Utah’s Orrin Hatch Wins Praise for Compassion : Conservatives: Longtime backers are irked by his stance against slashing funding to the arts, favoring child-care grants and increasing funds for AIDS research.

As one of the Senate’s staunchest conservatives for a dozen years, Orrin Hatch might be expected to be among lawmakers campaigning to slash federal grants for the arts.

But the Utah Republican who spent two years as a Mormon missionary is taking a pass.

He shakes his head glumly at moves to curb funding for the National Endowment for the Arts on grounds that some of the money has gone to projects tainted by obscenity.

“No one is more against obscenity and pornography than I am, but I just don’t believe that the Congress should impose censorship through the authorization process,” Hatch said.

“Some of these people, if they had lived in the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel would never have been painted,” Hatch said of lawmakers heading the drive. “They wouldn’t allow you to hang a Reubens in the Senate.”

Hatch is scrupulously polite and soft-spoken, although sometimes an emotional side surfaces.

When the Senate debated rights for the disabled in July, Hatch was telling how his brother-in-law suffered as a victim of polio. Suddenly, he “just broke down.”

“I mean I just wept, tears rolling down my cheeks,” Hatch recalled. “I was embarrassed because I don’t like people to know that side of me that much.”

From the scourge of the liberals to patron of the arts and other issues irksome to conservatives, Hatch’s political persona is undergoing a distinct change.

When Hatch arrived in the Senate in 1977, he was immediately accepted as one of the fiercest conservatives to prowl the floor. Over the last two years, though, he’s been at odds with old allies more than once.

Despite conservative opposition, he spearheaded in 1989 a $1.75-billion-a-year package of child-care grants. He’s campaigned for escalation of the battle against AIDS. And he sponsored a Justice Department program aimed at fighting “hate crimes” motivated by racial and religious bias.

The hate crimes bill put Hatch on a collision course with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who called it “the flagship of the gay rights agenda.”

Hatch, 56, scoffs at the notion that he’s changed: He remains a supporter of capital punishment, a critic of gun control and an opponent of a major civil rights bill on Capitol Hill whose minority-hiring provision, he says, would inevitably lead to hiring quotas.

All the same, a recent poll showed that many Utah voters believe he is moved in a more liberal direction.

And he’s finding increasing favor with lawmakers he once fought.

“He is open on some things,” said Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.). “He has grown, and I hope we can all grow. He was superb on the hate-crimes bill.”

Lean at 6-foot-4, with every silvery hair in place and a taste for conservatively tailored dark suits and blazers, Hatch likes to tell of his humble origins as the son of a Pittsburgh metal lather.

“I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks,” he said. “We were poor, poor people.”

He worked as a janitor to help pay his way through Brigham Young University, where he met his wife, Elaine. They have three sons, three daughters and 10 grandchildren.

He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh Law School and practiced in that city before returning to Utah.

In 1976, he upset incumbent Democratic Sen. Frank Moss, in part with the help of hundreds of Hatches in rural Utah, their numbers a legacy of the heavily Mormon state’s polygamous past.

Moss and other Democrats, however, blamed rough-and-tumble tactics by New Right conservatives--Washington groups whose trademark was mail-order campaigns designed to rise funds and energize voters around issues such as abortion and school prayer.

In the Senate, Hatch is a vocal member of the Judiciary Committee where he ranks second behind Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). But his major post is that of top Republican on the Labor Committee, where he’s often at odds with the chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

But frequently, Hatch and Kennedy reach a compromise, as they did on a Hatch bill opposed by some liberals that allows export of pharmaceuticals not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in this country.

Indeed, the Hatch record on such matters gives business little to complain about.

He is a firm backer of bills to rein in court damages in product liability and medical malpractice lawsuits--major goals of the insurance industry. And he’s sponsoring a bill to allow the federal government to preempt tough state standards governing pesticides in foods.

Hatch scoffs at complaints from liberal consumer groups that his bill would allow unsafe concentrations of pesticides in foods.

“That’s not based on science,” he said. “That’s based on old wives’ tales.”

Senate Republicans take little notice of strained ties between Hatch and conservative activists. They hail him as hard-working and effective.

“I’m a real admirer of Orrin Hatch,” said Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.).

“He undertakes the toughest chores in the Senate because he is the ranking Republican on the Labor Committee,” Danforth said. “The issues he involves himself in are often hotly controversial and take up a good deal of the Senate’s time, but he does his job with unflappable competence.”

But such testimonials leave hard-core conservatives unmoved.

“He has separated himself from us . . . on social welfare legislation, on what we would call gay rights legislation, on a whole range of issues,” said New Right pioneer Paul Weyrich.

Weyrich said Hatch has been shopping for issues to help broaden his support and hopes for an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, when Justice William J. Brennan Jr. announced his retirement, reporters were quick to corner Hatch and ask if he wanted the post. He said no.

Hatch also says he’s always been a champion of the underdog and that perhaps his conservative critics just haven’t noticed.

“I have always been an advocate of those with disabilities, those who are downtrodden, who really can’t help themselves,” he said. “What I have a problem with is people who can help themselves but won’t.”

At the same time, he says his conservative critics should take a more careful look at his overall record.

“I wonder who they think took the lead in fighting for a lot of the changes around here,” he said, his voice rising. “I wonder who they think fought for fairness in the Iran-Contra hearings.”