It’s the End of a Profitable Era for the Pacific Northwest : Politics: The powerful alliance between Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood brought a host of benefits to their home state of Oregon.

Mark Hatfield came home to Oregon a dashing, popular World War II veteran and settled into leafy Willamette University, becoming faculty adviser to the campus Young Republicans and setting his gaze on the Legislature.

Bob Packwood, one of his prize students, sat out the Korean War because his eyesight was too bad. Packwood is remembered as the quiet protege, an insatiable reader who sat at Hatfield’s side in the cafeteria, but was too shy to date much. In old photos, he is the one standing to the side in thick glasses and a Hawaiian shirt.

Time passed. Hatfield won a seat in the Legislature and then became secretary of state; Packwood went off to law school in New York. It was in many ways a different man who came back to Oregon in 1957 with contact lenses and a new, breezy confidence. When Hatfield decided to run for governor, the biggest challenge of his life, Packwood parted company with his old professor, going to work for the man running against him.

“The biggest race of his mentor’s life, and he goes to work for his opponent,” said Packwood’s biographer, Mark Kirchmeier, who believes that election campaign more than three decades ago set the tone for a political lifetime.

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There was little to suggest that these two men would go on to become legends in Oregon politics, one of the most powerful political duos in Congress--and lifelong combatants for the limelight.

Nor could it be imagined that their political relationship--part alliance, part rivalry--would end with Hatfield delivering a moving eulogy for his scandalized colleague last month as Packwood, regretful and tripping over his own memories, announced his resignation after 27 years in the Senate.

The day marked the end of an era for the Pacific Northwest, during which Packwood, 63, rose to head the Senate Finance Committee while Hatfield, 73, assumed an equally powerful post at the helm of the Appropriations Committee.

The alliance brought the region a host of benefits--support for the Columbia River’s vast hydropower system and the cheapest electricity rates in the nation; aid to the beleaguered timber industry; tax and trade relief for such Oregon companies as shoemaker Nike Inc.; millions of dollars in federal funding for low-income housing, medical schools, research facilities; Portland’s multibillion-dollar light-rail transit system, the most advanced on the West Coast.

In the combined power they wielded, the pair came to be mentioned in the same breath with the duo that had dominated the Pacific Northwest’s political landscape a generation before--Sens. Warren G. Magnuson and Henry M. Jackson of Washington state.

But now, Packwood is gone and Hatfield is sending strong signals that he may not seek a sixth term in 1996. Even if Hatfield makes the run--and he is under pressure from some to do so in the wake of Packwood’s disgrace--Oregon faces a blow to its political clout.

“People back East hate us,” said Lewis and Clark College political scientist Donald Balmer. “They know good and well that we’ve been getting a good deal, which we think is our birthright.”

And without the magnified sway of Packwood and Hatfield in place, “They’re going to screw us,” Balmer said.

Also at risk is Oregon’s long tradition of moderate Republicanism, exemplified by Packwood’s support for abortion rights and Hatfield’s stands against gay discrimination and his stubborn defiance of conservative congressional leaders in opposing a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. With a burgeoning conservative streak in the state’s GOP electorate, the Packwood-Hatfield brand of politics may be winding to a close.

A long line of contenders is gearing up to succeed Packwood, with a primary election set for Dec. 5. The front-runners on the Republican side are state Senate President Gordon Smith, who has the backing of the ultraconservative and increasingly muscular Oregon Citizens Alliance, and the more moderate state schools superintendent, Norma Paulus.

Meanwhile, two of the three Democrats in the state’s U.S. House delegation, Reps. Ron Wyden and Peter A. DeFazio, are seeking their party’s nomination for the seat.

Whatever the outcome, Oregonians are poised for a new relationship with Washington in an age of vastly diminished federal largess.

Not everyone views this development in negative terms.

Paulus, whose candidacy could gain from the feminist backlash against Packwood’s years of sexual harassment, contends that the kind of clout Packwood and Hatfield exercised “is disappearing, particularly in Congress because of the push for term limits and the push to do away with pork barreling.”

She added: “The bottom line is that a way of life for senatorial clout is disappearing rapidly. And what Oregon is going to have to look to is a new kind of clout based on knowledge of issues, integrity, vision and a willingness to collaborate.”

The issues of integrity and so-called family values are expected to figure more prominently in the upcoming campaign, given that the distaste for Packwood in the state grew measurably over the past three years and left him a virtual pariah long before he announced his resignation.

Already, one potential GOP contender pulled out of the race because he is in the midst of a divorce. In explaining his decision, Rep. Jim Bunn acknowledged that in the battle to replace Packwood, the timing of his divorce could not have been worse.

In another example of the campaign’s tenor, Smith, the state Senate president, made a point in one speech of telling his listeners that he was a virgin when he got married 20 years ago and has been faithful to his wife ever since.

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Even as the candidates seek to distinguish themselves from Packwood, members of the Oregon business community fondly recall his work on their behalf. Oregon companies found Packwood a crucial ally in tax and trade issues; he battled federal customs officials, for example, to obtain tariff classifications that benefited hundreds of thousands of pairs of Nike athletic shoes manufactured in Asian countries and imported to the United States for retail sale.

“Despite the very unfortunate circumstances of Sen. Packwood’s departure, I think in all of the issues surrounding him you unfortunately didn’t hear very much about his competency as a senator,” said Dick Reitan, president of Oregon’s largest electric utility, Portland General Electric Co. “He really, very frankly, was a very good senator and really devoted to his job.”

Reitan and others said they especially fear Packwood’s absence--and the prospect of Hatfield’s retirement--at a time when the role of the federal Bonneville Power Administration is being debated. Some are pushing for accelerating the pay-back by the huge hydropower electricity broker of its debt load, a move that could affect the region’s historically low rates for electrical power. In the past, Packwood and Hatfield could be counted on to help block such efforts.

One of those who has dreaded Packwood’s departure from the Finance Committee helm is Jim Beall, a Washington lobbyist whose clients include several in Oregon--the city of Portland, small tree-farm owners and lumber mill owners. He also represents a rail car company implicated in Packwood’s diaries for reportedly offering a job to the senator’s ex-wife at a time when Packwood helped gain the company relief from a potentially disastrous change in the tax code. (The company says it made no such job offer.)

The tax bill currently before Congress is crucial for many of Beall’s clients. Estate tax provisions will affect Oregon tree farmers and their ability to delay logging on their land. Capital gains provisions directly affect the timber industry with its long holding periods on land. Beall is chagrined that Republican Sen. William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware will now be chairing the Finance Committee.

“Instead of the Oregon senator coming up with a bill that you can bet will have Oregon amendments in it, whose agenda is shaped to a great extent by the people of Oregon, we will have a Delaware senator sitting there,” Beall said.

As Hatfield contemplates retirement, similar concerns are expressed by Portland city officials about the flow of federal dollars to their community.

Many political insiders in Oregon believe that Hatfield will indeed retire, both to live out the rest of his life in tranquillity after 30 years in the Senate and in recognition of the increasingly conservative nature of the Republican congressional leaders around him.

Said political consultant Denny Miles: “Hatfield is a fairly liberal Republican, and there are [Republicans] in the Senate saying we have to get our agenda out, and if the chairman doesn’t agree then we shouldn’t have those people as chairman. That’s why I think Hatfield won’t stay, and the only reason he’s not saying so is he doesn’t want to become an instant lame duck.”

While Hatfield ponders his future, the question of Packwood’s next step also lingers over Oregon. Will he write a book from his diaries, many of which are yet to be disclosed? What will it say about those still standing on the political plain?

Said one Oregonian who has known and worked with the senator: “He holds the diaries. He can rewrite them any way he wants. He could write a book. So you have a huge number of people who are going to keep their mouth shut about Packwood as long as that man is alive. The worse those diaries are, the better the book’s going to sell. He could destroy any of us.”