Scandal Threatens Senate Democrats, Power Balance

In South Carolina, a Democratic senator faces the toughest reelection fight in his five decades of political life. In Illinois, a vulnerable Senate Democrat already falls behind her GOP challenger in the polls. In California, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer finds herself on every list of endangered incumbents.

From coast to coast, Democrats have been losing ground in key Senate races and they are facing new peril from President Clinton’s political problems, which continue to mount in the wake of his admission of an inappropriate relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky. The result, some analysts believe, could reach far beyond the individual races and effect a dramatic transformation on the balance of power in Washington.

Since Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, Democrats have exercised their last vestige of legislative clout in the Senate, where a muscular minority has retained the power to block key elements of the Republican agenda by filibustering. Republicans now fall five seats short of the 60 votes they need to break Democratic filibusters.

But recent developments in both the Clinton investigation and in individual Senate races have increased the likelihood that the GOP could gain the needed five seats this fall. That could vastly increase Republicans’ ability to control the political agenda during the last two years of Clinton’s presidency.

“Right now Republicans have a tugboat” to pull their agenda through Congress, said Michael Tucker, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “But with 60 votes, they would have a bulldozer.”

If Republicans had 60 votes now, they would be more likely to push a big election-year tax cut and they could ram through a version of managed health care reform that Democrats have denounced as inadequate.

With election day still two tumultuous months away, many analysts--even Republicans--remain wary of predicting big GOP gains.

Whatever happens between now and November, analysts say, it is hard to imagine things getting any better for Democrats. Fueling their anxiety is a new bipartisan poll released Tuesday showing how the Clinton scandal is poisoning the political atmosphere for Democrats.

Democratic Apathy Found by Pollsters

The poll, conducted Aug. 24 to 26 by Republican Ed Goeas and Democrat Celinda Lake, found that Democrats, dispirited by Clinton’s troubles, are far less likely to vote in November and that anti-Clinton Republicans may turn out in droves. Among registered voters surveyed, 70% of the Republicans said that they are “extremely likely” to vote this fall. Only 61% of Democrats said that they are.

The poll also found that the scandal had catapulted issues of morality and values to the top of voters’ concerns, eclipsing issues like health care and education that work to the Democrats’ advantage.

Those findings bolster Republican hopes that an election long expected to be a ratification of the status quo could turn into a rout.

“I think there may be an October wave and it could be huge,” said Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Contrary to predictions just a few months ago, hardly anyone now thinks that Republicans will lose control of the House. And in the Senate, “it’s not hard to see how the Republicans get five seats, which is the magic number,” said Jennifer E. Duffy, Senate editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Although Democrats publicly insist that Senate races will be determined by individual personalities and the issues, privately many are glum about the impact of Clinton’s troubles.

Duffy and other analysts cited five Senate races as weak links in the Democratic chain:

* In California, the four-point lead Boxer once enjoyed over GOP candidate Matt Fong has evaporated. A Field poll conducted Aug. 18 to 24 found the race a dead heat. When the candidates met for a debate, the first quarter was consumed by discussion of Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky. Having taken heat for not criticizing Clinton more, Boxer on Tuesday delivered a Senate speech criticizing his relationship as “immoral.”

* In Illinois, Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun has long been considered one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents. Hobbled by ethics problems of her own, Moseley-Braun stands to lose more ground if concerns about integrity in government loom large, analysts said. A poll conducted for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Aug. 31 to Sept. 1 found Moseley-Braun trailing GOP state Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, 35% to 46%.

* In Nevada, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid is leading his GOP opponent, Rep. John E. Ensign, by only a five-point margin. The state is particularly volatile politically because a large number of new voters move into the state each year.

* In Kentucky, there is a tight race for an open seat now held by a Democrat. Democratic Rep. Scotty Baesler has been running ahead of GOP Rep. Jim Bunning. But in late August for the first time an independent poll showed the two candidates running neck and neck.

* In South Carolina, Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings is fighting for his political life in what has become the most solidly Republican state in the South. Anti-Clinton sentiment runs high there and conservative GOP Rep. Bob Inglis is mounting an aggressive campaign.

Perhaps the best news in weeks for nervous Senate Democrats came last week, when a poll conducted after Clinton’s speech found that Hollings was still ahead of Inglis by a 48% to 40% margin, compared to 47% to 42% in May. But with many voters still undecided--and with such voters’ tendency to vote for challengers--Hollings is not out of the woods.

On Tuesday, he sharply criticized the president. “We’re fed up,” Hollings said. “The behavior, the dishonesty of the president is unacceptable.”

If Republicans were to have 60 votes in the Senate, it would scramble both parties’ legislative strategies, which now are based on the assumption that Senate Democrats will filibuster the most ambitious elements of the conservative agenda.

At stake for Clinton is whether he will have a key tool of legislative leverage during his final two years in office, or whether he will be reduced to a string of veto fights with a Congress firmly in the command of the GOP.

“If we can energize our base and let them know what’s at stake,” said Tucker at the Democrats’ Senate campaign committee, “that ought to scare them into voting.”

Times staff writer Marc Lacey contributed to this story.

* DAMAGE CONTROL: Clinton to meet today with House Democratic leaders amid impeachment talk. A9