Bush Abortion Position Draws Fire From GOP : Politics: The issue is seen as causing Tuesday’s losses. Some Republicans fear it could lead to defeat in 1990.

President Bush was caught in a cross-fire of recriminations from members of his own party Wednesday for his stand on abortion in the wake of Tuesday’s Democratic sweep of key elections in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City.

“If we go into 1990 and abortion is the issue, we will lose on that issue and we’ll deserve to lose on that issue,” Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood, a longtime supporter of abortion rights, told reporters after he and other GOP congressional leaders met with the President and Republican National Chairman Lee Atwater at the White House.

Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), another GOP moderate who is a longtime friend of Bush, called the election results a “political debacle” that put Republican hopes of becoming the nation’s majority party “at grave risk.”

“While the reasons for the defeat are varied, paramount among them is the fact that the Republican Party and its candidates were perceived as holding rigid, narrow views on one of the most difficult and divisive issues of our time,” Leach said.

Abortion opponents fired back, blaming the GOP losses on candidates who were unwilling to stick to their principles.

“Our candidates have to deal with the issue. Avoidance of the issue is politically costly,” said Rep. Duncan L. Hunter (R-Coronado), another member of the leadership group that met with Bush. “The people who are really hurt were the people who changed position in the face of polling results,” Hunter said.

In Virginia, Democratic Lt. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder campaigned hard for governor as an abortion rights advocate, charging that his Republican opponent, J. Marshall Coleman, wanted to “take away your right to chose and give it back to politicians.” Coleman responded by softening his position, promising not to push for a law restricting abortions to cases in which the mother’s life is in danger.

Wilder apparently defeated Coleman by a few thousand votes out of 1.7 million cast, but Coleman has indicated that he will ask for a recount.

“The abortion issue was an important issue,” Wilder said after Tuesday’s election. “It was an emotional issue, and it touched people who sometimes may not have been touched in elections.”

In the New Jersey governor’s race, Democratic Rep. James J. Florio easily defeated Republican Rep. Jim Courter, an abortion opponent who also backpedaled on the issue during the campaign, saying he would not impose his “personal views on the women of New Jersey.”

In New York, Democrat David N. Dinkins edged former U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani in a campaign that focused mostly on their respective personalities, but Giuliani appears to have been hurt by his effort to downplay his previous opposition to abortion.

Bush Invisible

In the midst of the gathering controversy within the party, White House aides worked to keep Bush invisible on Wednesday. The President, who had campaigned repeatedly for all three losing GOP candidates, made no public appearances all day. His one encounter with reporters occurred at a photo opportunity before the congressional meeting.

“Wait until next year,” was all Bush would say.

Later, a White House spokesman issued a statement noting that Bush had stumped for his party’s candidates in the three races. “President Bush showed his loyalty to the party and its candidates,” the statement said. “We’re turning our attention to the 1990 races.”

For their part, Democrats gloated. “We’ve put the Democratic Party in the mainstream,” National Chairman Ron Brown boasted. He pointed out that the last time that the Democrats swept those three offices was in 1961, when John F. Kennedy was President.

“Republicans are losing races they should win,” Rep. Dennis E. Eckart (D-Ohio) said. “They are wedded to out-of-date right-wing positions.”

Losses Discounted

Republicans contended that Democrats attached far too much significance to Tuesday’s off-year voting. “These three elections were not a referendum on the abortion issue,” B. J. Cooper, communications director of the Republican National Committee, argued.

But the predicament of the Republican candidates reminded some analysts of the awkward stances Democrats have been forced into on unpopular issues in recent years.

“It’s every bit as much of an albatross as the left-liberal bleeding-heart positions the Democrats have had to defend,” Southern pollster Claibourne H. Darden Jr. said of the abortion issue.

In addition, the returns appeared to cast a fresh light on another divisive issue: race.

The election of Dinkins and the apparent victory of Wilder both seemed to breathe new life into a pattern by which moderate black politicians can successfully rise through the system, rather than through the ranks of the civil rights movement.

Moreover, their victories could reduce the influence that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an often-divisive figure within the party, has been able to wield as the nation’s most prominent spokesman for black constituents.

In New York, Dinkins cast himself as a conciliator who promised to help ease the tensions between the competing groups that make up the nation’s largest and probably most diverse city. “Somehow, I am going to find a way to appeal to what is the best in people rather than what is worst in people,” he said at a post-election press conference.

In conservative Virginia, Wilder--once a civil rights militant--also stuck close to the middle of the road, giving his support to the state’s right-to-work law, which is anathema to labor unions, and backing capital punishment, which many liberal Democrats abhor.

When asked if, in view of those positions, he was in the party’s mainstream, he said: “As a matter of fact, I am in the mainstream, and that’s what I think that national Democrats will assert. Those of us who espouse the views I espouse are there. And we’ve done it in Virginia, we can do it other places.”

“Wilder is the only Southern black politician I know running for a reasonably high office who campaigns as a moderate,” pollster Darden said. “All the rest are to the left of Abbie Hoffman. And his success should help open up a whole new area of the electorate to other moderate black politicians.”

“This is an extraordinarily big deal,” said Eddie Williams of the Joint Center for Political Studies, which focuses on black politics, of the Dinkins and Wilder victories. “It does not mean all of our race relations problems are solved. But the fact that blacks can be elected to historically visible positions could help forestall fears that whites have about blacks running in other predominantly white jurisdictions.”

Within the System

Williams pointed to the contrast between Dinkins and Wilder and the nation’s most prominent black politician, Jackson. Unlike the controversial Jackson, Dinkins and Wilder both worked their way up through the political system and relied on alliances with white politicians and coalitions with white voters.

“As elected officials, they tried to work inside the system,” Williams said. “They are less of a threat and have less to explain. They are more credible talking about their commitment to public policies that address the needs of all their constituents.”

University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said that the Wilder and Dinkins success stories would crimp efforts by Republican Chairman Atwater to convert blacks to the GOP.

“Atwater’s strategy is shot all to hell,” Sabato said. “Now it’s not just the left-leaning blacks that will stay in the Democratic coalition, but also moderate blacks that will be looking at other figures like Wilder.”

Sabato said also that Dickens and Wilder can help the Democrats preserve party harmony by acting as “a counterweight” to Jackson, the often mercurial two-time Democratic presidential aspirant.

“When issues affecting blacks are discussed, there will be more chairs at the table now,” Sabato said. “Jackson will not be there as the chairman of black America. Other blacks will have an equal claim. Remember, Jackson has never been elected to anything.”

Black-Jewish Friction

Of course, the election results were not all good news for the Democrats. Exit polls in New York City suggested continuing friction between blacks and Jews, once the closest of allies, with Dinkins getting only about 40% of the Jewish vote.

Moreover, Democratic strategists cautioned against the idea that the abortion issue would be the solution to all of the party’s problems. “It’s not the silver bullet,” said Paul Tully, political director of the Democratic National Committee.

Republican strategists contended that Democrats gained only a transient advantage on the issue because Republicans did a poor job of explaining themselves.

Staff writers Paul Houston in Richmond, Va., Robert Vickers in Washington and John J. Goldman in New York contributed to this story.