Democrats Seize Control of the Senate : Apparently Win 7 GOP Seats While Losing Only One

The Democratic Party, scoring a victory of unexpected size and scope, Tuesday seized control of the Senate for the first time in six years despite an unprecedented campaign effort by President Reagan to stave off the Democratic challenge.

Apparently winning a total of at least seven Republican-held Senate seats, while apparently losing only one of their own, Democrats from coast to coast either won or were projected as winners over Republican freshmen who had been swept into office in Reagan’s 1980 landslide victory but who found his campaign blitz on their behalf this year to be of little help at the polls.

“If there was a Reagan revolution, it’s over,” claimed House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), who is retiring from Congress. O’Neill’s House seat was won by Joseph Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Dole Concedes

As the polls were closing in the West, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) conceded that six years of Republican rule were ending. “It’s going to make it more difficult for the President,” he said. “It’s a question of whether it will be 53 or 55” Democrats in the new lineup, Dole added. Republicans held a 53-47 majority in the old Senate.

With Democratic voters turning out in unexpectedly large numbers, Republican candidates, all but two of them incumbents, either were defeated or were projected to lose in Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia and Nevada.

Only in Missouri, where former Gov. Christopher S. Bond defeated Democratic Lt. Gov. Harriet Woods in the race for the seat of retiring Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton, were the Republicans assured of winning a seat held by a Democrat.

Louisiana, Colorado

In California, another state where Republicans had hoped to gain a seat, Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston opened a lead over Rep. Ed Zschau. Democrats held on in Louisiana and apparently won in Colorado, both states where Democratic incumbents chose not to run again.

Against the decidedly Democratic trend in the Senate, Republicans were holding their losses to a minimum in the House, where the Democrats held a 253-182 advantage before the election.

And in the governors’ races, Republicans apparently gained eight seats, barely short of the 10 they needed to command a majority for the first time since 1970. They scored particularly striking victories in the South, wresting control of governorships in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Texas.

But by taking control of the Senate, Democrats cast a cloud over President Reagan’s last two years in office. Although Democratic leaders immediately pledged to work with the popular President, their new-found control of the Senate, coupled with their continuing dominance of the House, will make it more difficult for the President to work his will in Congress.

“We want to cooperate,” said Senate Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). But he warned that if Reagan failed to work with congressional Democrats to write trade and farm legislation, “we’re going ahead and putting a bill on his desk anyway.”

Lineup May Be 53 to 47

In the next Congress, the Democratic majority will apparently be 53 to 47 and could go even higher. Democratic campaign workers who crowded into the Democratic National Committee headquarters chanted: “55, 55, 55.”

As returns and late projections trickled in at Republican National Committee headquarters, Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. tried to put the best face on what was turning into a severe setback in the Senate.

“We did well in the House, we did very well in the governorships, we did well in the state legislatures,” he said. “If we don’t keep the Senate, we’re three for four and that isn’t bad.”

Stinging Defeat

The Democratic victory was a stinging personal defeat for Reagan, who had put his prestige and popularity on the line by campaigning exhaustively for Republican Senate candidates. Traveling 25,000 miles in three weeks, he appealed to voters to cast a final ballot for him by electing candidates that would retain a Republican majority in the Senate.

At the urging of his close friend, Sen. Paul Laxalt, general chairman of the Republican National Committee and chairman of his two winning presidential campaigns, Reagan even made a final election eve visit to Nevada to try to save for the Republicans the Senate seat that Laxalt is vacating. But the effort apparently went for naught as network projections showed former Rep. Jim Santini losing to Democratic Rep. Harry Reid.

Fowler Wins

Liberal Rep. Wyche Fowler Jr. of Atlanta, an opponent of Reagan’s policies of financial support for the contras in Nicaragua, scored one of the more surprising Democratic victories. He upset Sen. Mack Mattingly, who had held significant leads in polls throughout most of the campaign but called on Reagan for a final campaign boost in the last week before the election as polls showed Fowler closing the gap. With 83% of the vote counted, Fowler led, 52% to 48%.

Other GOP-held seats apparently captured by Democrats were:

--Florida. Gov. Bob Graham soundly defeated Sen. Paula Hawkins. With 93% of the vote counted, Graham led, 55% to 45%.

--North Carolina. Former Gov. Terry Sanford, also a former president of Duke University, defeated Sen. James T. Broyhill, who was appointed to the seat earlier this year after the suicide of incumbent Republican John East. Sanford led, 52% to 48%, with 93% of the vote counted.

--Maryland. Rep. Barbara A. Mikulski handily defeated Linda Chavez, formerly an aide in the Reagan White House, for the seat of retiring Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. Mikulski’s share of the vote was 61% with nearly all the votes counted.

--North Dakota. Democrat Kent Conrad, the state tax commissioner, held a narrow lead of 51% to 49% over Sen. Mark Andrews with 78% of the vote counted, and CBS and NBC projected that Conrad would hold his lead when all the votes were counted.

--South Dakota. Rep. Thomas A. Daschle held a 52%-48% lead over Sen. James Abnor with 69% of the votes counted, and CBS and NBC also projected that he would maintain his lead.

Late returns indicated Democrats still had a chance of unseating Alabama Sen. Jeremiah Denton, who was locked in a tight race with Democratic Rep. Richard C. Shelby. Shelby led by 585,987 to 580,226 with 95% of the vote counted. ABC and NBC projected Denton the winner based on exit polls and results from sample precincts, but CBS, based on late returns, called Shelby the winner.

And the Democrats also had a chance of taking the Senate seat in Washington. With 53% of the vote counted, Former Rep. Brock Adams, who was former President Jimmy Carter’s transportation secretary, led incumbent Sen. Slade Gorton by 5,000 votes.

Forced to Defend 22

In the 1980 elections, when the Republicans won back control of the Senate for the first time since 1954, the GOP held on to all 10 of its seats that were at stake while Democrats lost 12 of their 24. Those were the same seats up for election this year, and Republicans were forced to defend 22 of the 34 seats at stake.

Republican strategists, realizing they were in danger of losing several of the GOP-controlled seats, had counted heavily on winning several seats held by Democrats, including Cranston’s and the seats being vacated by Sen. Russell B. Long in Louisiana and Sen. Gary Hart in Colorado.

But returns showed Democratic Rep. John B. Breaux winning handily over Republican Rep. W. Henson Moore in Louisiana. With virtually all the vote counted, Breaux held a comfortable 53%-47% lead.

And in another contest between House members of opposite parties, Democrat Timothy E. Wirth apparently defeated Republican Kenneth B. Kramer in Colorado. Wirth had 51% of the vote with three-quarters of the precincts counted.

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, Steven Symms of Idaho, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Bob Packwood of Oregon, Jake Garn of Utah, Bob Kasten of Wisconsin and Don Nickles of Oklahoma.

Among Democrats, other reelected incumbents included Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Alan Dixon of Illinois, Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, John Glenn of Ohio, Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Wendell Ford of Kentucky.

Not Swayed by Reagan

Exit polls indicated that although voters still supported President Reagan, 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.

Exit polls generally showed Democrats turned out to vote in much larger numbers than Republicans and generally voted for their party’s candidates, a key factor in the outcome of the Senate elections.

In Florida, Gov. Graham ran strong among liberals and moderates against Sen. Paula Hawkins. He carried the men’s vote by roughly 12 percentage points and the women’s vote by 10 percentage points, according to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.