Democrats Lead in Key Senate Races : Apparent Victories in North Carolina, Florida, Maryland Aid Bid for Control

Democrats pressed toward their goal of regaining control of the Senate on Tuesday night, seizing leads in three key races where Republicans held Senate seats.

All three networks and the Associated Press named Gov. Bob Graham the victor over Sen. Paula Hawkins in Florida. ABC, NBC and CBS also said Rep. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) won the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Charles McC. Mathias.

Former Democratic Gov. Terry Sanford apparently defeated Sen. James T. Broyhill of North Carolina, CBS and NBC reported, based on surveys taken as voters left polling places. ABC reported Sanford leading with 52.3% to 47.6% with 7.9% of the vote tabulated.

Expected to Win

Graham and Mikulski were expected to win, but the early projection of their victories, coupled with Sanford’s possible triumph in what had been seen as a close race, buoyed Democratic hopes for overturning the GOP’s 53-47 margin in the Senate.

Republicans continued to count on strong showings in close races in Western states to pull them through.

Further fueling Democratic hopes, exit polls nationwide showed Democrats turning out at the polls in substantially greater numbers than Republicans.

And early returns gave little comfort to the GOP as it struggled to reduce the Democrats’ substantial margins in the House of Representatives and among the nation’s governors.

In Florida, Graham ran strongly among liberals and moderates and carried the men’s vote by roughly 12 percentage points and the women’s vote by 10 percentage points, according to NBC, which projected Graham would poll 56% of the vote to Hawkins’ 44%.

Mikulski was running strongly against Linda Chavez, a former White House aide and one-time U.S. Civil Rights Commission official. ABC projected Mikulski to get 55.4% to Chavez’s 44.5%.

Chavez ran one of the most negative campaigns in a year marked by such stumping: She described the Maryland congresswoman as “a San Francisco Democrat,” emphasized that Mikulski was single, accused her of being “anti-male” and challenged her to “come out of the closet” and debate.

In Missouri, NBC projected that former Gov. Christopher S. Bond would wrest a seat from the Democrats by besting Democratic Lt. Gov. Harriet Woods in the race for the seat vacated by Democratic incumbent Thomas F. Eagleton.

Close Georgia Battle

In other crucial Senate battles, Republican Sen. Mack Mattingly of Georgia was locked in a close battle with Democratic Rep. Wyche Fowler Jr. and Republican freshman Sen. Jeremiah Denton of Alabama was narrowly leading Democratic Rep. Richard C. Shelby.

Republican incumbents who appeared headed for victory, according to early returns, were Dan Quayle of Indiana, Bob Dole of Kansas, Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire, Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Don Nickles of Oklahoma.

Among Democrats, early returns strongly indicated reelection for incumbents Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, Alan J. Dixon of Illinois, John Glenn of Ohio, Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Wendell H. Ford of Kentucky.

President Reagan campaigned extensively for Sens. Hawkins and Broyhill and other Republican senators who faced serious challenges. Exit polls indicated that although voters still supported the President, they were not swayed by his entreaties to vote for Republican candidates as a way of casting a final vote for him.

Florida voters, for example, gave Reagan a 64% approval rating, according to CBS exit polls, but Hawkins’ final vote was expected to be at least 20 percentage points less than that.

Few dramatic changes were expected in the lopsidedly Democratic House, where most incumbents faced relatively mild challenges and almost 70 congressmen had no opposition at all. Both parties had focused most of their attention on a few key battlegrounds, most notably in the South, where the bulk of Republican gains had come during Reagan’s landslide reelection two years ago.

The Democrats held a 253-182 advantage in the House going into the election and party officials insisted that they expected to pick up an additional 10 or 12 seats Tuesday.

Strong Showing

In South Carolina, Democrats appeared in early returns to be making a strong showing. In the congressional district that had been held by Republican gubernatorial nominee Carroll A. Campbell Jr., the underdog Democrat, State Sen. Elizabeth Patterson, was holding a strong lead over Greenville Mayor William D. Workman. Meanwhile, incumbent Republican Floyd Spence was locked in a tight race with Democratic challenger Fred Zeigler. Democrats had also sought gains in the economically depressed farm states, but many GOP incumbents had moved early to distance themselves from unpopular Reagan Administration programs and Democrats were hobbled by widespread uncertainty about where blame for agriculture’s ingrained problems should be placed.

Early results from Indiana, a key farm state, were mixed. In the 8th District rematch of a hotly disputed 1984 race, Republican challenger Richard D. McIntyre was leading incumbent Democratic Rep. Frank McCloskey, whose election two years ago had been decided by only four votes. However, Democratic incumbent Andrew Jacobs Jr. enjoyed a comfortable lead over Republican Jim Eynon, despite the fact that Jacobs had spent almost nothing on the race and Eynon had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Crucial Difference

The Republicans had counted on a last-minute campaign blitz by President Reagan and a massive get-out-the-vote drive to help them retain control of the Senate. Richard B. Wirthlin, the White House pollster, said Reagan’s campaigning might have provided the crucial difference for Republican candidates in several close races.

Wirthlin said the effort to get voters to the polls, which he said culminated a two-year voter education project by the GOP, could turn out to be the single most important factor in the Republicans’ favor.

“I think it means we’ll retain control by about 52 to 48,” he had predicted before the voting started.

25,000 Miles in 3 Weeks

Reagan’s exhaustive campaigning, which covered 25,000 miles in three weeks and took in 10 states in the final week, ended on election eve with appearances in California for Rep. Ed Zschau, who was seeking to unseat Sen. Alan Cranston, and in Nevada, where Republican Jim Santini was fighting an uphill battle with Democratic Rep. Harry Reid for the seat being vacated by Sen. Paul Laxalt.

The President, who flew back to Washington on Air Force One on Tuesday and watched election returns in the White House, shrugged off questions about whether he expected the GOP to retain control of the Senate. “I’m not going to make any predictions,” he said.

Two other political leaders with much to lose or gain personally from the outcome--Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas and Senate Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia--did not hesitate to predict that their parties would control the Senate after the election, each suggesting that it would be by a 52-48 margin.

Tougher Sledding

If the Democrats, who lost the Senate when Reagan was first elected in 1980, do return to power, the President’s agenda on both foreign policy and domestic issues will face tougher sledding in Congress.

Byrd said it would mean that Democrats would force the Administration to pull back from some of its “extremes” and to use diplomatic and economic tools and not just military means to advance its goals in Central America. Moreover, he said, the Democrats would pass trade legislation and confront Reagan once again with a bill similar to the one he vetoed earlier that would limit textile imports.

Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said trade would indeed be the area of greatest change with a Democratic Senate. Democrats, he said, would enact a trade bill that would limit the President’s discretion because they believe that his policies are encouraging protectionism in other countries.

Bush Could Be Factor

With so many close races, political observers pointed out the election could result in a 50-50 division in the Senate, in which case Vice President George Bush, as presiding officer of the Senate ex officio, would be in position to break a deadlock vote and give the Republicans a bare majority.

Voter turnout appeared to be unusually low, not only because of the lack of overriding national issues, but because of inclement weather across the nation--ranging from freezing temperatures in the northern Plains and New England to heavy rain and snow in the Southwest.

“It’s beautiful weather for Republicans,” said William Lucas, Michigan’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, as he cast his ballot in Detroit. Lucas, opposing Democratic Gov. James J. Blanchard in an uphill battle, was seeking to become the nation’s first elected black governor.

Lucas was referring to the old political saw--now widely discounted--that bad weather favors Republicans by reducing the turnout. In that view, GOP voters are held to be better motivated than Democrats. But in this case the remark was tinged with irony: Lucas, praised as a sign of future trends when he shucked off his Democratic allegiance and ran for governor as a Republican, was among the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls apparently headed for defeat Tuesday.

House Races Watched

Although the bitter struggle to control the Senate dominated the election spotlight, both parties also were keeping a close watch on the House of Representatives races, where Republicans were expecting to buck historical trends and minimize their losses.

The gubernatorial races, in which Republicans expected to reduce the Democrats’ 34-16 majority, were also important to the two parties in the long term. Governors, among other things, can influence all-important decisions on congressional redistricting and can strengthen their party’s efforts in presidential elections.

Redistricting battles that will come in the early 1990s are expected to involve the shifting of about 20 congressional seats, mostly from the North and East to the South and West.

During this century, congressional elections in the sixth year of a party’s control of the White House have produced substantial losses of House seats for that party, ranging from 10 to 71 and averaging 41.

Incumbents Stronger

But it was not clear how strong this pattern would be in 1986, in part because of the increasing strength of incumbents.

Incumbents were running for reelection in all but 44 of the 435 House districts and incumbency generally has been a major advantage. In 1984, for example, 390 incumbents were reelected.

With Democrats virtually assured of retaining control of the House, Democratic floor Leader Jim Wright of Texas is expected to be elected Speaker of the House in January, succeeding Rep. Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr., who is retiring from the House after serving as Speaker for 10 years.

Rep. Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), who had an easy reelection contest, will continue as the GOP’s House leader.

Gubernatorial Races

In governors’ races, Republicans were expected to do much better, especially since Democrats hold 27 of the 36 governorships that were at stake in the election.

GOP strategists said they expected to pick up at least six additional statehouses and perhaps as many as 10. Democratic officials conceded that because of the number of Democratic governorships at stake, they expected to suffer a net loss of several governorships, but no more than four to eight.

Gov. John H. Sununu of New Hampshire, chairman of the Republican Governors Conference, said that a gain of as many as nine seats for the GOP would “certainly indicate a movement across the country, at the statehouse level, toward party realignment.”

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