Reagan in South to Aid GOP Candidates

President Reagan courted conservative Democrats on Thursday in the Deep South, where Republican candidates have a chance to win two offices the GOP has not held in modern times.

In Louisiana, a state that has never sent a popularly elected Republican to the U.S. Senate, Republicans are seeking to win the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Russell B. Long. Reagan advised Democrats to follow the example of Winston Churchill and “change party for principle.”

The message was much the same in Alabama, where Reagan campaigned primarily for the reelection of Republican Sen. Jeremiah Denton but where a fractious Democratic primary has given the GOP a chance to capture the governor’s office for the first time in 112 years.

In both states, Reagan traveled in territory that has remained in the economic doldrums but where he nevertheless retains great personal popularity.

In his remarks Thursday, Reagan carefully walked the line between a fiercely partisan attack on the Democratic Party leadership and an open overture to the opposition party’s rank and file.

“We must never mistake the rank and file of the Democratic Party for the liberals who lead the party,” former Democrat Reagan told a Denton rally here, criticizing “the liberals who want to betray everyday Democrats by going back to the failed old policies of tax and tax and spend and spend.”

Reagan’s trip to Louisiana to campaign for Senate candidate W. Henson Moore, a six-term Republican congressman, was an important one, for Louisiana is one of the crucial states in the struggle for control of the Senate.

Republicans have a 53-47 edge in the Senate, and a net gain of just four seats by the Democrats would put them back in power.

Moore is expected to lead the field of 14 candidates in Louisiana’s unique “open primary” on Sept. 27, but he is unlikely to win a majority and thus is expecting a runoff on Nov. 4, probably against the leading Democratic contender, Rep. John B. Breaux.

At his first stop in Louisiana, where plummeting oil prices have devastated the state’s energy industries, Reagan said that, at the urging of Moore and others, “we will undertake a high-level review of America’s energy-related national security concerns.”

Some local officials interpreted that to mean that the Administration would study the possibility of an oil import fee. The President has opposed such a fee in the past.

Moore said at a later appearance that one of the first things he would do if elected to the Senate is push for an oil import fee.

In Alabama later in the day, Reagan said that the Senate election there “could determine whether, in the remaining time of my presidency, I see two more years of moving forward or two years of backsliding and stalemate.”

Denton, a one-time Navy pilot and prisoner of war in North Vietnam, was elected to the Senate in 1980 and faces a well-financed Rep. Richard C. Shelby, who won the Democratic nomination without a runoff.

But the Senate race has been overshadowed here by the struggle to succeed Democratic Gov. George C. Wallace, who has dominated the state’s politics for a generation.

After the Democratic primary was apparently won by Atty. Gen. Charles Graddick, a former Republican, a federal district court ordered that Lt. Gov. Bill Baxley be declared the winner because of crossover voting by Republicans in the Democratic primary. Later court rulings have further complicated the situation.