News stories from Saturday October 30, 1976
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The presidential campaign, according to polls, is closing in a nearly dead heat and too close to predict the winner. The final national survey by the New York Times and CBS News found that President Ford had drawn almost even with Jimmy Carter, leaving the Democratic contender with only a precarious advantage. A Louis Harris poll showed Mr. Carter holding a lead of only one percentage point. The four key factors Tuesday will be momentum, the turnout, undecided voters and electoral vote distribution. [New York Times]
- A sudden, 11th hour swing by independent voters has helped President Ford make the most spectacular political comeback in decades. The critical shift among independents was found by the final New York Times-CBS News poll of the campaign to be apparently due to Mr. Ford's stand on issues, including his pledge to fight inflation, and his advantages of experience and incumbency. [New York Times]
- Looking back on the exhausting campaign, Mr. Carter acknowledged that it had taken from him much of the candor that was a keystone of his early victories. The Democratic presidential candidate said this to an interviewer:, "I'm less open now, I know. I don't like it, but I realize it's true. It's just, it's just that I feel so much more vulnerable now than when I started." He spoke quietly and slowly, as though even a candid talk about a loss of candor was a problem. [New York Times]
- The once-substantial lead held by Jimmy Carter in the New York metropolitan area has fallen to the point where President Ford may be leading by a hair's breadth in New Jersey and Connecticut, while Mr. Carter appears to lead narrowly in New York. In other races, Daniel Patrick Moynihan is favored to unseat Senator James Buckley in New York, while Senators Harrison Williams of New Jersey and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut are heavy favorites to win re-election. The post-Watergate Democratic House majorities in all three states are likely to remain unchanged. [New York Times]
- Increased unemployment is a cause of death, due to diseases, suicides and murders, according to a congressional study. It said that at least 26,000 deaths from the stress-related diseases of stroke and kidney and heart ailments, 1,500 suicides and 1,700 homicides were traceable to a 1.4 percentage rise in joblessness since 1970. [New York Times]
- Protecting all of Alaska's wilderness has become a major concern of conservation groups as the trans-Alaska pipeline nears completion. Conservationists fear that temporary federal protection of the state's vast, untapped mineral and timber riches, set to end after 1978, will open the door to developers. Before then, environmentalists want the government to set up a permanent system of national parks, refuges and forests. [New York Times]
- The activities of Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman, have been under investigation by the Justice Department at the request of the State Department, according to government sources. The inquiry followed testimony before a Senate subcommittee that the Gulf Oil Corporation paid $4 million in covert political contributions to South Korean officials from 1966 to 1970. Mr. Park's family operates a Gulf Oil refinery in South Korea. [New York Times]
- An American envoy arrived in Geneva to aid behind-the-scenes talks at the conference on Rhodesia. Under Secretary of State William Schaufele said he would keep Secretary of State Kissinger informed on the meeting, where the white Rhodesian government and black nationalist leaders have taken opposite stands on proposals charted by Mr. Kissinger for transferring power to the country's black majority. [New York Times]