Campaign Roundup (1)

John Anderson has crossed the finish line in the legal steeplechase to get his name on the presidential ballots in all 50 states. The candidate filed his last two petitions for ballot access Sept. 19 in Arizona and New Hampshire.

But in Georgia, Anderson forces are appealing a court ruling denying his name a line on the ballot. Similar appeals have been successful in other states.

And in New Hampshire, some of the Anderson petitions lacked signatures of local election officials to render them valid. Campaign workers still have until Sept. 24 to obtain the missing names.

Anti-Carter TV commercials produced by the Reagan campaign are scheduled to debut this week in response to newly unveiled Carter ads aimed at Reagan.

The Carter campaign ads, which first appeared Sept. 18, come from the office of Gerald Rafshoon, the President's media man. They show an empty Oval Office as a narrator's voice asks if Ronald Reagan's "fractured view of America" belongs in the White House.

The soon-to-be-aired Reagan ads were produced under California ad man Peter Dailey, who handled Richard Nixon's advertising in his 1972 campaign against George McGovern.

"Independent" groups such as the Fund for a Conservative Majority and the National Conservative Political Action Committee, also are expected to begin their long-awaited attacks against Carter this week, chiefly via TV and radio spots.m

Insinuations of racism now have come home to boost for both major party presidential candidates.

Reagans's Labor Day comment that Carter had begun his fall campaign at the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan was attacked by Carter as an insult to the entire South.

Now, reports from Carter aides say the President got carried away with his own controversial comments about Reagan last week and that he would do thing differently if he had another chance.

Republicans charged the President with "political mudsliding" by implying that Reagan is a racist. Former President Gerald Ford said Carter's remarks were "a lot worse than some of the things that Governor Ragan said just a week or two ago."

Carter insisted he had made no such insinuations and that Reagan is not a racist "in any degree."

Carter has caught and passed his Republican rival in Texas, according to a new poll released Sept. 20 by Texas Monthly magazine.

Taken just before both candidates took their campaigns to Texas last week, the poll put Carter eight points ahead. Most other Texas Polls had Reagan in the lead but losing groung from early summer.

In a reversal of the pattern in other states, especially in the North, the Texas Monthly poll showed Carter was strongest in rural areas and Reagan in the metropolitan areas.

Reagan campaign bosses found out, following Carter's press conference Sept. 18, there is no getting equal time on television with an incumbent president.

All three major networks turned down an appeal from Reagan campaign director William Casey to provide free air time for the GOP nominee to match Carter's opening remarks at his press conference.

The issue arose because the first few minutes of Carter's talk, Casey felt, were political and not presidential in nature.

Network executives largely agreed, but still characterized the conference as a legitimate news avent and therefore not subject to federal equal-time regulations.

Anderson also requested air time to respond to Carter's opening remarks and planned to file suit with the Federal Communications Commission this week.m

Full analysis of the first League of Women Voters' presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and John Anderson will appear in Tuesday's edition of the Monitor.