POLITICAL BRIEFING

BACK TO NORMAL: All the Republican dismay over the damage done to GOP candidates by President Bush’s handling of the budget negotiations is obscuring what some analysts see as the larger point--that the election is settling into the normal pattern for a midterm contest, when the party in the White House typically suffers moderate losses in Congress.

The bottom could still drop out further for the GOP, but for now, many observers are estimating that Democratic gains will be unremarkable by historical standards: six to 15 seats in the House, one to two seats in the Senate. Over the last three decades, the President’s party has lost an average of 22 House seats and two Senate seats in midterm elections.

Still, such losses would be a major setback for the Republicans, who are already at a low ebb in the House of Representatives and, earlier this year, had hoped that Bush’s high public approval ratings would help them break that historical pattern. Now, one senior GOP strategist conceded: “We had unrealistic expectations.”

CUOMO CLUE?: Is New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo running for President?

Here’s a possible hint: The Cuomo Commission on the economy is back.

As he was considering a 1988 presidential bid, Cuomo assembled a panel of big-name investment bankers, economists and union leaders that produced a book-length volume of recommendations for national and international economic policy.

Cuomo decided not to run then, but now, with a few shuffles in the membership, the commission is back in business and slated to issue its overview report in early 1992--just at the time that Democrats, coincidentally or not, will begin the business of selecting their next presidential nominee.

TAR HEEL: For years, supporters of liberal causes from abortion rights and gay rights to integration have regarded North Carolina’s Jesse Helms as the senator they most love to hate, and many have been raising money for his Democratic opponent, Harvey Gantt.

Now Helms is trying to take his revenge. During stump speeches in the Tar Heel State, the Republican senator has been emphasizing the support that Gantt, the black former mayor of Charlotte, is getting from Helms’ old adversaries. “He gets the help of lesbians and labor unions and the arty crowd,” Helms says. “Go look at his financial reports.”

Last week, the Helms campaign unveiled a television commercial that shows the “Washington Blade,” a gay newspaper, and a picture of a gay bar. The narrator says Gantt has run “a secret campaign” and raised “thousands of dollars in gay and lesbian bars in San Francisco, New York and Washington” by promising to back “mandatory gay-rights laws.”

Gantt’s retort: “If this were 25 years ago, he’d be talking about blacks. If this were 18 years ago, he’d be talking about the Communists. This year it’s artists, architects and maybe extreme liberals.”

SUPPORT TROOPS: Conservative hawks are launching a counteroffensive to blunt efforts by peace groups that are protesting the U.S. military deployment in the Persian Gulf.

Scott Stanley Jr., former editor of the Conservative Digest and co-chairman of the Coalition for Americans at Risk, said the coalition already has raised about $250,000.