Senate’s Under New Management

Control of the Senate quietly changed hands Tuesday, as gleeful Democrats prepared to govern with a fragile new majority and dispirited Republicans seemed to back away from earlier threats to turn the takeover into a pitched partisan battle.

That cleared the way for newly empowered Democrats to begin shifting the legislative focus to their favored issues of patients’ rights, more spending for education and expanding Medicare benefits.

The transition occurred without fanfare at the end of the day’s Senate session, but tremors of political upheaval could be felt across the nation’s capital.

Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont, whose decision to leave the GOP to become an independent caused the power shift, attended his first party caucus with Democrats and was greeted with a standing ovation. His seat on the Senate floor was to be uprooted and moved to the Democratic side of the aisle early today.

At the White House, President Bush tried to set a conciliatory tone by inviting a bipartisan group of lawmakers--including the renegade Jeffords--to discuss pending education legislation. He even deferred to the Senate’s liberal lion, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), as the incoming chairman of the education committee.

“He’s been around here a lot longer than I have,” Bush said of Kennedy, who was first elected in 1962.

Bush also moved to mend fences within his own party, hosting Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and McCain’s wife, Cindy, at a White House dinner. McCain, a political maverick who battled Bush for the Republican presidential nomination last year and has opposed the new administration on several policy fronts, spurred talk that he might jump the GOP ship when he hosted incoming Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota at his Arizona ranch last weekend.

Daschle officially starts exercising his new power when the Senate opens for business this morning. In a gesture of the bipartisanship that prevailed on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) paid a call on Daschle.

Meanwhile, senators from both parties began negotiating the rules for organizing the chamber to reflect the new balance of power. Some Democrats feared it would be a rocky and contentious transition, in light of sharp partisan rhetoric employed in recent days by Senate GOP leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Lott has taken to calling Jeffords’ defection a “coup of one” and in a memo to other Republicans called for waging war with Senate Democrats.

Lott reiterated his comments Tuesday, saying, “We should have a war of ideas, and we should have a full campaign for the Senate in 2002.”

But other Republicans recoiled from that partisan tone and dismissed suggestions that they might tie up the Senate until Democrats guaranteed them more power over the approval process for Bush nominees to various federal posts and other issues.

“I didn’t hear anybody say they wanted to filibuster,” said Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) after a party strategy session. “The best thing for the country is to get [the reorganization] done and move forward.”

It still may be days before the details of the Senate organization are settled, especially the new makeup of its committees. But some changes will happen immediately; for instance, a generally liberal team of Democrats will be promoted to committee chairmanships. And that, in turn, will give party leaders potent perches from which to push their own proposals.

Jeffords’ decision to become an independent tipped the Senate’s partisan composition from a 50-50 party split--with Republicans in control by virtue of Vice President Dick Cheney’s tie-breaking vote--to a 50-49-1 breakdown. Jeffords’ resignation from the GOP was announced almost two weeks ago, but it did not take effect until the close of business Tuesday--a delay intended to give Republicans time to finish work on Bush’s signature tax cut legislation before losing the Senate.

Given the effect of his decision, Jeffords found himself squarely in the spotlight Tuesday. Camera crews lay in wait around the Capitol to capture his arrival at the weekly meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus, where he received his hero’s welcome.

Not long after that, he joined the bipartisan group headed to the White House for a meeting with Bush on the education bill. When Bush was asked about Jeffords’ defection during a photo session, the president joked, “Why do you want to make him feel bad in front of the cameras?”

Today the attention turns to Daschle. He tried to set a conciliatory tone Tuesday, acknowledging that he will have to overcome deep Republican suspicion and bitterness in his avowed effort to set a new, less partisan tone in the Senate.

“I think we have to deal with that skepticism,” Daschle said. “I have to prove myself to our Republican colleagues.”

Republicans met in a strategy session devoted largely to licking their wounds. “Reality has set in,” Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) said after the meeting. “It was sort of a quiet occasion.”

Republicans have grappled with division in their ranks about their party’s direction in the wake of Jeffords’ defection. The remaining handful of Senate Republicans with generally liberal voting records agreed with Jeffords’ criticism that the party had moved too far to the right. And these Republicans are concerned that their leaders have not learned that lesson.

Lott’s fiercely partisan memo, in which he said Democrats lack “the moral authority of a mandate from the voters” as they take control of the Senate, clearly intensified such worries.

“The partisanship that’s been here . . . is deepening,” said Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.). “Sen. Lott’s letter is more evidence of that.”

The course Republicans pursue in the reconfigured Senate could become clear in the negotiations with Democrats on organizing Senate committees. Although committee chairmanships will automatically transfer to Democrats today, the Senate will have to pass a resolution making new committee assignments in ratios reflecting the Democrats’ new majority.

Members of both parties agree that Democrats should be given a one-seat majority on Senate panels, but many Republicans are worried that Democrats will use that edge to kill Bush’s nominations to the judiciary and executive branch posts--without bringing them to the full Senate for a vote.

To avoid that, some Republicans are pushing for a new rule that would require the full Senate to vote on a nomination if the matter isn’t acted on by a committee within about six weeks of its arrival. Some Republicans have suggested that they could mount a filibuster to wring such a concession from the Democrats.

Snowe said she argued against that tactic during the GOP’s caucus meeting. Even Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a conservative on the Judiciary Committee, seemed resigned to getting few, if any, concessions on the nomination process. “I don’t think we can ask for too much on nominations,” Sessions said.

While Republicans insisted they were not trying to be obstructionist, some seemed in no hurry to wrap up negotiations with Democrats.

“We don’t desire to hold the Senate up, but we do want to have a serious negotiation . . . about how this 49-member minority will be treated in the new Senate,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).