Appointed Junior Senators Quickly Find Obscurity Is Their Destiny : Politics: Official Washington is likely to bestow acceptance only if Seymour is elected in his own right.

When Sen.-designate John Seymour arrives in town, he will get a desk in the Senate chamber, an office near the Capitol, a large staff and a $101,404-a-year paycheck. But he is not likely to be viewed as a real member of the club for some time.

After an initial flurry of publicity, Seymour will quickly slip into relative obscurity. Not until he is elected in his own right by the voters of California will he be viewed by official Washington as anything more than Pete Wilson’s hand-picked successor.

Like other appointed junior senators before him, Seymour will be last in line when committee assignments are passed out. His daily news releases will be virtually ignored by the news media. His face is not likely to show up on national television news.

Of course, Seymour will have an opportunity to be elected to the Senate in his own right in 1992. But getting elected back home in California could be an even tougher task for him than getting noticed in Washington.

Of the 23 appointees to the Senate since 1960 who later sought election, 11 succeeded in becoming full-fledged members of the club, as the Senate is known.

“His chances are no better than 50-50,” said Donald A. Ritchie, associate Senate historian.

Among the vanquished Senate appointees was Pierre Salinger, who served as senator from California for only a few months in 1964. He currently works as a correspondent for ABC News.

Still, despite the many difficulties, some appointed senators have not only succeeded in being elected, they have risen in the ranks to prominence. Such was the case with Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), who was appointed to succeed Sen. Edmund Muskie in 1981 when Muskie became secretary of state.

In just eight years, Mitchell became majority leader.

David Gambrell, who was appointed to the Senate in 1971 by then-Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter but was ousted by Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) in 1972 on a wave of anti-Carter sentiment, predicted that Seymour’s fate in the 1992 election will be tied closely to Wilson’s popularity as governor.

“In two years, whether Governor Wilson is popular or unpopular will be very important to him,” Gambrell said in a telephone interview from his law office in Atlanta.

“An appointed senator inherits the political liabilities of whomever appointed you. Political opponents of whomever appointed you are against you even if they would have been for you under other circumstances. In short, your politics are defined for you.”

Moreover, even if Seymour is elected in 1992, he will be forced to run again in 1994--the year that Wilson would have stood for reelection had he not been elected governor.

According to Gambrell and other experts, Seymour’s biggest tasks over the next two years will be to develop statewide name recognition and to raise enough money to mount a campaign in 1992. In seeking reelection in 1989, Wilson spent an estimated $20 million.

Unlike Wilson, Seymour has neither accumulated a sizable campaign war chest nor developed a network of contributors around the nation. Moreover, the competition for campaign dollars in California will be particularly stiff in 1992 since candidates also will be vying for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Alan Cranston.

In recent years, many governors in Wilson’s position have chosen sitting members of the House of Representatives to fill vacant Senate seats because they normally have large campaign treasuries of their own.

In other cases, governors have appointed figurehead senators who do not intend to stand for election. Thus no one enters the next election with the stigma of being an appointed senator.

Often, the figurehead appointee has been the widow of a senator who has just died. Similarly, when John F. Kennedy left the Senate to become President in 1960, he was succeeded by his college roommate, Ben Smith. This permitted Kennedy’s brother, Edward, to be elected to fill the seat in the next election.

Like others before him, Seymour will be called on to be an instant expert on many subjects of national importance. Chief among the issues facing the Senate when he arrives will be the question of whether to authorize President Bush to take military action against Iraq.

Gambrell recalled that during his second day in the Senate, he was called upon to vote in the Democratic caucus on the crucial question of whether the United States should withdraw its troops from Vietnam.

“I felt unprepared to deal with issues of that consequence and breadth,” he said. “But when I shared my feelings with one member, he told me, ‘That’s what it’s all about,’ as if all issues were the same.”