The House: Personalities on Stage

Halloween in Houston

Before the 70 first-graders at Stephens Elementary School north of Houston could perform a Halloween pageant for their families last week, Democratic Congressman Bob Eckhardt and Republican Challenger Jack Fields, 28, put on their own show.

Fields, a vice president of his family's cemetery company, started by declaring: "Eckhardt represents everything that is wrong with this country. He would destroy the free enterprise system and destroy the work ethic." Charged Fields of the seven-term incumbent: "He voted nine times for busing [to desegregate schools]. He voted against the B-l bomber. He voted for gun control. He voted to give tax dollars to Communist countries."

Eckhardt, 67, looking like a rumpled professor in his tweed suit and bow tie, but sounding like a Southern populist, replied that many of the charges were false. Said he: "I have never voted for a statute that would call for forced busing. I have never been for gun control, and I helped beat registration of rifles and shotguns." He claimed that the campaign ("the dirtiest I've ever encountered") was the work of ghosts hovering behind the scenes. Said he: "The $600,000 raised by oil companies [for Fields] is being used to repeat absolute lies. They're not concerned with gun control and these other things. They're concerned about their pocketbooks."

Eckhardt has long tilted at the oil companies, fighting for continued price controls on some categories of oil and for a strong windfall-profits tax. This year these positions have come back to haunt him. Oil executives and many of the Sunbelt migrants to his district dislike Eckhardt's liberalism. But in east Houston, where most of his district's 30% blacks and Hispanics live, Eckhardt has strong backing from those who work in the huge refineries. As he said last week at a union hall while introducing Senator Edward Kennedy, who was on a Texas swing for President Carter: "My supporters make the riches but don't share in the profits."

The challenger, an athletic political novice, has worn out four pairs of shoes while knocking on 20,000 doors in 18 months. He has got strategic and financial help from the national Republican Party, including prepackaged issue papers designed to appeal to conservatives on matters like school prayers (favored) and abortion (opposed).

Fields, who claims that only 20% of his money comes from oil-related contributions, will outspend Eckhardt by $600,000 to $150,000. "I've got a hell of a race on my hands," admits Eckhardt. "In the past, I've beaten a challenger who outspent me 3 to 1, and now I'll see if I can beat one who'll outspend me 4 to 1."

Star Wars in Los Angeles

Only in the land of Tinsel Town could there be such a race. The Republican incumbent, Robert Dornan, 47, is a former B-movie actor and Emmy-winning TV talk show host. His challenger is Democrat Carey Peck, 31, son of Gregory Peck and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal and Senate aide. The set: a onetime Republican stronghold that includes the Los Angeles suburbs of Santa Monica, Venice and Marina del Rey. Voters run the gamut from Ronald Reagan to Jane Fonda. Allows a Republican official: "The district is eccentric."

So is the campaign. The contenders first met in 1978, when Dornan beat Peck by only 2% of the vote. Some waggish voters are calling this contest Jaws II. Peck has been aided by such celebrities as Walter Matthau, Helen Reddy and Lily Tomlin; Dornan is relying on contributions from conservatives, plus the help of right-wing Fund Raiser Richard Viguerie, to match Peck's $500,000.

The candidates have plenty over which to fight. Dornan, an archconservative, is one of Congress's most fervent opponents of abortion, the ERA and SALT II. Says Dornan, a former Air Force fighter pilot: "The way to keep the peace is to prepare for war." Peck, on the other hand, is a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative and social liberal. He favors the ERA, more defense spending and tax incentives for building new homes, a popular issue in his district, with its 30% annual inflation in house prices.

But the issues have been obscured in the race by mud as thick as a Los Angeles slide. Dornan is an expert slinger; he has called Peck "a sick, pompous little ass" who is a "Daddy's boy looking for something to do." Early in the campaign, Dornan charged that Peck in 1978 accepted an illegal campaign contribution from an Alabama businessman who is in federal prison for fraud. The charge backfired: the businessman did try to contribute $13,000, but Peck eventually returned the checks. Peck faults Dornan for his membership, now terminated, on the advisory board of the right-wing Christian Voice organization of Pacific Grove, Calif.

Although Dornan and Peck debated 17 times in 1978, there have been only two this year. At one of the forums, Peck demanded an apology from his opponent for his campaign attacks. Dornan responded by slapping a coin down on the table: "Here's a dime, character. Use it to call and congratulate me on Nov. 4."

Peck may get to keep that dime. Dornan's tactics have turned off voters and helped win Peck the endorsement of Dornan's predecessor, eight-term Republican Alphonzo Bell, who stayed neutral in 1978. He now criticizes Dornan's "extremist, right-wing viewpoints." Although Dornan and Peck are running about even in the polls, political experts give Peck a good shot at pulling ahead.

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