Reelection Fears Spur Them to Seek Approval at Home : Some GOP Senators Defy Reagan Policy

The teacher from Waterloo leaned over the seats at the Iowa Boys State Basketball Tournament here last weekend to pump Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley’s hand and give him the kind of cheer that the rest of the fans were aiming at their high school heroes: “I just want to tell you, give ‘em hell out there in Washington.”

A few minutes later, a clergyman pulled Grassley aside to commend him for defying the White House over farm policy. “Keep at it,” he told the senator. “They (farmers) need you.”

What pleased the Iowa voters was the fact that Grassley, long one of the Senate’s most faithful supporters of President Reagan’s legislative programs, has now become a thorn in the Administration’s side. On issue after issue, especially on the all-embracing question of where to cut federal spending at a time of skyrocketing budget deficits, he is stepping forward to challenge his President.

And the headache for the Administration goes beyond a freshman senator from a relatively small state. Grassley is one of 21 Republican senators up for reelection in 1986, compared to only 12 Democrats. Worried that the President’s plans for deep cuts in domestic spending programs and continued increases in defense spending may not prove popular back home, many of these Senate Republicans are moving to distance themselves from some of Reagan’s policies.

In the process, they are becoming a problem for the Administration and Senate Republican leaders because they constitute a critical voting bloc in a Senate whose 53 Republicans barely outnumber the 47 Democrats.

At the mere mention of Grassley’s name, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger recently rolled his eyes and asked with dread: “Good God. . . . What’s he doing?” Grassley has embarrassed the Pentagon by uncovering headline-grabbing examples of waste in defense purchases and has called for a freeze on military spending.

That, some Republican senators say, is only a prelude. Although the 21 Republican senators facing reelection next year supported Reagan 19 to 2 on funding the controversial MX missile, they split 10 to 10 (with one not voting) on an emergency farm aid bill that Reagan later vetoed. And several are wavering on the Administration’s push for $14 million in covert aid to rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

‘A Powder-Puff Derby’

“This has been a powder-puff derby” so far, said Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), who, as the Senate’s majority whip, is in charge of rounding up the votes that the leadership needs on any issue.

When the Senate Republican leadership struggles to negotiate a deficit reduction package with the White House, Simpson said, GOP senators will have to make difficult choices on such basic programs as Social Security, Medicare, agricultural price supports and defense.

He predicted: “We will just see people who will have to jump ship.”

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) argues that the pressure of the approaching election year “ought to be a plus” in trying to design a legislative package that significantly cuts the deficit. “The climate’s going to grow in all our states to do something” about the deficit, he said in an interview.

Pressure on Dole

However, Dole, who will be up for reelection in 1986, has felt some pressure in his home state of Kansas over his backing of the Administration’s opposition to emergency aid for debt-ridden farmers.

Dole said he saw a sprinkling of “Dump Dole” hats when he spoke before a farm group in Kansas last weekend.

Grassley and five other Budget Committee Republicans up for reelection next year demonstrated several weeks ago how demanding and unpredictable the GOP senators are likely to be in voting on the budget and other legislation. Time after time, as each of Reagan’s domestic spending cuts was presented to the 22-member committee, the Democrats were able to peel off at least the two or three Republican votes that they needed to reject the proposals.

In many cases, the Democrats were joined by lopsided Republican majorities.

To win the 11 Republican votes that he needed to send the committee’s own compromise deficit-reduction package to the full Senate, Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) had to appease several members facing reelection.

Protection for Grants

Sen. Bob Kasten (R-Wis.) demanded protection for revenue sharing and other grant programs vital to Wisconsin cities, as well as funds that could be used for a politically sensitive $1-billion Milwaukee sewer project. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) fought the proposed elimination of the Export-Import Bank, on which Seattle-based Boeing Co. has relied for overseas aircraft sales.

Sen. Mark Andrews (R-N.D.) voted for the package, but only after denouncing it before the committee as “a turkey.” One aide to the Republican leadership said Andrews, already known for his skill at winning federal largess for North Dakota, has grown more insistent in demanding favors in return for his support on crucial votes.

“He apparently has a little wish list, and he’s saying, ‘This is what I want. This is what I want,’ ” the aide said.

Political analysts agree that Andrews could use some help at home. In a recent University of North Dakota telephone poll that tested public response to potential senatorial matchups, Democratic Rep. Byron L. Dorgan, the only House member from the sparsely populated state, swamped Andrews. When 505 persons were asked how they would vote in an Andrews-Dorgan race, Dorgan won by a margin of better than 2 to 1.

Swing Votes Cited

Some of the Budget Committee’s Republican “Class of ‘86,” including Dan Quayle of Indiana, sided consistently with the White House and Domenici during the two weeks in which the committee put its budget proposal together. But the number of Republican swing votes was large enough that “you could see an effective working Democratic majority (when the budget debate reaches) the floor of the Senate,” Quayle said.

“The President’s budget has never been accepted in total, but in the past it was adjusted moderately,” Quayle said. “I think this time we will see a radical change, especially in the defense budget, where you’re looking at zero growth.”

What’s more, he added, “the possibility of having a confrontation with the White House among the Republicans is greater than ever before. The attitudes are a little different this year.”

The Republican-controlled Senate was the lever with which Reagan accomplished his dramatic re-arrangement of federal spending priorities in 1981. But the Senate’s Republican majority then was largely insulated from immediate voter backlash--only 12 faced reelection in 1982, compared with 20 Democrats--and it was more willing to gamble on Reagan’s bold new agenda and the apparent mandate that he had received from voters.

Numbers Now Reversed

Now the numbers have been reversed, and the same Republican senators who rode to victory on Reagan’s 1980 landslide are facing 1986 reelection campaigns on their own. Twenty-two Republican seats will be on the ballot in 1986, and, although all incumbents but Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) are expected to seek reelection, Democrats say they will have their best chance since 1980 to regain control of the Senate.

White House aides have warned that Reagan may not be available to campaign for Republicans who do not support his programs. However, as the loss of two Republican Senate seats in the midst of Reagan’s overwhelming 1984 reelection victory proved, Republicans can no longer count on Reagan’s popularity to rub off on them.

Although this means that Democrats stand a good chance of wooing enough GOP support to block much of the President’s legislative agenda this session, Republicans predict that the Democrats will be less successful in picking up the GOP votes that they need to push through their own spending proposals. “They can be united on voting no, but they have a harder time voting for something,” said Gorton, who backed the bulk of the Administration’s spending cuts in the Budget Committee debate.

Debt-Ridden Farmers

Simpson added that, even if some Democratic-sponsored measures pass, as in the case of recent emergency legislation to bail out debt-ridden farmers, they will probably fall short of the two-thirds vote that they would need to override a Reagan veto. The result is likely to be a stalemate on many issues.

In the end, it is often said on Capitol Hill, all politics are local. And local priorities, rather than party loyalty, will probably determine how the senators up for reelection vote in the next year.

In Grassley’s Iowa, where farmers voted 2 to 1 for Reagan last November, a recent Iowa Poll showed that 49% now disapprove of the President, compared to an approval rate of only 42%. The poll, taken even before Reagan vetoed the emergency farm credit bill that Grassley had supported, marked only the second time that farmers have given the conservative President a negative rating.

Karol King, who grows corn near the west Iowa town of Mondamin, said he voted for Reagan last fall and probably would again. “But most of us feel (Reagan) really hasn’t recognized the farm problem yet. . . . Grassley understands what we’re leading ourselves into,” he said.

Supported Budget Freeze

Grassley was one of the early supporters of a budget freeze--an idea that the Senate’s Republican leadership complains would not put enough of a dent in a 1986 deficit that is projected to exceed $220 billion. King agreed, saying: “It doesn’t go as far as we need to go, but at least we’ve stopped increasing (spending). . . . Everybody feels like they will be treated fairly under a freeze.”

Student Loan Letters

A freeze would preserve many basic programs that Reagan has earmarked for huge cuts--including student loans, a topic that Grassley said has drawn more mail to his office than any other but agriculture. Des Moines’ Drake University, one of Iowa’s 28 private institutions of higher learning, has urged its students to write to Grassley and other lawmakers because few of its 5,500 students could afford to continue their studies under the student aid cuts proposed in the White House budget.

“If this goes through, you’re going to see a huge drop in college students, and the first to be hit will be the private colleges,” said Henry Kutak, Drake’s director of student aid.

Though Grassley’s refusal to go along with the Administration game plan has cost him friends in the White House and even drawn public criticism from some of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, he has become a strong favorite for another term in a state that has not reelected a senator since 1966.

Challenge for Democrats

“It is somewhat ironic that we have a Republican senator trying to run away from a Republican President,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Dave Nagle, who is sometimes mentioned as a possible challenger to Grassley. “The challenge for Democrats is to prove that he is also running away from his own record.”

Many Democrats, contending that Reagan’s popularity and influence peaked last November, say the split in the Republican ranks will probably widen as the 1986 elections approach.

“Rats don’t swim toward a sinking ship,” said one Democratic congressman who is weighing a bid to unseat an incumbent GOP senator next year. “Reagan can’t get any more popular than he already is. . . . The more this budget stuff sinks in, the less popular he’ll get.”