Ships That Pass in the Night

The House: Strong Challenges from Newcomers

Tall, white-haired and earnest, Clarence Long, 71, has won nine elections to Congress from suburban Baltimore by following a simple formula: ignore his opponent and pay close attention to his constituents, whom he tends every weekend from a mobile office parked outside libraries, post offices or schools.

Lately, however, the Democrat has also taken to embarrassing many of his constituents. For example, at a NAACP meeting in Baltimore this year, Long, who has a progressive record on civil rights, started rambling on about American blacks being "genetically superior . . . because Southern white blood flows in every black today." All this might not have got Long into trouble if he were not opposed this year by an aggressive Republican, who has a more telling way with words.

Blunt-mannered Helen Delich Bentley, 56, wife of an antiques dealer, covered the waterfront for 16 years as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Her salty language and dukes-up style endeared her to dock workers. She once punched a stevedore in a bar when he compared her nose to a ski jump. Her expletives-undeleted report from the tanker Manhattan, during its 1969 voyage through the Northwest Passage, caused her to be banned from using the ship's radio.

In 1969 President Nixon named her to head the Federal Maritime Commission, where she coupled Agnewesque assaults on reporters ("fall guys for the misfits and malcontents of our society") with a flag-waving defense of American shipping lines. Foreign shippers protested her lack of impartiality, and President Ford decided not to reappoint her in 1975.

In one of her campaign ads, a hard-hatted stevedore bellows: "Give 'em hell, Helen." But the modestly budgeted race (neither is expected to spend more than $200,000) goes beyond personalities. Long for many years has blocked proposals to dredge Baltimore harbor because he objected to the dumping of the polluted muck around two uninhabited islands in his district. The islands are favorite anchorages for Chesapeake Bay boaters and crab fishermen, who are anxious to keep the waters clean. But Bentley, who has dubbed herself "the Fighting Lady" after the World War II aircraft carrier Yorktown, insists that the harbor must be deepened to protect jobs in the Baltimore area.

Thus far, Long has ignored his opponent, even when she called him "insensitive and irresponsible." When he spoke last week to workers at a sewage treatment plant, she showed up for a confrontation, but he drove off without even exchanging greetings. Says the Fighting Lady: "His jaw dropped a foot. He comes apart when pressure is put on him, and that's just what I aim to do." sb

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.