Hotly Contested GOP Leadership Races Raising Stakes for President : Politics: Bush’s working relationship with top party members depends on House contests Monday. Gingrich again challenges White House.

President Bush’s working relationship with House Republicans will be at stake Monday when GOP congressmen decide two bitterly contested leadership races growing out of this year’s marathon budget battle.

The schism within the President’s party in the House reflects continuing GOP uneasiness over Bush’s endorsement of tax increases to help reduce a massive budget deficit as well as criticism of White House conduct during the budget negotiations.

“It’s a public bloodletting,” lamented Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield). “We should be burying hatchets in Democrats’ backs rather than in Republicans’ backs.”

A candidate backed by combative House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is trying to defeat the more pragmatic Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Highland) for the No. 3 GOP post, in large part because Lewis supported the President in the first round of the budget fight. Gingrich led the GOP revolt against Bush.

In the other race, Gingrich is backing the incumbent chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which came under fire from the White House for advising Republican candidates for Congress this year to oppose the President on the tax issue.

If Gingrich’s forces win both contests, the Bush Administration would face a more independent GOP leadership and a fragmented party within Congress. That, in turn, could make it more difficult to advance Bush’s program or sustain vetoes of legislation pushed through by an enlarged Democratic majority. The outcome also may signal whether Lewis or Gingrich will succeed in a future struggle for the crucial minority leader post that Rep. Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) is expected to vacate at the end of the next session.

Gingrich, who barely survived a reelection fight himself, is said to have encouraged Rep. Carl D. Pursell (R-Mich.) to challenge Lewis for the post of chairman of the Republican Conference, which includes all 167 GOP House members. Lewis said that close associates of the Georgian are lobbying colleagues on Pursell’s behalf.

The stakes are especially high for Lewis, 56, since a defeat probably would doom the 12-year House veteran’s hopes of becoming minority leader. Some insiders said that the race could be decided by less than a half-dozen votes.

Lewis’ willingness to compromise in seeking to shape legislation has been depicted as a liability by Gingrich and his allies, who contend that confrontation with the Democratic leadership is the best route to gaining an eventual Republican majority in the House.

“I did not get elected simply to be a bomb thrower or to take on the majority at every turn, regardless,” Lewis responded in an interview. “Obstructionism does not lead to the best public policy.”

His challenger, however, has taken a different view, declaring that he would rather use the leadership post to shake up the system.

“I’m not interested in working in the House if it’s continued business-as-usual,” Pursell said.

Pursell, 57, is a relatively obscure lawmaker who has developed a reputation as a behind-the-scenes workhorse during his seven terms in Congress. While his voting record on abortion rights, defense and other issues is regarded as more liberal than Lewis’ record, Pursell is describing himself in his campaign as a centrist and fiscal conservative.

The initial budget summit agreement--which was repudiated by the House in a stunning defeat for the President as well as Democratic and Republican congressional leaders--was attacked by Pursell, Gingrich and others because it raised taxes and Medicare payments for the elderly. Aside from Michel, Lewis was the only member of the House GOP leadership who backed the ill-fated plan.

“It was the best we could get,” said Lewis, who added that neither he nor any other House Republican liked the agreement. “The package that the Democrats eventually passed was a much poorer package. We didn’t help ourselves (by defeating the original agreement) by any means.”

Critics, however, said that Lewis bowed to White House requests not to convene meetings of the GOP conference at critical times during the long budget negotiations and thus failed to represent the interests of House Republicans.

The fight has even fractured the 19-member California delegation, which appears to be sharply divided but is considered likely to cast a majority of its votes for Lewis.

Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), Gingrich’s chief deputy whip, exemplifies the ambivalence of many members. He said that he is undecided because he is personally indebted to Lewis but also wary of domination by the executive branch.

“It’s largely a question of whether the (GOP) conference is going to be independent of White House influence or whether it’s going to be a conference subject to White House dictates,” Walker said.

Nonetheless, Lewis’ advocates contend that he would do more than Pursell to unite a splintered GOP House delegation. Rep. E. Thomas Coleman (R-Mo.), for example, said that Lewis is a “voice of reason” rather than an advocate of guerrilla warfare like Gingrich.

“I tell people we should be on the construction gang and not on the wrecking crew,” Coleman said.

In a second key race in which the White House is an issue, Rep. Guy Vander Jagt (R-Mich.) faces a strong challenge from Rep. Don Sundquist (R-Tenn.) for the job of running the National Republican Congressional Committee. Vander Jagt, who has held the post since 1976, has accused the Bush Administration of backing Sundquist as a way to oust Edward J. Rollins, a political consultant who advised GOP candidates to split with Bush over tax increases.

Sundquist, who denies that he is a White House stooge, has charged that the NRCC under Vander Jagt has been mismanaged and ineffective in electing more Republicans to the House. Because of the anti-Administration mood among GOP lawmakers, however, Vander Jagt is favored to win another two-year term.