866 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

to meet, not only because of my own conviction but because it is
clear to me that the people feel the same way.

Mr. Spivak: Based on the knowledge that you have of your own
State, who would carry the State, today, do you think, among the three
most likely candidates?

Governor Agnew: My honest conviction is that any one of the
Republican candidates who are being talked about could carry
Maryland, today.

Mr. Donovan: Governor Agnew, you have been stressing here the
change that has taken place in the public philosophy since the riots
after Dr. King's death, the fear that people have, their worry, and
you seem to be full of praise for Richard Nixon's strong stand against
all this. Aren't you saying that what Nixon is riding here is a white
backlash?

Governor Agnew: Not at all, because if you have noticed Mr.
Nixon's statements, particularly with regard to the need to stimulate
the investment of black capital in the ghettoes and to bring the black
man in this country to a point of leadership in an economic sense —
not just in a sense of relying upon governmental programming to
support him — this is what I think cuts through any attempt on the
part of Nixon to, what you might say, be equivocal on this question.

Mr. Donovan: Sir, I believe you have been quoted from Tulsa as
having said that if Nixon were President he would not have allowed
the Poor People's Campaign to encamp—

Governor Agnew: That is false. I said that I was not at all in
sympathy with the Poor People's March and that I couldn't visualize
any President giving any group of people having a special interest the
right to camp out on that public land, and I mean exactly that. I
am sure that, for example, if any other group having a political pur-
pose requested the use of public land in Washington, the answer
would be without any question, a no, and I don't know why this group
is different.

I question the identification of these people as the poor people. No
one has ever proved to me that these people are poor, and there are a
lot of Cadillacs parked over there.

Mr. Furgurson: Governor Agnew, if I may shift away from politics,
per se, for a moment, to ask you about one of the most critical issues,
the hottest issues before us today. That is gun control. In Maryland