Close Races to Decide Fight for Senate Control : Democrats Narrow Margin by Stressing Local Issues, Economy

By targeting regional economic problems and other local grievances, Democrats have driven to within striking distance of taking control of the U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s midterm election, a victory that would help them regain the political initiative they lost in President Reagan’s 1980 landslide.

To achieve this long-cherished objective, however, the Democrats must overcome two bulwarks of Republican defense: a multimillion-dollar advantage in campaign funds and President Reagan’s last-ditch campaigning.

Reagan has campaigned with even more than his usual energy and partisan force, because a Democratic victory in the Senate would almost certainly cost him dearly in the last two years of his presidency.

Dozen States Crucial

In the closing hours of this bitterly fought election, strategists for both sides agreed on at least one conclusion: The outcome depends on results of still-too-close-to-call contests in a dozen or so states scattered from the heart of Dixie to the Pacific shore.

Counting no fewer than eight races that were “dead even” as the campaign turned into the home stretch, Republican National Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. declared: “Probably the candidate who makes the last mistake will lose,” a comment that reflected not only the closeness of the battle but also what many people considered to be the barren and negative quality of this year’s political debate.

Nonetheless, Democrats claimed to feel relatively confident about gaining Republican-held seats in three states--Florida, Maryland and Nevada--while Republicans are just about as sure of picking up one Democratic seat, in Missouri. That adds up to a net Democratic gain of two.

As a result, to score the net gain of four seats that is required to reverse the present 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate, Democrats must net only two more seats from a cluster of most vulnerable GOP targets, including Alabama, Idaho, North Carolina, North and South Dakota and Washington. At the same time, however, they have to protect their flanks in California, Colorado and Louisiana, where Democratic seats are threatened by Republican takeovers.

34 Seats at Stake

Of the 34 seats at stake, 22 are now in GOP hands, giving the Democrats their biggest overall target in years.

One reason the Senate has dominated this midterm election from the beginning is that Tuesday’s vote is expected to produce little change in the Democratic-controlled House. Democrats are expected to pick up about 10 seats or so, which--as Republicans point out--would be a much smaller gain than the opposition party normally makes in off-year elections.

But Democrats point out that they are starting from a high base point, with a 253-180 House majority.

The implications for the national political future of the struggle for the Senate are far-reaching. Republican retention of Senate control would help the President avoid the lame duck label in his last two years in office, and provide further fuel for the continuing Republican drive to become the nation’s majority party, particularly when combined with expected GOP gains in the gubernatorial races.

(The GOP’s favorable gubernatorial outlook is largely because 27 of the 36 governorships at stake in Tuesday’s vote are now controlled by Democrats and 14 of the 27 Democratic incumbents are not seeking reelection. Republicans are particularly hopeful of taking two big Southern states, Texas and Florida, now held by the Democrats.)

Potent Machinery

For the Democrats, winning the Senate would mean control of the Senate’s potent committee machinery, allowing them to spend the next two years challenging Reagan’s appointments, certainly including any he might make to fill Supreme Court vacancies, and also to probe and poke into the operations of the Reagan Administration.

Meanwhile the Democrats would be better able to promote their own policy agenda and thus lay groundwork for retaking the White House in 1988.

President Reagan made a televised appeal to voters Sunday night, declaring that “I need your help,” asking that they continue to support his presidency and his policies by voting Republican on Tuesday. “Together you and I, with the help of the Republican team, can finish the job,” he said in a $500,000 paid political announcement financed in part by corporate contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Handicap for Democrats

The Senate campaign from the beginning has lacked any unifying theme or issue, an absence that some analysts have seen as a handicap for the Democrats.

Usually opposition parties make gains in off-year elections by turning them into national protests against an unpopular President and his policies. But in 1986 the Democrats have had to contend with a highly popular chief executive and the absence of any truly critical national predicament, such as a deep recession or a frustrating war.

But the Democrats have done a pretty fair job of finding an assortment of problems in individual states and blaming them on the incumbent GOP senator and the incumbent Republican President.

In North Dakota, where grain prices are sagging, Democrat challenger Kent Conrad hammers away at Administration farm policies. In Louisiana, where the local economy has been staggered by sinking oil prices, Democratic Rep. John B. Breaux lambastes the Reagan Adminstration’s unwillingness to push for an oil import duty. In North Carolina, where the textile industry is suffering, Democrat Terry Sanford denounces Reagan’s veto of the bill restricting textile imports.

Credit for Good Times

And in the few parts of the country where even Democrats are hard-pressed to find much to complain about, some of their candidates are claiming credit for the good times. Thus, in Florida, a state with a healthy economy, the Democratic Senate candidate, incumbent Gov. Bob Graham, says: “We believe a substantial reason for the recovery is what we have done,” referring to his own two-term administration in Tallahassee.

To Graham, the Democrats’ state-by-state approach to the campaign is perfectly logical. “There is no such thing as American politics,” he said in an interview. “There are thousands of communities, 50 states, each of which has their own special characteristics.”

In a number of cases the Republicans have responded by attacking some of the same Administration policies the Democrats are criticizing.

Wisconsin’s Difficulties

Thus in Wisconsin, where Democratic challenger Ed Garvey has been blaming Administration trade polices for contributing to the state’s economic difficulties, Republican Bob Kasten makes a point of reminding voters that he co-sponsored the textile import bill that President Reagan vetoed.

Still, Kasten and other Republican senators who have differed with Reagan on policy matters were glad enough to welcome the President into their states in the last last two weeks of the campaign as he sought to help them fight off their Democratic challengers.

Next to Reagan, however, the other not-so-secret Republican weapon in the election is money. The Republican Senate Committee expects to spend about $12 million, close to the federal legal limit--contrasted with an estimated $6.5 million laid out by the counterpart Democratic committee, on direct help for candidates. The GOP group also has more money to spend for indirect support through such campaign tools as polling and research.

In addition, the House and Senate campaign committees, combined with the Republican National Committee, are spending about $10 million to $15 million on a registration and get-out-the-vote campaign, including a last-minute television blitz, a scale of financing the Democrats say they cannot come close to matching.

And given the evidence of voter apathy and predictions of low turnout Tuesday, based on the high rate of stay-at-homes in this year’s primary contests, anything either party can do to make its supporters more likely to vote could be decisive. Among the Republican seats they have targeted, Democrats are now most confident of capturing the seat being vacated by Republican Charles McC. Mathias Jr. in Maryland, where Democratic Rep. Barbara A. Mikulski leads Republican Linda Chavez in the polls.

But Democratic challengers Garvey in Wisconsin and Rep. Wyche Fowler Jr. in Georgia need strong finishes to overcome leads by Republican incumbents Kasten and Mack Mattingly, respectively.

For their part, Missouri Republicans are all but convinced that their former governor, Christopher (Kit) Bond, will defeat Democrat Harriett Woods, giving them the seat now held by outgoing Democrat Thomas F. Eagleton.

sh 10 Closest Contests

Meanwhile, party strategists focused most of their attention on a group of states where--in some cases--leads held by one candidate or another were so small as to be within the margin of statistical polling error. Here is a brief summary of what are probably the 10 closest contests in the nation--apart from California, where Zschau has been closing in on Cranston:

--Alabama: Democratic hopes that Rep. Richard C. Shelby could defeat Republican Sen. Jeremiah Denton at first appeared doomed by a bitter intraparty fight over the gubernatorial nomination. But recent polls show Shelby gaining. And Democrats believe that conservative Shelby will get the ballots of black voters drawn to the polls to support the liberal Democratic candidate for governor, Bill Baxley.

--Colorado: In the contest for the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Gary Hart, Democratic Rep. Timothy E. Wirth has tried to depict his Republican opponent, Rep. Ken Kramer, as too far to the right, while Kramer has charged Wirth with excessive liberalism. Kramer may have boosted his chances by claiming credit for getting Colorado a Strategic Defense Initiative research facility that will provide several thousand jobs.

Hawkins in Trouble

--Florida: Incumbent Republican Sen. Paula Hawkins was in trouble from the beginning of her race against popular Democratic Gov. Graham, who prides himself on his pragmatism and his ties to the business community. Hawkins’ erratic style--late in the campaign she implied that Graham had the backing of the Young Communist League--has not helped her cause.

--Idaho: Another state in which the Democrats have nominated a popular governor, John V. Evans, to oppose a conservative Republican incumbent, Sen. Steven D. Symms. The slump in farming, timber and mining in the state put Symms on the defensive. But the deciding factor could be whether pro- or anti-union forces turn out more voters for a ballot initiative to repeal the state’s right-to-work law.

--Louisiana: Seeking to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Russell B. Long, Republican Rep. W. Henson Moore came in first in a multicandidate field in the state’s bipartisan September primary. But since then his Democrat opponent, Breaux, has been gaining ground, and Democrats are now trying to link Moore to a Republican National Committee “ballot security” program allegedly aimed at holding down the black vote.

Santini Lags Behind

--Nevada: Republican James D. Santini started off behind Democratic Rep. Harry Reid in this race for the seat being vacated by Republican Paul Laxalt and Democrats say that it is too late for him to catch up. Santini, a former Democrat, has apparently been hurt by the perception that he is too much of an opportunist.

--North Carolina: Republican James T. Broyhill moved ahead of Democrat Terry Sanford last June when Broyhill was named to replace Republican Sen. John East after East’s suicide. But more recent polls show Sanford closing the gap. Criticized by Broyhill for raising taxes when he was governor, Sanford has attacked Broyhill for voting for tax increases in the House.

--North Dakota: Democrat Kent Conrad turned out to be a stronger challenger to Republican Sen. Mark Andrews than many people expected. Andrews has been hurt not only by the slumping farm economy but also from negative public reaction to the unsuccessful multimillion-dollar malpractice suit the wealthy senator filed against the doctors who treated his wife, Mary, for meningitis.

Dim View of Red Meat

--South Dakota: Democrats nominated the popular and forceful Rep. Thomas A. Daschle who proceeded to attack incumbent Republican Sen. James Abdnor on farm policy. But Abdnor counterattacked, trying to link Daschle to actress Jane Fonda, with whom he was pictured at a California fund-raiser. Fonda’s health books, Abdnor’s commercials point out to voters in this cattle-raising state, take a dim nutritional view of red meat.

--Washington: Republican Sen. Slade Gorton decided last summer to trade his vote in favor of controversial judicial nominee Daniel A. Manion for an Administration promise to push another judgeship nomination; that has been roundly criticized as overly political and made Gorton vulnerable to attacks by Democratic nominee Brock Adams on trade policy and on the selection of Washington as a possible site for nuclear waste deposit.