Preacher Tipped for D.C. Congress Seat

WASHINGTON (A)Walter E. Fauntroy, 37, who has a Yale degree and a base of support among the poor, is avored to win Tuesday this city's first congressional seat in a century.

Fauntroy is a preacher, a black and a Democrat in a city 70% Negro where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one.

At stake is a nonvoting delegate seat in the House of Representatives that many say is a stepping stone to full congressional representation for this city of 756,000.

Despite Fauntroy's frontrunning position, the campaign has been lively thanks to a six-man ballot that also includes an avowed homosexual, a Socialist, a black militant and a white Republican running as if he had a chance to pull it off.

ALTHOUGH Republican

Walter E. Fauntroy

AP Wirephoto

nominee John A. Nevius is viewed by many as the most centrist of the candidates and has received the en-

dorsement of the Washington Evening Star, he is not expected to be a threat to the evangelistic Fauntroy,

who says he will carry God to Capitol Hill.

The Washington Post is endorsing no one.

Strongest of the independent candidates is Julius Hobso, a militant civil rights leader who hopes to attract enough votes to keep Fauntroy from getting the 40% required to win. He says such a blow would shatter Fauntroy's image and he (Hobson) would then capture a runoff.

Most local observers, however, expect Fauntroy to win about 60 to 65% of the vote and Nevius to finish second ahead of Hobson.

OTHER CANDIDATES are Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, an avowed homosexual and the only white besides Nevius in the race, black militant the Rev.

Douglas Moore, and James Harris, a 26-year-old Socialist Workers party candidate.

Fauntroy, who preached his first sermon to his Bap-

tist church when he was 17, attended Virginia Union University with financial help from his parishioners and later graduated from Yale with a divinity degree. He still is an active minister at the same Washington church.

During the 1960s Fauntroy worked with the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on various civil rights activities. He stresses in his campaign that he helped organiez the 1963 march on Washington and the 1965 march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery.

The no-voting seat was authorized by Congress last year and pays $42,500 a year.

The delegate will be allowed to vote in committees, speak on the floor of the House and hire a full office staff. But he will not have a vote in the House itself.