, namely the Committee to Re-Elect the President. (After playing with the name briefly, I realized it was possible to fairly give the committee the acronym “CREEP.” I mentioned this to Frank Mankiewicz, who said, “Or, it could stand for CRAP.” He had noticed the acronym, too, and used it when talking to the press. The name stuck.)

I learned first hand that CREEP was not as inclusive as the McGovern campaign in accepting volunteers. During the break after the Democratic Convention, a young visitor suggested that I should check out how President Richard Nixon’s volunteer office was run. That, and boredom, led to a visit to CREEP.

CREEP was located at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was housed in a 60s era office structure catty corner from The White House Executive Office Building. As soon as I got off the elevator, a guard stopped me. “I’d like to tour Nixon’s volunteer office,” I said.

The guard picked up his phone and announced, “You have a volunteer out here.” The guard and I waited in silence in the small hallway. There wasn’t even ceiling music.

The elevator doors slid open and a man in a suit stepped out. He nodded to the guard, who reached behind his desk and pressed a button. Neither spoke. The glass door to the Volunteer Section audibly unlocked. The door relocking was a welcome noise. Then, absolute quiet. Five minutes later came another audible unlocking. A man in black appeared.

“You want to volunteer, I understand?” he asked.

I thought: “Don’t be silly. I just want to see how you do my job.” But, a sudden surge of common sense told me it wouldn’t do to say that. I reached for words, “Well, uh, how does someone volunteer?” I asked. “You can’t just walk in?”

“No,” he said. A pause. “No.” Another pause. “You have to fill out an application.” He handed me a multi-page questionnaire. “Fill this out. It takes three weeks for us to do a background check. If you pass, we’ll call you.”

I couldn’t believe what I heard. “A background check!?” I blurted out. “To volunteer!?”

“Yes,” he said, surprised at my shock. “All volunteers undergo a background check.” He stared at me quizzically. The guard just stared.

It was time to go. I thanked him, took the questionnaire, and left.

At that moment I realized Nixon security probably screened out all barefoot applicants. The bananas didn’t matter. Looking back, with what we learned about Watergate, the man was probably a former FBI agent, a member of the “Plumbers.”

The rear of 1910’s second floor was home to the campaign’s home-grown printing facility, which operated around-the-clock, nine to a shift. One of the twenty seven member team was Joe Pirozzolo, who Judy Harrington, Midwest Coordinator, once described as “my favorite free spirit.”

Joe was a free spirit, complete with leather jacket, helmet and motorcycle. He and his future wife Ginger Wiles, worked for Ethel Kennedy, and volunteered their evenings. Joe, a first-rate cook, made quiche for the election night primaries.

Joe won fame not only for his food, but because every time he didn’t cook, we lost a primary. When Joe was present and dishing up hot quiche, it was a given we were going to win that night. The superstition held until the general election. Unless one considers that prevailing on the major issues, though losing the office, counts as a win.

The front of the second floor housed McGovern’s press operation. Its support staff was composed mostly of professional journalists who started as volunteers.

One volunteer was a National Geographic Editor who walked over from the Society’s 17th and M Street offices after work. After an hour of stuffing envelopes, he told me his occupation, and I walked him to the press section. Within a month, he became the editor of the morning news digest for the candidate.

One of the earliest paid staffers was, I think, Frank Mankiewicz, a Kennedy family friend. He had worked at the Peace Corps with Sergent Shriver, and later became Bobby Kennedy’s press agent.

Mankiewicz apparently had followed his political heart in going with McGovern, who was the spiritual brother of Robert Kennedy, a man Mankiewicz had been with to the end. And then with his family.

Frank Mankiewicz joined McGovern’s quest for the Presidency at the end of May in 1971. The Gallup Poll of August 1971 showed McGovern polling at six percent (up from two percent) against thirteen potential democratic candidates. If Mankiewicz foresaw McGovern capturing the nomination, he was uncommonly prescient.

The first campaign headquarters occupied but the bottom floor of a three story townhouse at 201 Maryland Avenue, NE, across the street from a Senate parking lot (now the home of the Hart Senate Office Building).

A reporter who was interviewing Campaign Manager Gary Hart, looked around the tiny office, and said, wonderingly, “There must be more to this campaign than meets the eye.”

Hart later told a magazine writer that he was thinking how that morning he had carried the candidate’s suitcase to the car, driven him to the airport, returned to call donors and beg for campaign contributions, and then crank out a press release, responded with, “Often, in this campaign, there is less than meets the eye.”

The staff called Gary Hart and Frank Mankiewicz by their first names, at Frank’s and Gary’s own instructions. Excepting O’Brien, the top officers were approachable by all staff, at any level. Curiously, I later learned that Gary also had a staff nickname. According to Marilyn Bittner, Frank’s assistant, the staff immediately around Gary called him “RHDL.”

“RHDL stands for ‘Ruggedly Handsome Denver Lawyer,’ Marilyn said. “Haven’t you ever read that? It’s how reporters always refer to Gary when writing about him.”

The third floor was home to the campaign’s financing operation. The most interesting sub-division was where staff opened mail with campaign donations. It wasn’t about money. Staffers learned that McGovern’s persona, character, and his campaign had reached not just people’s political convictions, but also their heart’s hopes

Contributions were small, $5, $10, $20, and $50. Morris Dees, who later would establish The Southern Poverty Law Center, pioneered mass mail fundraising for the McGovern campaign. He sent out a seven page fundraising letter at a time current wisdom taught that long letters from politicians would not be read.


But, it was an historic success. Thousands of contributions flooded headquarters. By the final months of the campaign, the post office had to add more deliveries. Nearly all checks came with handwritten letters.

An astonishing number of contributors wrote that they held McGovern’s call for Americans to “Come Home” to our core values as being so sacred and important that they had enclosed their entire pay check. Even in October, scores of Social Security recipients enclosed a personal check for all of that month’s Social Security payment.

The Fourth Floor was headquarters for the campaign’s schedulers, and the Advance Team who arranged the candidate’s campaign visits. The Floor also held the office for Frank Mankiewicz.

Even so, the fourth floor belonged to Steve Robbins. He was the Scheduling Director. Tall, lean, and wiry, Steve also directed, and formidably commanded the Advance Team. He established what can only be called a “presence” that permeated every room on the Fourth Floor.

Steve probably had the toughest job. Pulling together fifteen or more campaign appearances daily is a Herculean task. Space has to be found and reserved; decorations planned and hung. Security has to be consulted, and followed.

Campaign workers differ from the general public in one important respect: they thrive on uncertainty. They are usually unemployed before they join the campaign, they can be unemployed at anytime during it, and they often are unemployed after the campaign ends, even if the candidate wins. And, not uncommonly, they can become unemployed no matter how long or close their association with the candidate.

The Advance Team lives with chaos and disorganization. They sleep in a different city every night. They deal with oversized local egos, and keep their own in reasonable check. Plans can go wrong at any moment, and do. If Advance messes up, the candidate him, or herself, takes the hit with national television cameras there to record it.

Of course, our Advance Team staff had an even edgier life because they had Steve Robbins to answer to. Yet, they loved it all. And loved him. For the most part.

Now, to the story about the campaign sign that caused a ruckus among the staff. The artist, Leon Rotner, and I met through a mutual friend. Sister Mary Warther. Sister Mary and I had met at a Methodist Thursday night church supper.

Fascinated, I listened as she told me how she had come to Washington, DC from Baltimore with two other nuns. Later I learned it was on the Q.T. It seems they decided to approach the Archbishop and ask for his endorsement of their idea to move here, rent a house, and undertake individual ministries. He allowed it.

Sister Mary swore me to secrecy. “This is a trial. Our presence here is known to only a few,” she said. Meeting Sister Mary as a dinner guest at a protestant church, and learning about the Sisters’ secret adventure were but two of scores of indicators that American society was changing, in the spring of 1972.

Sister Mary chose to run an apprentice print shop. She found a small shop on Eighth Street, SE; one block from the Marine Barracks. Between the convention in Miami and the Labor Day campaign kickoff, I went by to visit her.

“There’s this fellow, Leon Rotner, who wants to meet you,” she said. “He wants to volunteer for McGovern.” To Leon, she had said, “Neil wants your help on the McGovern campaign.”

In truth, neither Leon nor I had mentioned anything to her about the other one. We did shake hands when she introduced us at her print shop, but then we turned our attention to other things. It was only after the campaign, while comparing notes, that we realized we had been hoodwinked by a nun.

In August, Leon looked me up in 1910’s Volunteer Room. “I want to make a sign of the McGovern Rainbow button for the front of headquarters,” he said. I’ll need about $400 for canvas, materials, and paint.”

“We’ll need more than that,” I thought out loud. “Start with George Cunningham, and see what he says, ” I said. George was McGovern’s Senate Administrative Assistant. He was managing National Head-quarters, thanks to abundant vacation leave from his Senate job.

More than once, a campaign staffer told me that George was “ruthless.” One day, I finally decided to ask. “George, people tell me you’re ruthless. Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true.” he admitted. “There is no ‘Ruth’ in my name.”

George told Leon that he could hang his painting—provided he could secure Frank Mankiewicz’s permission. Leon went to Frank who said it was fine with him—provided it was OK with George.

Leon went back to George. “Mankiewicz thinks it a splendid idea,” he said.

“Fine,” said George.

Leon told Frank, “Cunningham says, “Fine.”

“Fine, then.” said Frank.

Unpromisingly, as news of the project spread, opposition spread faster. Yet, at the first indication of resistance, Leon blossomed. He worked it so that anyone who objected was unable to pin down which one had given approval.

But, George caught on immediately. He called me to his office and told me he knew what Leon was doing. I was expecting the ax to fall. Instead, George said he approved. “Leon confused the lines of authority,” he said. “It worked. You got both Frank and me off the hook.”

The brouhaha eventually reached Gary Hart’s Office. Marcia Johnston, Gary’s executive assistant, ran into me and asked how Leon had gotten the financing. I mentioned the name of a senior Finance Officer.

“Oh. Well.” Marcia said, “Why didn’t Leon just steal candy from a baby? This would appeal to [the finance officer].”

Opposition to the sign reached a crisis as Leon assembled his team in front of 1910 K Street. His workers unloaded four large canvass squares. Others were getting ropes and large pulleys. Still others were holding the squares upright, which caused passers by to nervously crane their necks at the one-story painted squares.

As this was going on, JoAnne Omang of McGovern Press strode into the volunteer room in a controlled fury. “That sign,” she said, leveling a gaze directly at me, “ is going to cover my only window. I like looking out on K Street, Neil.” She pleaded. “I don’t like it; I don’t want it. Hang it elsewhere. Who authorized it?” she asked.

JoAnne’s long, shimmering hair always distracted me when she was talking. But, it wasn’t distracting at the moment.

“Uh, Leon asked George Cunningham,” I replied, with full, guilty, knowledge that George would send her to Frank, who would say George had passed on it.

Except, Joanne then went to see Steve Robbins. Steve, a fearsome opponent, headed to Frank’s office. I feared this boded only ill, because both Frank's and Steve’s office windows would be covered by the sign. Frank later described the encounter:

“Steve stormed into my office, almost purple.” Frank said. “He threatened to walk off the campaign.” [Nothing unusual there.] But as he walked back and forth, something caught the corner of my eye. I looked at the window, and the sign was just then slowly rising, like the sun, peeping over the window sill. And as Steve talked, it continued to rise past my windows, until they were blanketed. It was like something out of a movie,” he said.

“Steve left upset,” Frank added.

Leon told me later he had talked with Frank. “I told him I would paint anything Frank wanted on the side that faced his window, if he’d let me have the sign. How about a nice scene from Italy?” he asked.

The painting stayed up. JoAnne and Steve lived with it, never saying another word. Still, I hold remorse to this day for having a hand in taking away their K Street view.

In addition, the sign got Lawrence O’Brien involved. He objected that “Democrat” wasn’t anywhere on the sign. He ordered a sign made that said simply, “Democratic Headquarters,” and directed that it be hung immediately below the rainbow.

O’Brien didn’t realize, apparently, that the rainbow was a symbol for being a 1972 Democrat.

After the election, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution called and asked if they could have Leon’s sign for the American History Museum.

George and Frank gave their go-ahead. And, Leon said “Yes!” So it happened that Leon Rotner’s 1972 campaign masterpiece earned a place of honor among the Smithsonian’s political memorabilia.