Senate Sustains Bush Veto of Bill to Relax Hatch Act : Legislation: The move to expand federal workers’ political activity rights falls 2 votes short. The President has yet to be overridden by Congress.

President Bush preserved his perfect veto record when the Senate Thursday sustained his rejection of a bill that would have permitted 3 million federal employees to participate in partisan political activity during off-duty hours.

Senators seeking to override Bush’s veto fell two votes short of the required two-thirds majority. Three Republicans who had voted for the bill a month ago switched sides to support the White House position.

Since taking office, Bush has prevailed on 12 of 12 veto confrontations with Congress. On five occasions, neither the House nor Senate was able to override. In three cases in which the House achieved the two-thirds majority needed to override, pro-Bush forces in the Senate were able to sustain his veto. On four vetoes, there was no attempt to override, and the legislation was rewritten to meet Bush’s objections.

All 55 Democratic senators and 10 Republicans voted Thursday to override the veto of legislation intended to modify the Hatch Act.

Bush objected that the bill would have “politicized” the civil service. Proponents of the bill--strongly backed by federal employee unions, which traditionally give most of their support to Democrats--said it would simply provide U.S. government workers with the same basic rights that all other citizens enjoy, without injecting politics into official business.

Three GOP lawmakers--Sens. Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York, Trent Lott of Mississippi and Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico--voted to sustain the President’s veto, although all three supported the legislation when it was passed by the Senate on May 10.

Domenici said after the vote that he objected to a provision that would have allowed government workers to solicit contributions from fellow employees for federal union political action committees, and he complained about the Senate’s refusal to exempt the FBI, CIA and similar agencies from the bill’s provisions.

D’Amato and Lott did not explain why they switched positions on the bill.

Vincent R. Sombrotto, president of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers, accused Bush of “strong-arm tactics to force senators to abandon their consciences and switch their votes to continue to deny millions of Americans political freedom.”

Sombrotto said that postal and federal employees would try again to persuade Congress to support new legislation to relax provisions of the 51-year-old law that blocks U.S. workers from taking part in partisan politics on their own time.

“We will win--if not in 1990, then in 1991, or 1992 or 1993, or whenever,” he said in a statement. “We will fight for as long as it takes.”

California’s senators split along party lines. Republican Pete Wilson, who had missed the vote on the legislation last month, voted to sustain the veto. Democrat Alan Cranston voted to override.

GOP backers of Bush’s veto said that the bill would have benefited Democrats more than Republicans. “The federal work force has been partisan Democratic,” Senate Minority Whip Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) said. “A political game is involved.”

But Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), who led the unsuccessful override attempt, said that it was “a matter of simple fairness” to allow government employees to take part in election campaigns as their neighbors do.