Hoyden's Rough Rider

In the 55 years that he has represented Arizona on Capitol Hill, Carl Hayden, 90, has been nothing if not patient. For the past two decades, Hayden has been polishing legislation to authorize a Central Arizona Project, a vast network of dams and waterways to irrigate his arid state. In deference to his seniority and his power as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the Senate has passed his Arizona bills three times--most recently last August when, despite their economizing mood, his colleagues approved a $1.2 billion appropriation for the project, along with five other Colorado River plans.

But Hayden's dream program has always died in committee on the other side of the Hill. Colorado's Wayne Aspinall, chairman of the House Interior Committee, and a crusty young whippersnapper of 71, has effectively blocked the bill because his state--along with six others--shares the source of Arizona's water: the Colorado River. Unless Colorado's share of the water was guaranteed Aspinall was not about to let any of Hayden's proposals leak out of his committee. After Hayden's latest bill was passed in the Senate, Aspinall simply ignored it, just as he had promised he would. When his committee finished its other business at the end of August, he went home to Colorado.

"It Amounts to Blackmail." But this time Carl Hayden was apparently a mite impatient. Once Aspinall was out of town, Hayden blandly asked his colleagues on the Appropriations Committee if they saw anything wrong with attaching the Central Arizona Project as a rider to the $4.7 billion public-works bill--the "pork barrel" package on its way to the Senate floor. Of course not, said the committee.

Then Hayden sat placidly back and waited. Aspinall got word of what had happened and hotfooted it back to Washington. How could the House accept the Central Arizona Project as part of the public-works bill? he asked. The House was supposed to be trying to cut expenditures. But then, how could Congressmen vote down a bill containing all those pork-barrel projects so dear to their hearts? If Hayden's Arizona rider stayed on the bill, the Congress could be caught up in a ruckus that might last until Christmas. Most people would probably blame Aspinall.

Caught in a trap, Aspinall backed down. "It amounts to blackmail," he grumbled, as he allowed that if Hayden would withdraw his rider and stick with the Central Arizona Project bill as passed by the Senate, Aspinall's committee would take it up first thing next session. "This is all I ever wanted," responded Hayden with a grin.

The old man, who shuffles haltingly around the Capitol with the aid of a mahogany cane, announced that he is feeling so politically spry he may well run against Barry Goldwater next year for an eighth term in the Senate.

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