Republican Wrangle in the Senate

By KURT ANDERSEN

Five candidates stage a dogfight for the majority leader's job

For Republicans, the presidential election was more a celebration than a genuine contest. Now, however, as the giddiness passes, G.O.P. leaders have a real election to worry about. Next Wednesday morning the 53 Republican members of the new Senate will choose a majority leader to replace Tennessee's Howard Baker, who chose not to seek re-election to the Senate.

The majority leader's job is one of the several most important in Washington, and five candidates are fighting for it. Since the majority leader cannot also head a Senate committee, and since three of the five candidates are chairmen of important committees, next week's G.O.P. caucus is almost certain to set off a new round of politicking for the various chairmanships, which are to be filled in January.

Baker joked that he was the Senate's janitor, opening up the place every morning and keeping the political plumbing in good repair. But as the first Republican majority leader since 1953, he deftly walked the line between passive overseer and overbearing boss, nudging consensus into shape when he could, urging the White House to change legislative tacks when he could not. The institution is balky, filled with large egos and powerful fiefdoms. The majority leader has to wheedle and plead, wheel and deal, yet maintain an almost presidential gravity.

The declared contenders for the job, all conservatives, are Robert Dole of Kansas, Richard Lugar of Stevens: hot temper Indiana, Ted Stevens of Alaska, James McClure of Idaho and Pete Domenici of New Mexico. Dole is the front runner. Once known chiefly for his astringent wit and confident, almost arrogant intelligence, the three-term Senator in recent years has played a more statesmanlike role. "I'm sort of a consensus builder," he says. To the consternation of the Reagan Administration, he has pushed for tax hikes along with spending reductions as the only way to make a sizable dent in the deficit. Dole has the most serious national ambitions: he was the vice-presidential nominee in 1976, made an abortive bid for the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 1980, and is thinking hard about 1988. His colleagues may be reluctant to give him visibility and thus an early edge in the nomination race; besides, they may not want a leader who would be otherwise engaged.

Lugar, buttoned-down and a bit bland, is a capable organization man who may be the second choice of Senate Republicans. If Dole might be too assertive as majority leader, the low-key Lugar could be too deferential. Elected to the Senate in 1976, he is a relative newcomer. It seems apropos that Stevens, a 14-year veteran, is majority whip: his opinions tend to be plain and angrily expressed. "I've got a temper," he confesses, "and I know how to use it!" The New Right would pick McClure, a Senator since 1973, who shares their ultraconservatism but not their uncompromising manner. Domenici, re-elected to his third Senate term, is fair-minded and sincere in the Baker fashion. As Budget Committee chairman, he has shown great forbearance. But he is the darkest horse. Says one Senator: "I don't think Pete's got a chance."

Election requires a simple majority, or 27 votes of the 53. After each secret ballot, the candidate receiving fewest votes will be eliminated. Each of the five has enlisted the support--or believes he has enlisted the support--often to 15 Senators. "If everyone has the votes he claims," says one Domenici partisan, "then there are 74 Republican Senators."

But this election will not turn simply on personal loyalty or on judgments of the contenders' relative competence. There is, in addition, the question of the committee chairmanships that hang on the outcome. Dole, for example, heads the Finance Committee. The next most senior Republican is Moderate Bob Packwood of Oregon, who would take over the committee if Dole became majority leader. That, in turn, would make Moderate John Danforth of Missouri chairman of the Commerce Committee. Whom do Packwood and Danforth support for the majority leadership? Dole, naturally. Meanwhile, Dole has been reassuring conservatives that Packwood, despite his liberalism on social issues, is a fiscal hardliner, perfectly trustworthy to run the Finance Committee should the chairmanship become, uh, vacant.

Another web of uncertainties has Jesse Helms of North Carolina at its center. In his tough re-election campaign this fall, the New Right standard-bearer promised his tobacco-farmer constituents that he would remain as head of the Agriculture Committee to maintain their price supports--- even if the plummy chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee were to become available to him. It did, when Charles Percy was defeated for re-election in Illinois. The White House and most Senators are queasy at the prospect of Helms in a position of formal foreign policy power. As chairman, Helms might try to scotch any nascent arms-control deal, or champion too enthusiastically right-wing Latin American bully boys like El Salvador's Roberto d'Aubuisson. But although Helms said again last week that it is his "intent to remain as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee," he may have no choice in the end. If Lugar, second-ranking on Foreign Relations, wins the majority leadership, the committee chair would go to Maryland's Charles Mathias -- a bona fide liberal whom Helms cannot abide. If anyone but Lugar wins the leadership election, however, the pressure will be intense on Helms to stay where he is; if he moves, he will be succeeded as Agriculture chairman by none other than Lugar, who is dark horse inclined to cut tobacco subsidies.

Other Senators are involved in similar strategies. McClure's candidacy for the leadership job may be hurt by conservative distaste for his prospective successor as Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman: free-thinking Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. Conversely, Colorado's William Armstrong, second-ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, is regarded as perhaps too rigidly conservative for that give-and-take chairmanship.

Ironically, the race for majority leader could be decided by the minority wing of the party. Six liberal-moderate Republicans -- Mathias, Weicker, Packwood, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Robert Stafford of Vermont and John Chaffee of Rhode Island--plan to meet the day before the election to explore voting as a bloc. Acting jointly, with a group of nine G.O.P. moderates, they may be decisive. "Frankly," says one of the centrists, "we're close to being in the driver's seat."

-- By Kurt Andersen.

Reported by Neil MacNeil/ Washington

With reporting by Neil MacNeil