More Votes Slip From Clinton’s Grasp in House

The floodgates of pro-impeachment sentiment broke wide open Tuesday as undecided Republicans turned against President Clinton and threatened to sink any chance that he can avoid being impeached later this week.

The new wave of Republicans supporting impeachment included a pivotal New Yorker who had previously said that he would vote against it as well as numerous other bellwether moderates--a stampede that led some to predict there is no way Clinton can turn the tide.

“It is my judgment that the president will be impeached by the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Tom Campbell (R-San Jose), one of the many moderate fence-sitters who announced his support for impeachment Tuesday.

“If it isn’t over, it’s pretty close to over,” said one White House official, who spoke on condition that his name not be used.

Some Clinton allies took solace in the fact that there still technically were enough undeclared Republicans that the outcome was not utterly certain. In the first break in the momentum toward impeachment in days, a leading moderate Republican--Rep. Michael N. Castle of Delaware--Tuesday proposed censuring Clinton and imposing a $2-million fine.

And Clinton may have one last chance to dig himself out of the hole today when he is to meet with Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), a wavering opponent of impeachment, and possibly other undecided Republicans.

“It’s seminal,” a top House Democratic leadership aide said of that meeting. “He needs to pick up support there. If he doesn’t, the hemorrhaging is likely to continue.”

White House officials cautioned that they did not see the Shays meeting as a silver bullet.

But one White House official involved in the defense said: “It’s not meaningless, because there are still enough people out there” to block impeachment.

The prospects for defeating impeachment were dimming so dramatically that attention has already begun to turn to the Senate, which is responsible for conducting a trial of any articles of impeachment approved by the House to determine if Clinton should be removed from office.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) gave a boost to the prospects of avoiding a lengthy, potentially paralyzing trial by recommending that the Senate quickly pass a resolution of censure, which would then also be passed by the House and signed by the president, rather than conduct a trial.

“It is time for a tough but responsible conclusion,” Dole said in an op-ed piece in the New York Times. “Maybe these ideas will be a starting point for a bipartisan ending.”

White House Welcomes Initiatives

White House officials welcomed Castle’s and Dole’s initiatives but did not hold out much hope that agreement will be reached with the Republicans.

“We welcome efforts by those who seek a bipartisan plan that will allow us to seek closure and get back to the business of the country,” said Jim Kennedy, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office. “The Republican leadership appears determined to press a partisan, party-line vote that will send us to the Senate for a potentially divisive and uncertain trial.”

This maneuvering came as Clinton was on his way back to the United States from a three-day trip to the Middle East. When he returned to the capital late Tuesday night, Clinton had only one day left before the House was to open its historic debate on the future of his presidency. House members were also beginning to return to Washington for the debate, scheduled to begin Thursday, on four articles of impeachment that accuse Clinton of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power in connection with his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

Strategists from both parties said that Clinton is facing increasingly long odds of winning the impeachment votes, based on this vote-counting calculus: The House is made up of 228 Republicans, 206 Democrats and one independent, Bernard Sanders of Vermont, who has said that he will vote against impeachment.

Thus, as both sides are predicting, if between three and eight Democrats defect and vote to impeach Clinton, GOP leaders could lose 13 to 18 Republicans and still narrowly pass impeachment articles.

Six Republicans have said at some point that they opposed impeachment but one has reversed his position and others may follow. It is hard to say exactly how many undeclared lawmakers remain but vote counters said there probably are fewer than 20. And of the list of 26 Republicans that Democrats identified as most likely to be persuaded to vote against impeachment, only 12 now remain undecided.

“It’s not over till it’s over,” said one top Democratic vote counter. “I’m not telling you we’re looking great here but it’s not over. But it will require Clinton doing something to change the dynamic in some fashion.”

Various Clinton Overtures Studied

White House advisors considered possible overtures the president could make in the limited time before the House votes. Various scenarios involved the president speaking publicly or privately to members. The president’s defenders said there are no plans for him to admit to legal wrongdoing because anything he said could be used against him in a trial in the Senate or in legal proceedings when he leaves office.

Vice President Al Gore on Tuesday made telephone calls to members of Congress to seek support for an alternative to impeachment and make the case that, while Clinton’s behavior was inexcusable, it was not impeachable.

The mood in the White House combined gloom and disbelief, as officials watched the televised declarations of more and more GOP moderates for impeachment. The single most devastating blow was the defection of Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.), who had been one of the earliest and most vocal GOP opponents of impeachment.

But Quinn did an abrupt U-turn Tuesday and announced that he would vote for impeachment. “My decision is based on the clear evidence of perjury and obstruction of justice as presented by the House Judiciary Committee in the last week,” he said in a statement.

Quinn was more than just one vote to Clinton. He also had been working with the White House in trying to persuade fellow moderates to oppose impeachment.

Another major loss came when Rep. Michael P. Forbes (R-N.Y.), whom Clinton allies had been counting on to oppose impeachment, said that he would vote for it. That drained another vote from the New York delegation, which had been considered a mother lode of potential support for the president.

Campbell, a moderate who has been willing to cast maverick votes in the past--he opposed Newt Gingrich’s reelection as speaker two years ago--ended intense speculation about his position and announced that he would support impeachment.

“The matter is serious, the matter is grave, but it is not complicated,” said Campbell. “The president of the United States on several occasions, with premeditation, said what is not true under oath.”

Another bellwether rang when Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said he had concluded that Clinton’s “behavior has broken the very laws he swore to uphold.” Upton had been one of the first lawmakers to call on Clinton to resign earlier this year, but he was considered a key swing vote because he is a leader of a group of about 30 moderates who meet on a regular basis.

But another leader of the moderate caucus is Castle, who made an 11th-hour pitch for a compromise when he wrote to Republican leaders and asked them to allow the House to vote on a censure resolution that would require Clinton to pay a penalty of at least $2 million to help reimburse the government for the cost of its investigation of him.

“Would not the country be better served if we took action now . . . to bring this matter to the same conclusion that is likely to occur even after months of Senate trial?” he said.

GOP leaders have given the request the cold shoulder. “I don’t think anybody’s going to take that seriously,” said a Republican leadership aide.

Republican Leaders Refuse Censure Vote

Republican leaders adamantly have refused to allow a vote on censure. They say it is an unconstitutional ploy that would allow members to shirk their responsibility to vote up or down on impeachment. And GOP strategists fear that allowing a vote on censure would drain support for impeachment.

Dole’s proposal calls for the Senate to act on a censure resolution, which could include a financial penalty, regardless of the outcome of the House impeachment vote. After being passed by the House and Senate, the resolution would have to be signed by Clinton in a public ceremony by Jan. 2, 1999.

The proposal was not greeted with open arms in the Senate, where more conservative Republicans bristled at Dole’s proposal as unwelcome meddling.

“Sen. Dole misstepped and misspoke and it was impolitic and unwise,” said a Senate GOP leadership aide. “Those who have the power make the decisions. Those who had the power, but lost it, have no right even to kibitz.”

Senate staff members have begun a detailed examination of the historical precedents and the many options that the Senate will face after it receives the expected articles of impeachment from the House.

Among the options loosely being outlined by leadership staff are whether to go forward with a full trial, whether to vote without a trial--since it is widely believed that the vote would be roughly the same and the trial would be a tawdry and painful event both for some of the witnesses and the public--or whether to allow a vote on censure rather than a vote on impeachment.

Although Senate Democrats have studiously shunned the appearance of preparing for the case, Sens. Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey and Tom Harkin of Iowa have been quietly working on Senate language.

The White House also began shifting its focus to developing a Senate strategy. Clinton’s lawyers were considering whether to challenge the House impeachment vote in court, on grounds that a lame-duck House has no standing to impeach.

Both sides are assuming that Clinton will not be convicted and removed from office by the Senate, where 67 votes would be needed. But as the Capitol headed toward Thursday’s momentous vote, all certainties seemed to be dissolving.

“It’s everybody’s intuition that there will not be 67 votes for removal,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). “But it’s only intuition.”

Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this story.

You can easily let your congressional representatives know your views on impeachment with the Write to Congress service on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/scandal

DECISION IN SAN JOSE: Rep. Tom Campbell says he’ll vote to impeach Clinton. A30

PUNDITS RUN AMOK: Prognosticators raise serious journalistic issues. A33