Cranston Remains a Major Player : Politics: Despite Senate ethics investigation, many of his colleagues go all out to show they respect his leadership.

On the Senate floor last Tuesday, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) held up a dog-eared, hen-scratched tally sheet that had been compiled by the Senate Democratic whip, Alan Cranston of California.

“I think he did the country a great service today,” Biden said of the angular, beaming senator, who was standing next to him.

Cranston had just spearheaded the surprisingly decisive defeat of a constitutional amendment against flag burning. His tally sheet, denoting senators that he believed were lined up to oppose the amendment, precisely matched the eventual roll call vote.

The next day, Cranston shepherded to Senate passage the first overhaul of federal housing programs in a decade, a $17.8-billion compromise bill worked out with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp and key senators from both parties.

And on Friday, Cranston, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, left on a 10-day trip to India and Pakistan to assess rising political tensions at the invitation of both of the rival governments.

The week’s events demonstrated that, although an ethics investigation shadows him, the 76-year-old Californian remains an active force on the legislative front lines. While there are reports that some senators are keeping their distance as Cranston records low voter-support ratings back home, there is evidence that he retains the respect and friendship of many colleagues.

After the flag amendment vote, Biden, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N. Y.) paid him tributes that were effusive even by Senate-club standards.

Cranston “proved once again that he is the most effective and accurate vote counter in the Senate,” Mitchell said. “He certainly was invaluable to me in organizing the effort to defeat the amendment.”

“He knows how much we love him and admire him,” Moynihan added, offering both kudos and a gesture of sympathy. Cranston faces a Senate Ethics Committee decision in the next two or three months.

The panel is seeking to determine whether Cranston and four colleagues intervened improperly with federal regulators on behalf of Lincoln Savings & Loan while receiving large political donations from Charles H. Keating Jr., owner of the Irvine, Calif.-based thrift.

Cranston and the other senators--Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Glenn (D-Ohio) and Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.)--have denied wrongdoing.

“I don’t think there has been any real negative impact” from the inquiry, Cranston said in an interview Friday before departing on his trip. “The reason is that every senator who has ever lifted a finger for anybody who contributed to his campaign or paid him a speech honorarium is very concerned about the sort of case that Common Cause tries to make out of all this.”

Common Cause, the citizens lobby group, filed a complaint before the Ethics Committee suggesting that favors had been done for Keating in exchange for donations.

Cranston said that he is “going full tilt” on a number of issues on which he is a major player. These include the proposed cancellation of the B-2 Stealth bomber, preservation of California deserts, simplified voter registration, revision of campaign finance laws and application of defense budget savings to environmental and social programs.

“No senator has shown any desire to keep any distance,” Cranston insisted, despite a renewed campaign by Sen. Wendell H. Ford (D-Ky.) to unseat him as whip next January--and despite leadership assignments that Mitchell has given to junior Sen. Wyche Fowler Jr. (D-Ga.) instead of to Cranston.

“I am working very closely with Democrats and Republicans on a variety of issues, as demonstrated by the housing bill that was passed by 96 to 1,” said Cranston, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs subcommittee on housing and urban affairs. “It is really a monumental bill.”

The bill, which must be reconciled with a more costly House version, authorizes an increase of about $12 billion for housing programs over the next three years. A key Democratic program called Housing Opportunity Partnerships would consolidate several small existing programs and provide subsidies to encourage state, local and private investment in an expansion of “affordable housing,” starting with $2 billion next year.

Also, funding would be increased for Kemp’s program of Home Ownership for People Everywhere, under which nearly $2 billion would be provided over three years to help residents in federal housing programs buy units they now rent.