GOP Retains Control of Senate, but New Faces Will Predominate

The U.S. Senate that will convene in January, like the current one, will be dominated by Republicans. But in a chamber devoted to tradition, new faces--including some with no experience in Congress--will be nearing a majority.

Although only one incumbent apparently was defeated in Tuesday’s balloting, voters sent at least 15 new senators to Washington, thanks to the 14 who decided not to seek reelection. Altogether, 39 of the 100 senators in the new Congress will be in their first full terms.

Women will hold a record nine seats, up one from the current Senate. Two states in opposite corners of the country--California and Maine--will be represented by two women: both Republicans in Maine, both Democrats in California.

The new Senate will be made up of less-experienced legislators who have not learned the often genteel ways of the upper house and who have reached their seats after generally rough-and-tumble campaigns.

There were questions Tuesday about whether continued Republican majorities in Congress and the Democrats’ control of the executive branch, bringing another two years of divided government, will mean gridlock or bipartisanship.

“This is a mandate for less government, but more importantly, it is for our leaders to stop the finger-pointing and do something in a common-sense way,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was President Reagan’s final White House chief of staff. “The voters haven’t given Bill Clinton a blank check or the Republicans a blank check. But they’ve given each a kick in the rear end to get something done.”

Bragging Rights

Each party came away from the Senate contests with something to brag about: The Democrats had turned back what had seemed throughout the autumn to be stiff challenges to half a dozen open seats or to Democratic incumbents, and they appeared to be turning out Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.); Republicans, in addition to picking up at least two seats vacated by Democratic incumbents, easily won the Senate contests in Tennessee and appeared to be winning in Arkansas, the home states of Al Gore and Bill Clinton.

In the new Senate, Republicans are likely to hold 54 or 55 seats, and Democrats 45 or 46, based on actual returns and television network projections. The Republican margin had been 53 to 47 during the concluded 104th Congress.

Seats held by retiring Democrats in Alabama and Nebraska were won by Republicans.

Susan Collins, a Republican, was the projected winner in Maine, filling the seat that is being vacated by Sen. William S. Cohen, also a Republican.

But Rep. Robert G. Torricelli, a Democrat, won a bitter and expensive contest to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley in New Jersey, and Sen. John Kerry, also a Democrat, won reelection against popular Gov. William F. Weld in Massachusetts.

Two mainstays of Southern conservatism, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), were reelected--Thurmond, whose 94th birthday is Dec. 5, to his eighth term, and Helms to his fifth. But Georgians apparently rejected a conservative Republican seeking to replace Sam Nunn, a Democrat who is retiring, choosing instead Max Cleland--a Democrat and severely wounded Vietnam veteran who directed the Veterans Administration in the Carter administration.

Among Democrats, there was an effort to see in the Senate results--and in the holding of previously Democratic seats--a reluctance to hand over much additional control to Republicans.

In Minnesota, for example, Sen. Paul Wellstone ran a campaign based largely on liberal principles, and he coasted to a repeat victory over former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz. Wellstone was the only Democrat running for reelection to oppose the Republican-led, Clinton-approved welfare overhaul. And in his victory speech, he singled out the need for universal health care.

“I believe that it is just wrong that people should go without health care. We must have universal health care coverage,” he said.

‘Revolution Ends’

Democrats hoped that Tuesday’s vote would make the Senate, historically less subject to popular trends and political pressures than the House, even less likely to swing to extremes.

“Tonight, the Republican revolution ends,” Mike Casey, a former Democratic official, said optimistically. “Their near-death experience this election cycle can only be attributed to the extreme actions they took these past two years. Moderation will be the order of the day these next two years.”

The Massachusetts Senate race between Kerry and Weld was conducted for the most part on a plane well above that of most other contests in recent years, although exit polls showed that one out of every four voters chose Kerry in reaction to an onslaught of negative television advertising launched by Weld.

“I’m not stupid; I’ve got the message. The message is, I’m a real good governor and I should stick to that,” the defeated Republican said.

Kerry chose to quote Jackie Gleason: “How sweet it is.”

In Arkansas, Rep. Tim Hutchinson, a Republican who was leading state Atty. Gen. Winston Bryant, said in an interview Tuesday night that his apparent victory reflected the state’s independent-minded electorate rather than a snub of Clinton.

“There are a lot of factors involved here,” Hutchinson said. “We are getting a big chunk of the Clinton vote at the same time that he is carrying the state for the White House. So it’s not a backlash against the president.”

Hutchinson, 47, said he tried to keep the race focused on local issues, while at the same time touting his work in Congress pushing a $500-per-child tax break for families with college students.

The race to succeed Nunn was so close that neither candidate had claimed victory by midnight, although several news networks had projected Cleland would win. As the night wore on, the gap between the Democrat and Republican Guy Millner narrowed.

With 74% of the precincts reporting, Cleland was leading 49% to 47%.

Nasty in N.J.

The New Jersey race was one of the nastiest of the year, fouled by negative advertising. The contest had appeared much closer in final public opinion polls over the weekend than the exit polls seemed to indicate.

Clinton made three visits to the state to boost Torricelli--and his own chances in the traditionally fickle state--as Democrats sought to keep a seat crucial to their party’s hope of regaining the Senate.

With no overriding issues unifying the parties’ Senate races from state to state, individual concerns took on prime importance. In Colorado, the environment, federal spending and a woman’s right to choose an abortion dominated a bruising Senate race in which three-term Republican Rep. Wayne Allard defeated Democratic newcomer Tom Strickland.

Allard, 52, painted Strickland, a politically well-connected attorney for the state’s most prominent law firm, as a lobbyist for special interests and a hypocrite for claiming to be an environmentalist.

In television ads and in debates, Allard attacked Strickland for representing a logging and woodcutting firm, as well as an incinerator company that had tried to locate a plant in a poor section of north Denver.

Strickland, 44, who got endorsements from every environmental group in the country, pointed out that Allard’s voting record earned him a place on the League of Conservation Voters’ “dirty dozen” list of members of Congress targeted for defeat.

Times staff writers Sam Fulwood III in Charlotte, N.C.; Eric Harrison in Atlanta; Elizabeth Mehren in Boston; Richard A. Serrano in Little Rock, Ark.; and Louis Sahagun in Denver contributed to this story.