Close Races to Decide Fight for Senate Control : ‘Star Wars’ Criticism Spurred President to Campaign, Aides Say

In the final days of the 1986 election season, President Reagan has launched himself into an unprecedented campaign blitz designed to turn Tuesday’s voting into a referendum on his presidency. And if that ends up helping Republicans preserve their crucial majority in the Senate, the GOP may well have the Democrats to thank.

At least the way White House officials tell the tale, it was Democratic criticism, not Republican strategizing alone, that was the catalyst for Reagan’s surge of campaign energy.

Partisan Enthusiasm

The President had always planned a heavy schedule of campaigning for GOP candidates. And he has always gone at such assignments with a partisan enthusiasm that gets under the skin of Democratic congressional leaders who have often cooperated closely with him on such major issues as tax reform.

Yet, returning from the Reykjavik, Iceland, summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev three weeks ago, aides say, Reagan was stung by the criticism--even ridicule, as he saw it--being voiced by some Democrats over his refusal to curtail development of his “Star Wars” space-based missile defense system in exchange for a U.S.-Soviet agreement on sweeping cuts in nuclear weapons.

In the wake of the summit, for example, Democratic Rep. Thomas J. Downey of New York charged that Reagan’s dream of “Star Wars” was more like a nightmare because he had refused to use it as a bargaining chip with Gorbachev. Similarly, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) declared that the missile defense system would become a bargaining chip only “if Congress comes back next year and takes a meat ax to it.”

Such comments got the President’s dander up, aides say, and set his political advisers to thinking that “Star Wars”--or the Strategic Defense Initiative, as it is formally known--might prove to be a potent national issue for the Senate races.

Opinion polls uniformly showed that most Americans backed Reagan’s handling of the summit and thought it was important to elect members of Congress who support SDI. That convinced White House strategists that the President should make it an issue. And the potential of SDI as a mobilizing point, coupled with the fact that Democrats were gaining ground in several close Senate races, persuaded Reagan to beef up his schedule, which winds up with the President in California on election eve campaigning for Rep. Ed Zschau in his effort to unseat Sen. Alan Cranston.

‘Won That Issue’

“The Democrats prematurely trashed SDI and the President’s handling of the summit,” said White House communications director Patrick J. Buchanan, “and he went out and said, ‘That’s the issue: Shall we defend America? Shall we build SDI?’ And we’ve already won that issue. No Democrat is treating SDI as a crazy Buck Rogers idea now.”

The Republican National Committee was so taken with SDI and the summit as an issue that it put out a four-page pamphlet that cited several campaign talking points and a poll showing that Americans, by a 4-1 margin, approved Reagan’s handling of the summit and that 53% believed that it was important to elect members of Congress who support SDI.

Stumping With Gusto

After White House strategy sessions, a fired-up Reagan hit the campaign trail with gusto, carrying the same message to GOP rallies all across the country: SDI induced the Soviets to negotiate on arms control, and now “what we need in Washington is a Congress that won’t give away at the conference table what we refused to surrender at the negotiating table in Reykjavik, Iceland!”

Richard B. Wirthlin, a Reagan pollster, said the President had always looked forward to campaigning this year and was scheduled to be heavily involved even before Reykjavik because of concern that he might be “confined to a caretaker role in 1987 and 1988” if the Democrats regained control of the Senate.

To that end, he has raised $33 million for GOP candidates around the country since May of last year, $14.8 million of it going to Senate candidates. In the last two months of the campaign he traveled 24,839 miles.

But Reykjavik was an energizing force, Buchanan said, and the catalyst for seeking to turn the Senate elections into “a referendum on Ronald Reagan and his agenda as opposed to Washington and the liberal agenda.”

That strategy contains some risks for the President. To the extent that he succeeds in making Tuesday’s vote a referendum on his stewardship, any widespread failure of GOP candidates to win could embolden Democrats to challenge him more fiercely on SDI and other programs dear to Reagan’s heart during the last two years of his term.

Democrats Stung

Certainly the harshness of his last-minute attacks has stung some Democrats. Retiring House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), who played a key role in resolving a Democratic confrontation with Reagan over SDI just before the summit, complained: “Little did I know when I untied the President’s hands before the Iceland summit that he would use the opportunity to attack me instead of the Russians.”

Yet Reagan has often benefited from his willingness to risk political capital instead of hoard it. And in this case the risk may not really be all that great. For one thing, a substantial number of Democrats have actually been supporting “Star Wars,” at least to some limited extent.

Finally, as the 1988 election looms closer, Democrats will naturally press Reagan as hard as they dare, no matter how he frames this year’s contest.

The 1986 campaign has been carefully staged and rigidly controlled, with no press conferences and only an occasional opportunity for a reporter to shout a question at the President. Reagan has not held a press conference since Aug. 12 and has not been questioned about SDI or about his claim in campaign speeches--disputed by many economists--that the economy is headed for “a second boom.”

Economy Issue

As with SDI, Reagan’s decision to inject the economy into the campaign was apparently reinforced, if not triggered entirely, by his response to criticism.

It came after O’Neill and Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, accused him of engaging in SDI rhetoric to divert attention from the Administration’s “failed economic policies.”

And one of Reagan’s most outspoken critics, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, accused him of boasting about the nation’s economy when 27 states are in a recession and his policies “have put more Americans in poverty and unemployment, widened the gap between the very rich and the very poor, ground economic growth to a snail’s pace . . . and broken the $2-trillion debt barrier.”

The President, painting a glowing picture of the economy as he barnstorms across the country in Air Force One, has been repeatedly cheered at rallies reminiscent of the ones staged during his reelection campaign in 1984.

‘Better Actor’

Colorful high school bands play while cheerleaders, students and local citizens help pack flag-draped auditoriums. Thousands of red, white and blue balloons shower the spectators at the end of the President’s speeches.

Reagan beams at all the hoopla as though he hasn’t been through it all scores of times. At the Birmingham Civic Center, a reporter for a Spanish newspaper, observing Reagan watching apparently wide-eyed with delight as balloons showered on the crowd, said: “He’s a better actor than they give him credit for. He looks like my 11-year-old daughter would look.”

The President’s visits have dominated television and newspaper coverage in each state as he portrays Democrats as weak on defense, soft on crime and spendthrifts itching to raise taxes. Wherever he has gone, Reagan has delivered a standard campaign speech, with appropriate inserts at each location to cover all the local bases. And Reagan remains a master of the local angle, touching off lusty rounds of cheers and applause as he calls out the names of all the local bands and political figures.

Standard Jokes

In Birmingham, he named four bands at the beginning of his speech and near the end of it sparked thunderous applause by ad-libbing: “I goofed a little while ago when I started in. I forgot to mention the Oak Grove High School Band.”

He brings down the house with the same jokes and one-liners he has been using for years. There is the story--a trusty veteran of many previous Reagan campaigns--about the boy who tried to sell two puppies as Democratic dogs and got nowhere, then two weeks later tried to sell them as Republican dogs; asked to explain how he could change their identity, the boy said: “Now their eyes are open.”

At one stop Reagan, who frequently jokes about his age, said: “I don’t know why, but around about here I always feel like telling a story, and maybe some of you have heard it, but then, you’ve got to remember that after you pass 40 you begin telling stories over and over again.” His timing was perfect and that brought laughter too.

As Buchanan says, it’s really the “last hurrah” for the 75-year-old President, and he obviously enjoys it as he appeals to voters to cast a ballot for him one final time by voting to keep Republicans in control of the Senate.

‘Strong National Defense’

The idea for the campaign, Buchanan says, was for Reagan to emphasize “the issue of a strong national defense with SDI as the touchstone and to be tough on the social issues, but without talking about the death penalty or school prayer or the right-to-life, but to ask if you would support a Judiciary Committee that would give Joe Biden (Delaware’s Democratic senator) or Kennedy (Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts) absolute veto power over the President’s choice of judges.”

During the last week Reagan has hit hard at those issues and at the notion that, as Buchanan put it, the Democrats will raise taxes, but if Republicans are elected, “the good times will roll.”

Republican strategists say Reagan’s frenetic campaigning during the final week before the election--a 10-state blitz that press aide Pete Rousell jokingly referred to as “the Bataan Death March”--could make a difference in eight of the races that polls indicate are especially close: Alabama, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, South Dakota and Washington.

“There’s never been an election when there have been so many close Senate races and with the potential payoff so high. Changing only a few votes in some of the closest states could be well worth the President’s time and effort,” said Robert Teeter, a Republican pollster who has done polling for the White House.

Marginal Help

Teeter, who stresses that even a President as popular as Reagan could be of only marginal help to a candidate, predicts that the final outcome of Tuesday’s election will find the GOP either 51-49 in control of the Senate or 51-49 in the minority. The Republicans now have a 53-47 edge, but 22 of the 34 seats up this year are held by Republicans.

Democrats have looked with envy on Reagan’s campaign performance but say they doubt that he has large enough coattails to help Republicans retain control of the Senate.

“He loves it and he’s great at it,” Democratic pollster Peter Hart said. “Nobody gives a better endorsement than he does. But when he was on top of the ticket in 1984, he campaigned in the last week for Roger Jepsen (Republican senator from Iowa) and Charles Percy (Republican senator from Illinois) and they both lost. He didn’t lift a finger for Mitch McConnell (Kentucky’s Republican senator) and he won.”