Discouraged, Rudman Won’t Seek New Term

Sen. Warren B. Rudman, co-author of the Gramm-Rudman law, said Tuesday he will not run for reelection because he has had enough of the congressional infighting that has blocked the deficit-reducing plan.

“There comes a time when everybody ought to come home, and this is my time,” Rudman said in an emotional address at the Statehouse here. “Because, frankly, although I am not discouraged beyond repair, I am terribly frustrated. I do not see this Congress doing what has to be done while we have time to do it.”

Rudman, 61, a Republican, was elected to the Senate in 1980, defeating Democratic Sen. John Durkin. He was reelected in 1986 with 63% of the vote.

Rudman said he had a campaign ready to go, but his will to run again had wavered in the last six months.

Minutes after his announcement, Democrat John Rauh, an unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate in 1990, announced he would run for Rudman’s seat. Republican Gov. Judd Gregg said he would soon decide whether he, too, would run.

Rudman said he reached his decision last weekend.

He said: “I just sat back and thought to myself, ‘Be honest with yourself. It’s now 1994; you’re in the Senate doing the same thing. Are you going to be happy?’

“And the answer to that was no.”

Rudman’s main disappointment has been the failure of Gramm-Rudman to extend as far as he had hoped--primarily to entitlement programs, such as Medicaid and Social Security.

The measure, co-sponsored by Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), was designed to eliminate budget deficits by imposing spending cuts if the President and Congress did not. It never closed the budget gap because lawmakers and the White House were unwilling to make the cuts the law required.

Rudman warned that failure to curb spending on entitlements would mean “this recession . . . will be a picnic, compared to where this country will be in the year 1997. Your money you worked hard to save will be worthless.”

In addition to Gramm-Rudman, the senator said his proudest accomplishment was pushing through the nomination of his friend, David H. Souter, to the U.S. Supreme Court.