GOP Walks Out as Panel Votes to Seat Ind. Democrat

After an all-night marathon by angry Republicans, the House Administration Committee today recommended 12 to 0 that Democrat Frank McCloskey be named the winner in a bitterly disputed Indiana congressional election. All seven Republicans walked out in protest before the vote.

The GOP congressmen left the room after losing an attempt to have the 8th District seat declared vacant so that Republican Gov. Robert Orr could call a special election.

The full, Democrat-dominated House is expected to vote on the committee recommendation next week.

Irate Republicans, declaring “war” over the acrimonious dispute, kept the House in session all night and well into the morning to vent their anger before allowing other business to resume shortly before 10 a.m.

Republican leaders said the around-the-clock session was just one of a number of disruptive measures they will use to dramatize their contention that the seat was “stolen” by Democrats.

The GOP talkathon, consisting of a string of back-to-back speeches, was triggered by a Democratic-controlled task force vote Monday to seat McCloskey on the basis of a General Accounting Office recount that gave him a four-vote margin over Republican Richard McIntyre.

But Republicans, claiming the vote had been stolen from them, said they would obstruct regular business if necessary to prevent McCloskey’s seating.

“We do not intend for McCloskey to be seated, and we will take any actions necessary to stop that,” Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), minority whip, told reporters.

“We will be obstructionist” and may try to bring Congress to a halt, Lott said, mentioning such tactics as speeches, roll calls and objections.

“I think we ought to go to war,” said Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.).

“There is no pleasing both sides in this kind of determination,” said Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), chairman of the task force. “The reality is one side was going to be displeased. . . . The General Accounting Office auditors conducted in every aspect a credible job.”

President Reagan telephoned McIntyre during a meeting of House Republicans Monday. “He said he and Nancy had been watching the task force proceedings and said they ‘went through the ceiling,”’ McIntyre related. “He called it a robbery and pledged his help in whatever may come.”

Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Republican Conference, told reporters: “This threatens beyond anything that has ever happened before in the House of Representatives the relationship of the two parties.”

He and House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) said they would seek a meeting with House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) to express “our sense of political and moral outrage at the outright theft of the seat.”