Gains Seen for Democrat Presidential Hopefuls, Most Notably Gov. Cuomo, in Election Results

For the 1988 presidential contenders already edging away from the starting gate, Tuesday’s congressional and gubernatorial election results seem to have helped some winners, most notably New York’s Democratic Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.

His whopping 65% reelection margin broke a 104-year-old state record set by Grover Cleveland in 1882. The victory will help Cuomo command attention--and raise millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

And Democratic hopeful Gary Hart of Colorado, while retiring from the Senate, was spared a potential problem when Democratic Rep. Timothy E. Wirth beat Republican Rep. Ken Kramer for Hart’s old seat. That means Hart can count on having a friend in office in his home state while he seeks to promote his candidacy. He also escapes likely criticism from fellow Democrats had the GOP taken Hart’s seat.

Less Helpful for GOP

But Tuesday’s tidings were less helpful for at least three potential GOP presidential candidates: Vice President George Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and retiring Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada. While the impact of the 1986 election will almost certainly be overshadowed by later developments in the 1988 competition for the White House, all three awoke Wednesday with new problems or additional handicaps.

Bush is the GOP candidate who has wrapped himself most tightly in the mantle of Reaganism. Thus Tuesday’s Democratic victory in the face of a last-minute campaign blitz by the President denied Bush the lift another Reagan triumph could have provided.

Similarly, Dole, while reelected handily in Kansas, lost his job as Senate majority leader and with it what he himself considered an invaluable platform for projecting his views on issues and his image as a national leader. That is especially important for Dole, who has yet to develop a clear image in the minds of most voters.

Discouraging News

And for Laxalt, who has not yet decided whether to make a run for the GOP nomination, Tuesday’s vote brought discouraging news. The defeat of Republican Senate candidate Jim Santini in Nevada, whom Laxalt had personally persuaded to run for the seat he is leaving, raised questions about Laxalt’s political strength in his own state.

In a backhanded way, some analysts contended, Bush and Dole actually gained from their losses. The solid Democratic victory at least rescued Bush from the potential straitjacket of a 50-50 split in the Senate, which would have forced Bush to hang around Washington breaking tie votes, instead of stumping the country.

Similarly, Dole--freed from the burdens of running the Senate--is now freer to roam the country pursuing support for his presidential candidacy.

A Transition Period

More fundamental than the pluses and minuses for individual candidates, the widespread Democratic victories in the midterm election signaled the start of a transition period in national politics, a sort of interregnum between the “Reagan revolution” and the post-Reagan era. All of the White House aspirants in both parties must now adjust to this new reality.

And, while it is too early to tell how this interval will evolve, Tuesday’s returns did lay bare some important realities with which the 1988 presidential candidates must contend:

--Though he continues to be extraordinarily popular, Reagan is no better able to transfer this popularity to the candidates of his party than past presidents could. In the aftermath of Tuesday’s balloting, Reagan aides contended that Reagan had turned threatened GOP debacles into hairbreadth defeats. “In many cases he made a difference but it simply wasn’t enough,” insisted White House director of political affairs Mitchell E. Daniels Jr.

‘Crazy Quilt Election’

But the end result was the same and suggests that Bush and other potential 1988 Republican standard-bearers cannot expect Reagan’s coattails to carry them into the White House either.

--Tuesday’s results indicate the country is not drifting to the right ideologically, it is just drifting. “A crazy quilt election,” said American Enterprise Institute analyst Norman Ornstein. “There was no national statement, other than by and large a desire to protect the status quo.”

Thus in Alabama, hard-line conservative Republican Sen. Jeremiah Denton was ousted by Democratic Rep. Richard C. Shelby, a conservative if not a hard-liner, while in Maryland retiring liberal Republican Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. was replaced by staunchly liberal Democratic Rep. Barbara A. Mikulski.

Problems and Personalities

Such results served as a reminder for 1988 candidates that voters are more concerned with concrete--often local--problems and personalities than with abstract ideological doctrines of the right or left.

--While the Democratic grip on the nation’s voters has loosened, the much-heralded realignment of the Republicans as a majority party has yet to take place. After Reagan’s November, 1984, reelection landslide, Republicans cheered at polling figures suggesting they had just about drawn even with the long-dominant Democrats in party allegiance. But Tuesday’s network exit polls showed the Democrats with an advantage of 5 to 10 percentage points.

And Republican hopes that their gains among governorships would help them move toward a majority at the state level were undercut by the fact that they lost ground to the Democrats in the control of state legislatures. With neither party in clear ascendancy, the signal for 1988 White House aspirants seemed to be that--more than ever--they would have to rely on their own resources and supporters rather than on their political parties.

Beyond these broad conclusions, supporters of individual candidates in both parties struggled to find meaning in Tuesday’s vote that would be relevant two years hence.

Bush’s advisers believe he is now in a good position to reap the benefits from the campaign efforts he made on behalf of fellow Republicans this fall.

“He went out there and worked hard,” said Bill Phillips, executive director of the Fund for America’s Future, Bush’s political action committee. “That’s going to be remembered.”

Yet supporters of Dole and New York Rep. Jack Kemp, Bush’s chief potential rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, might take comfort from the response to an NBC exit poll question testing voters’ feelings about Bush. Asked whether Bush could be trusted to make the right decisions if he should succeed Reagan, only an underwhelming 48% said yes, while 28% said no and 24% said they were not sure.

Backers of Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., another likely Democratic presidential contender, also professed to see good news in Tuesday’s outcome. Mark Siegel, a Democratic Party activist and Biden enthusiast, contended that Democratic victories in Southern Senate contests signal better sailing for a moderate like Biden than for candidates like Cuomo and Hart.

On the other hand, Bill Carrick, chief political adviser to Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, asserted that the election represented a setback for the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, because its strength has been rooted in the statehouses and Democrats lost a bundle of governorships in the South and West.

Carrick’s own boss, Kennedy, once the hero of party liberals, took himself out of the 1988 presidential competition last year. But Carrick cited the election Tuesday of such new Democratic senators as Kent Conrad in North Dakota, Rep. Thomas A. Daschle in South Dakota, Brock Adams in Washington and Rep. Wyche Fowler Jr. in Georgia--all of whom reflected traditional Democratic liberalism to some degree. Their success, Carrick contended, means that liberalism will still be a potent force in the competition for the 1988 Democratic nomination.