Bennett to Succeed Atwater, Sources Say

President Bush has asked former drug czar William J. Bennett to take over Lee Atwater’s job as chairman of the Republican Party in January and Bennett has accepted, GOP sources said Saturday.

Bennett, a former secretary of education in Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet, formally resigned Nov. 8 as head of the Office of National Drug Control Strategy.

A GOP source said Atwater, who managed Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign, will continue to play a major strategy role for the GOP, possibly with a title as the party’s “general chairman.”

Such a structure would not be unique, the source said, citing Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr.’s chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in the 1980s while then-Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.) held the title as the party’s general chairman.

A formal announcement will not be made until Bush returns from his eight-day trip to Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, Egypt and the Persian Gulf, said the source, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Atwater, 39, has been undergoing intensive treatment for cancer since a tumor was discovered on the right side of his brain last March. His two-year term as GOP chairman expires in January.

B. J. Cooper, a Republican Party spokesman, said that Bennett “is on a short list of people being considered” to succeed Atwater “but there’s been no formal announcement at this time.”

Cooper said Bush’s choice for a new Republican chairman would have to be ratified by the party’s national committee in January.

Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown, meeting with his party’s $100,000 donors in Atlanta, said he welcomes Bennett’s appointment as his chief adversary with “open arms.”

“If Bennett accomplishes as much for the Republican Party as he achieved at the Education Department and in ridding us of drugs and violence, Americans will have to begin worrying about the future of the two-party system,” Brown quipped.

Atwater has been more of a tactician than an ideologue. After GOP candidates lost to abortion-rights Democrats in two high-profile governors races in 1989, he acted quickly to move the Republican Party away from its hard-line opposition to abortion.

But he also has what Democrats denounced as a “pit bull style of politics,” citing his use of “Willie Horton” ads against Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

Horton is a convicted murderer who raped a woman in Maryland during a furlough from a Massachusetts prison while Dukakis was the state’s governor.

Bennett, 47, also has a reputation for confrontation and brashness. Two weeks ago when Bush accepted his resignation, Bennett called Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), a frequent critic of his drug policies, “a gasbag.”