Byrd, 3 Others Join Bork Foes : DeConcini Gives Panel Majority to Opponents; Reagan Still Adamant

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, joining a growing list of moderate and conservative Democrats, announced Monday that he will oppose the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork and declared that Bork’s bid for confirmation is “doomed.”

Byrd’s announcement, along with a similar one by Democrat Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, brings to eight the number of senators on the 14-member Senate Judiciary Committee who have pledged to vote against Bork.

Barring last-minute parliamentary maneuvering by Bork’s supporters when the committee meets today, opponents of the nomination now would appear to have the margin to make Bork the first high court nominee in this century to receive a negative recommendation from the committee.

Two Republicans who are not members of the panel, Sens. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut and John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, also announced Monday that they would oppose Bork, becoming the third and fourth Republicans to break ranks with President Reagan on the issue.

‘Over My Dead Body’

However, Reagan gave no indication that he will withdraw the nomination. “Over my dead body,” he said, when told by a reporter earlier in the day that the committee probably would reject Bork’s nomination. “It’s getting tougher, but we’re still working on it,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said after hearing of Byrd’s announcement.

“We’re kind of down to the only way to deal with it is personal persuasion, one-on-one,” he said. “The President is calling people and Bork is making visits on the Hill.”

Republican adviser Tom Korologos, who has been leading the pro-Bork lobbying effort in the Senate for the White House, said that, although “we keep losing votes every time I turn around . . . arithmetically, it’s still possible.”

“Until someone looks me in the eye and says, ‘I’m voting against’ or ‘I’m voting for,’ I don’t write it down. That’s the vote counters’ first law,” Korologos said.

But the day’s four announcements of opposition probably have sealed the nominee’s fate, most Bork opponents and many Bork supporters agreed.

In Algona, Iowa, campaigning for his party’s presidential nomination, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas said of the nomination: “Right now, it’s sort of hanging by a thread.”

Based on counts of prospective votes, at least 51 of the 100 senators now either have announced opposition to Bork or are considered likely to vote against him. Forty-two are either committed to support him or likely to do so. Seven senators are considered undecided.

Cranston Counts 53 Against

DeConcini and California’s Sen. Alan Cranston, the Democrats’ assistant majority leader and chief vote counter, said Monday that they count 53 votes against Bork.

In addition, some Republican senators are becoming restive about being pressed to vote for a controversial nominee who might lose anyway, which is increasing the pressure on the White House to abandon the campaign, several GOP staff aides said.

Byrd and DeConcini went out of their way in their statements to emphasize that defeat is inevitable and that a prolonged effort for Bork would jeopardize Reagan’s chances of getting another nominee approved this year.

“Someone has to tell this President this isn’t going to go,” DeConcini said.

‘Pain’ of Rejection

“The President can spare Judge Bork the pain” of rejection and avoid “divisiveness” in the country by withdrawing the nomination, Byrd said. “This nomination is going down, there’s no other way it can go . . . . Newton’s law of gravitation is taking over.”

Reagan, although showing no signs of relenting, Monday did not press his high-profile public campaign for Bork, which in recent days has featured speeches and statements in a variety of settings. He made no reference to it in a Rose Garden ceremony on quality education, responding only in terse comments to shouted questions about Bork from reporters before ducking back into the Oval Office.

But Fitzwater said Reagan had talked by phone with three senators to ask for their support. Fitzwater would not name them.

No TV Speech Planned

Although there was some pressure on Reagan from conservatives outside the Administration and from the Justice Department to deliver a nationally televised speech on the nomination, White House officials said that such a dramatic appeal is not planned.

Fitzwater said that the White House would stick with the current lobbying strategy.

“The nomination is very much alive. The numbers show that votes are still there to get,” he said. “I will not entertain any scenario that calls for losing, pulling out, retrenching or anything of that sort, period.”

Korologos cited several other examples of tough battles in Congress won by the Administration--including the confirmation of Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and the sale of AWACS radar surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia. However, when those victories were won in Reagan’s first term, the Senate was Republican-controlled.

Time a Key Factor

The White House plan for saving Bork appears to be dependent on having sufficient time. “We’ve got two weeks here before the vote. We’ve got plenty of time to bring about this in a very methodical fashion, doing the things we think need to be done,” Fitzwater said.

However, Byrd, who as majority leader controls the Senate calendar, emphasized in his statement, which was issued after Fitzwater’s comments, that, if the nomination is not withdrawn, he will bring it to the floor for a vote “early,” probably sometime next week.

In the meantime, Bork supporters on the Judiciary Committee are expected to try today through an assortment of motions to get the panel to send the nomination to the full Senate with a “neutral” rather than a negative recommendation. Last week, Byrd had said that he would not oppose such action, but Monday he said he preferred to send a “clear signal” to the White House to withdraw the nomination.

Byrd, in a brief statement, said that Bork is too “divisive” to be placed on the court. “There is a great deal of unease and discontent” in the country over the nomination, he said.

‘Sophisticated Banter’

Weicker, one of the Senate’s most liberal Republicans, cited Bork’s assertions that he has moderated some of his more controversial stands over the years, including those calling for limited civil rights protections. Weicker said he could not accept “sophisticated banter by an eager nominee as a substitute” for Bork’s “lifetime of unrelenting opposition” to civil rights advances in the past.

DeConcini said that he found Bork’s interpretation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws particularly objectionable.

“I have two daughters,” he said. “I would want someone on the Supreme Court who would feel that the equal protection clause applies to them.”

Meanwhile, in a Capitol Hill news conference, We the People, a pro-Bork group organized by Bill Roberts, a veteran Southern California Republican activist, announced the start of a national advertising campaign designed to bolster the Bork nomination by attacking Bork’s leading Senate Judiciary Committee opponents. A spokesman for the group, which has raised $250,000, said that the ads will lambaste Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio.

HOW THE SENATE LINES UP

In the chart, senators listed as for or against confirming Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court have formally declared their positions. Other senators are categorized according to interviews and to Democratic and Republican vote counters. Democrats listed in italic with *

Leaning Leaning For Bork (32) Toward (10) Undecided (7) Against(19) Against (32) Armstrong Cohen Chiles* Adams* Baucus* Bond D’Amato Dixon* Breaux* Bentsen* Boren* Durenberger Exon* Bumpers* Biden* Boschwitz Evans Ford* Conrad* Bingaman* Cochran Hatfield Heflin* Dodd* Bradley* Danforth Kasten Reid* Fowler* Burdick* Dole Murkowski Stafford Gore* Byrd* Domenici Roth Graham* Chafee Garn Stevens Harkin* Cranston* Gramm Warner Heinz* Daschle* Grassley Inouye* DeConcini* Hatch Mitchell* Glenn* Hecht Nunn Johnston* Helms Pell Kennedy* Hollings* Proxmire* Kerry* Humphrey Sarbanes Lautenberg Karnes Sasser* Leahy* Kassebaum Shelby* Levin* Lugar Stennis* Matsunaga* McCain Melcher* McClure Metzenbaum* McConnell Mikulski* Nickles Moynihan* Pressler Packwood Quayle Pryor* Rudman Riegle* Simpson Rockefeller* Symms Sanford* Thurmond Simon* Trible Specter Wallop Weicker Wilson Wirth*