Seen as Too Frail to Head Key Panel : Rep. Price a Possible Defense Fight Casualty

A group of House Democrats, preparing for a series of crucial battles with the Reagan Administration over defense issues, is waging a rare and dramatic campaign to oust one of their own party’s front-line warriors, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Organizers of the effort complain that 80-year-old Rep. Melvin Price (D-Ill.) has become too frail to continue in a job that makes him the Democrats’ point man on defense issues. Earlier this week, they said they believed that they had enough votes to unseat Price when the House Democratic Caucus meets in closed session today to decide all committee chairmanships.

Job Based on Seniority

If they are right, it will be the first time in a decade that the House has stripped a member of a committee chairmanship, a powerful position awarded almost solely on seniority. Price, moreover, has a strong ally in House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.).

After an emotional appeal late Thursday by O’Neill, the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee--the party’s official nominating body for chairmanships--decided to go along with tradition and almost unanimously recommended that Price remain as head of the Armed Services panel.

Price’s ouster would be a highly unusual break with House tradition and a strong sign of the urgency that Democrats feel about the need to regroup for coming confrontations with Republicans over defense spending, the MX missile and the Administration’s proposed “Star Wars” space-based defense system.

Indeed, one Democrat described the Armed Services Committee chairmanship as “the highest elected official we in the Democratic Party have in dealing with defense.”

The campaign to unseat Price has been waged privately and delicately, through phone calls and meetings among congressmen. Committee members behind the drive--an alliance of liberals and conservatives--agreed to discuss it only if they were guaranteed anonymity.

“He’s not able to do the job,” one conservative committee member said of Price, who was first elected to Congress in 1944. “Most people realize he’s probably stayed too long.”

When asked to name specific instances in which Price had mishandled committee business, the congressman said: “It’s so obvious on a daily basis. It’s easier to look for the good times, the times when he’s more with it than not.”

In Price’s place, his opponents say, they hope to put a leader better able to hold Democratic ground against the Administration and Republican-controlled Senate. When the defense authorization bill went before a House-Senate conference committee last year, for example, liberals on the committee criticized Price as being too willing to give up hard-fought House positions on arms control.

“It really ends up being (ranking Republican) Bill Dickinson (of Alabama) running the committee” during critical negotiations, one liberal Democrat on the Armed Services Committee complained.

Price Has No Comment

A spokesman for Price, William K. Hart, said Wednesday that the congressman would not comment on the issue because “he doesn’t want to dignify these rumors.” However, Price has said he plans to give up the chairmanship in 1987.

But one committee member said that that is not good enough: “The opportunity is too great. It’s too important. The time is so critical that we can’t afford to wait another two years.”

Ironically, Price became the committee’s chairman through a revolt against the seniority system in 1975. While Price is now being criticized as too weak a leader, his predecessor, Rep. F. Edward Hebert (D-La.), was ousted because he was too forceful.

If Price is defeated, it is unclear who would succeed him. Two top contenders are Rep. Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.), who ranks second in seniority on the committee but is considered abrasive by some Democrats, and Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), who is seventh in line for the job but who has become a leading figure in House deliberations on defense policy.

Aspin was not available for comment, although one committee member said that he is “campaigning very hard” in private.