The Senate: Riding High with Reagan

In both Mississippi and New Hampshire, Democrats thought they had a good chance to knock off incumbent Republican Senators in 1984. But two popular challengers are finding the going a great deal harder than they had expected.

Visions of the New South

With his broad shoulders, silver hair and deep, drawling voice, Thad Cochran seems a paragon of the old-fashioned Southern politician. He is not. As the first Republican since Reconstruction to win a Senate seat from Mississippi, Cochran, 46, personifies the changing face of the Deep South. A boosterish supporter of Reaganomics, Cochran is less conservative on civil rights and funding for public education. His easygoing geniality, moreover, has an appeal that extends far beyond his white, urban, upwardly mobile core constituency. Even Democratic Challenger William Winter concedes, "There is no way I would win a popularity contest with Thad Cochran."

The admission seems strangely humble coming from Winter, a popular and respected former Governor. A low-key but courageous progressive on racial issues, Winter, 61, became a populist hero by pushing through a sweeping 1982 education reform and tax bill that, among other things, makes it mandatory beginning in 1986 for local school districts to offer kindergarten classes. After completing one term as Governor and being barred by law from succeeding himself, Winter was the obvious choice to assert the Democratic Party's claim to pre-eminence in the progressive New South.

Yet Winter managed to dither away his political strength. First, after his supporters won a bitter struggle to have him appointed chancellor of the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss") last December, Winter waffled, accepting the post and then changing his mind a week later. Then he appeared even more irresolute by agonizing for two months over whether to challenge Cochran, making up his mind, some say, only 20 minutes before his announcement. Compared with Cochran's upbeat, exuberant performance, the bespectacled, scholarly former bond attorney's campaign is rather dispirited.

Though the state's conservative majority gives Cochran an edge, his victory could hinge on Mississippi's blacks, who make up 35% of the population, the largest percentage of any state. Blacks traditionally vote solidly for Democrats, but Winter, for all his progressive credentials, cannot rely on their automatic support. The reason: many black voters are disenchanted with a state Democratic Party that they claim takes them for granted. While most polls show Cochran winning 15% to 20% of the black vote, Cochran's own surveys register 26%. Cochran is convinced he can appeal to both blacks and whites with his genial personality, moderate social positions and Reaganesque optimism. "People who wring their hands over how bad things are," says the Republican, "will have a hard time getting votes."

Thrift and Orgonomists

New Hampshire's Republican Senator Gordon Humphrey loves being known as a nickel squeezer. In his first term he has so far proudly returned $560,000 in unspent office funds to the U.S. Treasury. In a state where talk of taxation is political suicide, Humphrey, 44, boasts, "Six years ago I promised I would be the toughest skinflint in Washington, and I've kept that promise."

His Democratic opponent, five-term Congressman Norman D'Amours, insists that Humphrey's claims are mere "posturing," and has launched a ferocious attack on his inconsistent voting record. D'Amours, 47, cites Humphrey's initial support for the MX missile, his 1978 proposal that Social Security be phased out and his admission that he at first dismissed the threat of acid rain as "preposterous." It was only after Humphrey discovered that New Hampshire voters are deeply concerned about environmental issues and waste in military spending, D'Amours claims, that the Republican voted for federal funding to combat acid rain, began to oppose the MX and championed the sanctity of Social Security.

Humphrey, a former commercial airline co-pilot who came out of the blue in 1978 to pull a surprising upset in his first political race, has benefited from the current economic boom. New Hampshire's unemployment rate, as recently as 1982 among the country's highest at 9.2%, has fallen to a national low of 3%, the result of an influx of high-tech industries. Humphrey has swaddled himself in the President's popularity. D'Amours, a moderate, never mentions Mondale by name; in the acrimonious debates, he cites instances when he voted with Reagan while Humphrey did not.

The bitter contest has now been disrupted by a strange allegation with uncertain political impact: muckraking Washington Columnist Jack Anderson disclosed this month that Humphrey's wife Patricia belonged to the American College of Orgonomy. Orgonomists, following a theory of Viennese Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, believe that sexual orgasms, for both adults and children, can release pent-up psychic energy and thus prevent illness. Humphrey, who has made New Right moral values part of his political crusade, does not deny his wife's associations, though he claims that descriptions of orgonomy have been distorted in press reports. He has managed at least to blunt any impact by bitterly chastising his opponent for "poking around in my private life and that of my wife." D'Amours is rankled by Humphrey's implication that he raised the orgonomy issue, but Humphrey's charges that D'Amours is running a "dirty campaign" may be sticking. In any case, polls show that Humphrey has taken a slight lead.