‘Silent-Partner’ Senate May Become GOP Driving Force

Eclipsed for two years by the ideological energy emanating from the other wing of the Capitol, the Senate is about to generate its own legislative heat and light as Republicans exercise control of Congress for another two years.

And the unquestioned master of this political universe is Sen. Trent Lott, the telegenic Mississippian who will lead a revitalized and reinforced band of Senate Republicans when the 105th Congress convenes in January.

Lott, who is assured of reelection as Senate majority leader when senators assemble in Washington this week to choose next year’s leaders, represents the new face of a Senate Republican caucus that was dominated for years by Bob Dole of Kansas.

Lott took the reins as majority leader in June after Dole resigned from the Senate to devote all his time to his failed presidential campaign. Lott quickly established his credentials as an articulate and skilled consensus-builder.

When he gavels the new session to order, Lott will preside over a more conservative chamber that is clearly emerging from the shadow cast during the previous two years by the House and its GOP field commander, Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia.

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Under the direction of Gingrich and his “contract with America” legislative agenda, the House was the driving force of the Republican revolution, overshadowing the Senate’s more deliberative and cautious legislative role.

Now congressional experts and insiders call it an even match.

“I think the Senate is going to be an equal partner with the House, instead of the silent partner they were two years ago,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

One reason for the shifting balance of power is that the political clout of House Republicans has been diminished by bruising political battles and the loss of several seats in last month’s elections.

Moreover, Gingrich is but a hint of the whirling force that dominated the beginning of the first majority-Republican Congress in nearly half a century. The speaker’s influence has been reduced by political missteps, sagging popularity in the polls and allegations of ethical lapses.

For now, at least, Republicans on both sides of the Capitol seem to feel more confident having Lott in the limelight.

“Within the party . . . most Republicans feel more comfortable having his face associated with their policies,” said Charles Jones, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Last month, voters increased the GOP’s hold on the Senate by two seats, giving them a 55-45 advantage over the Democrats. More important for Lott, the nine freshman Republican senators, including three who captured open Democratic seats, provide a cushion of solid conservatism to bolster the majority leader’s own political leanings.

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All of the new GOP senators are seen as more right-tilting than the legislators they replaced. In part, that is a function of the growing strength of the party in the more conservative South, where Republicans captured Senate seats held by retiring Democrats Howell Heflin in Alabama and David Pryor in Arkansas. Yet even Kansas, where GOP moderates like Dole and Nancy Landon Kassebaum served for years, chose two conservative activists, Reps. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, as their replacements.

The net effect, say some political observers, is that the new Senate will be a more ideologically driven body than it has been in decades. The new GOP senators, for example, oppose abortion rights, favor repealing gun-control laws, support deep tax cuts and promise to reduce the federal government’s role in American life.

The more conservative tenor could prove to be a mixed blessing for Lott. Toward the end of the last session, he demonstrated his consensus-building skills by compromising on welfare reform, a minimum-wage increase and other hot-button issues passed in the House. In the process, he drew fire from some conservatives for accommodating the political objectives of the White House and Senate Democrats.

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“There is a gap, a leadership gap, at the national Republican level,” said Lee Miringhoff, executive director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “The national election exposed the fault line between the economic conservatives and the cultural conservatives within the Republican Party. I think we’ll see in the Senate more of the cultural aspect than we’ve seen in the past few years.”

Indeed, moderate Senate Republicans, such as Olympia J. Snowe of Maine or Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, are noticeably absent from the top leadership positions in the GOP caucus.

Conservative Southern Republicans are expected to retain the top jobs after this week’s caucus elections, including Oklahoma’s Don Nickles as majority whip and Idaho’s Larry E. Craig as chairman of the GOP Policy Committee. Connie Mack of Florida is expected to replace Thad Cochran as chairman of the Republican Conference.

Another restraint on Lott’s ability to work his will on the Senate is the nature of the institution itself, which allows a minority of members to block legislation through use of the filibuster and gives individual senators far more ability to dominate floor action than their House counterparts.

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“Lott is not going to play the Gingrich activist role,” said Baker, the Rutgers University political scientist. “He’s going to be bound by the very restrictive Senate rules that make it very, very difficult to build a majority with Republicans only. They have 55 seats, but they don’t have 60”--the number required to break a filibuster.

Baker predicts that Lott’s inability “to bully his will over policy” will keep the Senate from being as “extreme” as the House was portrayed under Gingrich. “I don’t think it’s really going to have the far-reaching and profound impact on the kinds of legislation that is proposed in the upcoming session, nothing like what we saw in the last session,” he said.

No one agrees more than Lott himself.

“You have to find consensus,” he said in his first post-election press conference. “You have to be prepared to work with senators of all regions, all philosophies, in both parties.”

Referring to the legendary filibusters of the upper house, Lott added: “This is still the Senate, and it doesn’t take a party to tie this place up. It takes a senator--one.”

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.