DEMOCRATS: Senators Hold Weekend Retreat : Kennedy Urges Democrats to Take Moderate Course

Democratic senators gathered Friday for a weekend meeting to ponder their party’s future only hours after Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy issued a call for moderation, saying that Democrats cannot run “constantly to the right or to the left.”

In a speech delivered Friday afternoon at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., the Massachusetts Democrat, long the leading spokesman for the liberal wing of his party, signaled a major shift in emphasis as he called for the Democrats to move dramatically to challenge the Republicans for supremacy in ideas as well as elections.

“So beyond the apparent discord and disputes within the Democratic Party there is an emerging opportunity, which is also a national imperative: The time is ripe for us to reclaim our rightful role at the center of American progress,” Kennedy said in his prepared remarks.

“We cannot move forward by running constantly to the right or to the left. Sometimes we need less government and sometimes we need more. The answer is simply not more dollars and more spending. We can no longer let the debate be cast in those terms.”

Senate Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia did not promise that any miracle cures for the party will come from the three days of private seminars and discussions, which will include speakers ranging from the head of Apple Computer to a former defense secretary.

In fact, Byrd said the weekend would be “rest, recreation and restoration.”

“I don’t want to create expectations that we’re going to come out of the conference with a great strategy and with numerous legislative proposals and goals,” Byrd told reporters in Washington.

He described the weekend as an effort to “get away from the street-car noises, the motorcycle noises, the jet plane noises . . . and talk among ourselves.”

The gathering of about 40 Democratic senators comes on the heels of a similar meeting by Democratic House members earlier this month at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.

The weekend schedule for the Democratic senators began with a reception and dinner Friday, followed by speeches from Mark Shields, a Washington political columnist, and Richard Scammon, a public opinion analyst.