The Battle for the Senate

IF POLITICS is a sport then there are two leagues in the United States-the traditional democratic and the radical. Until about five years ago there was only one league. Now there are two. But the fact is that the two leagues still refuse to recognize each other and until there is some kind of merger, or one is eliminated, the older league is still the most powerful.

Old style politics has three basic ingredients: money, organization, and votes. This season the money and organization belong to the guys in the black hats. Nixon-Agnew and Co. have launched a frontal assault to wrest the third ingredient, votes, away from its traditional owner, the Democratic party. If they are successful it will mean a major swing to the right for the United States, with the precise results of that swing left to anyone's guess. One thing is clear, however; if the Nixon-Agnew candidates are successful, the results will not be very pleasant for the Vietnamese, black people, the economy, or students.

Students have played an increasingly important role in the campaign, not as canvassers or volunteers, but as an issue. The deaths at Kent State, the wave of bombings, the Weatherman fall offensive have all provided grist for the conservative mill. All across the country liberal candidates are shying away from defending students. No one can really predict the effects of an Agnew tongue lashing on a candidate and liberals in general are taking no chances. Check out the store front office of Ted Kennedy in Boston if you don't believe it.

The prime target of the Nixon assault is the Senate. If the Republicans can pick up seven Senate seats, they will gain control of the body, giving them the power to pick the committee chairmen who rule the upper house. President Nixon has said that the best present the nation could give him on November 4 would be a Republican-controlled Senate. It was the Senate which rejected two of his Supreme Court nominations. It was the Senate which passed the Cooper-Church amendment. It is the Senate which contains George McGovern, Joseph Tydings, Edward Kennedy, and Edmund Muskie.

Thirty-five Senate seats are up this year. The key races are in New York, California, Vermont, Maryland, Nevada, Tennessee, North Dakota, and Ohio. Following is the first part of a two-part series giving a state-by-state rundown of the contests in the Senate:

ALASKA: Republican Senator Theodore F. Stevens, a strong Nixon supporter, faces Democratic challenger Wendell P. Kay, a liberal. Stevens is the first Republican ever to serve as a Senator from Alaska. He was appointed to fill the remainder of the term left following the death of Senator E. L. Bartlett. In a state which produced Ernest Gruening, one of the two Senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Kay is given a good chance of ousting Stevens.

Kay's big issue is conservation. He is militantly opposed to the big oil companies which have sought to racage the open northern portions of the state. Stevens, on the other hand, takes the stand that the oil companies will bring money and jobs into the underdeveloped portions of the state. Give the lead to Stevens, but don't count Kay out.

ARIZONA: What should have been a safe state for the incumbent Senator Paul J. Fannin has become not so safe. The Republican Senator, a protege of state folk hero Barry Gold-water, is in a hot battle with millionaire Phoenix businessman Sam Grossman, the Democratic candidate. Grossman is a liberal who is waging a heavily financed campaign on television and in the papers. He is still a long way from victory, but an upset is not impossible.

CALIFORNIA: Former song and dance man George Murphy is running neck and neck with a young and vigorous liberal Democrat, Rep. John V. Tunney. It is impossible to predict anything, much less a political election, in the land of Reagans and Mansons, yet Tunney must be given the edge. He is running a strong campaign against the 68-year-old Murphy, whose campaigning is hampered by his voice problem (he has had several major operations on his throat and is only barely audible).

In June Murphy was implicated in a conflict of interest scandal involving his relations with Technicolor Inc. Since the beginning of his Senate career, he has been employed by the firm as a $20,000 a year consultant. In addition, Technicolor has paid half the rent on Murphy's Washington, D.C. apartment and has provided him with a credit card for his travel expenses. Murphy claims that there is nothing wrong with a Senator picking up pocket money in such a fashion, but the incident is the kind of political no-no that can lose elections.

Tunney has criticized President Nixon for failing to realize that a settlement of the war will have to include a "broad based government in South Vietnam." He has also called for economic and medical aid for both North and South Vietnam.

CONNECTICUT: The bizarre career of incumbent Sen. Thomas J. Dood appears to be at an end. Running as an independent, Dodd is given little chance of winning. His only impact on the election will be to cut into the votes of the Democratic candidate, Rev. Joseph D. Duffey. Dodd, who has a liberal record on domestic matters but a mysteriously conservative stance on foreign policy, will benefit from his religion. He is a Roman Catholic in a heavily Catholic state. Duffey, a peace candidate and a backer of the 1968 Presidential bid of Gene McCarthy, is a Congregationalist minister. He is a long-time liberal, and his campaign has attracted nationwide attention as an indicator of the political viability of the peace movement.

How much Dodd cuts into Duffey's vote will determine whether the election is won by the Republican candidate, Rep. Lowell P. Weiker. Weiker is considered a moderate Republican, but supports the Nixon course in Indochina.

DELAWARE: Here is a clear liberal vs. conservative race. The conservative, Republican Rep. William V. Roth, is the front runner. Opposing him for the seat being relinquished by retiring Republican Senator John J. Williams is Democrat Jacob W. Zimmerman. Zimmerman is a strong opponent of the war and favors limiting the war-making powers of the President. In a state which is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Duponts and which has a sizeable group of Wallace supporters, Zimmerman is clearly the underdog.

FLORIDA: In one of the major primary upsets of the year, State Senator Lawton Chiles defeated former Governor Ferris Bryant in a runoff for the Democratic nomination. Facing Chiles in the general election is Republican Rep. William C. Cramer, who pulled a minor upset of his own in winning the Republican nomination from G. Harrold Carswell.

Cramer is running a slick, wellfinanced campaign and is proud to tell the folks that he is running "because President Nixon asked me to." Nobody of such stature asked Chiles to run, so he walked-1,003 miles down the middle of the state. In a revival of the old person-to-person vote-getting style that made Estes Kefauver so popular in the South ten years ago, Chiles has had personal chats with thousands of his constituents. He has met thousands more since the primary and shuns the television, airplane, newspaper gimmicks of his opponent.

Chiles is by no means a liberal, but he does have a populist tinge about him. He has called for a revamping of the federal social legislation-the most frequent beef of the constituents he met. If he wins it will not be a victory for liberalism, but it will be a major defeat for the Madison Avenue style which elected Richard Nixon in 1968.

HAWAII: It was a tough job for the Democrats to find a man to oppose Republican Senator Hiram Fong. The man they came up with is the owner of a television station, Cecil Heftel, who has achieved any reputation he might have through appearances on his own station. Fong's popularity is somewhat of a mystery in a state which gave 80 per cent of its votes in the last Senate election to one of the most liberal members of the Senate, Daniel K. Inouye. But Fong, who is Chinese, has a large ethnic backing and lots of money. To say that Heftel has an uphill battle is being kind to the Democrats.

ILLINOIS: Ever since his reconciliation last summer with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Democrat Adlai Stevenson III has been the favorite to win the seat held for 20 years by Everett Dirksen. His opponent, Republican Senator Ralph T. Smith, was appointed to fill the remainder of Dirksen's term and is still relatively unknown in the state. He is an employer of the Agnew style and has attacked Stevenson as a radical-liberal.

In reaction to Smith's attacks, Stevenson has retracted from his liberal position. He has hired to direct his campaign the prosecuting attorney at the Chicago 7 trial and has come down hard in favor of law and order and against "campus revolutionaries." He supports an early end to the war but has tried to avoid explaining just what that means while accusing Smith of being a rubber stamp for the Nixon administration.

Stevenson will win the election, but how far to the right he will go to do it remains to be seen. In any case he isn't the man his father was.

INDIANA: Vance Hartke, the Democratic incumbent from Indiana, may not be the ideal liberal Senator, but on most of the basic issues he votes with the good guys and in Indiana that takes guts. He opposed both Haynsworth and Carswell, as well as the ABM. He has opposed the war since the early days of the Johnson Administration. Predictably he is in trouble. His opponent, right-wing Republican Rep. Richard Roudebush, is a former national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and supports Nixon and Agnew about as much as anyone can.

Indiana is a basically conservative state with two remarkably liberal Senators. Hartke's main advantage is his campaign technique which is tireless and personal. This year he faces an opponent whom he calls "a faceless rubber stamp for the Administration." But he may find that that is what the voters in the Hoosier State want.

MARYLAND: The state which produced Spiro Agnew also has produced one of the most liberal and progressive members of the Senate. Yet the political splits and maneuverings which produced Agnew may serve to defeat Tydings this year.

Agnew was elected not because hewas particularly popular, but because his opponent, Wallace supporter George Mahoney, was particularly detestable. This year Tydings is particularly detestable to different segments of the electorate because of three factors:

His stand in favor of the no-knock provision of the D. C. crime bill has angered many liberals who otherwise would have supported him gladly. The provision permits police, under certain circumstances, to enter a building without first announcing their presence or occupation.

His championing of gun control legislation has brought upon him the wrath of the powerful and wealthy gun lobby. The gun people have flooded the state with anti-Tydings money and literature.

An August 20 article in Life magazine charged Tydings with conflict of interest in connection with a Maryland company, the Charter Corporation. Though nothing ever came of the charges and many Tydings backers see it as an indirect White House-initiated smear attempt, the odor remains and may have an effect.

Whether traditional Tydings supporters will be angered enough by these single issues to vote against a man whose whole record they admire will determine whether the election will go to Tydings' Republican opponent, Rep. J. Glenn Beall. Beall, like Tydings the son of a former Senator, is a shrewd politician who was persuaded to give up his safe seat in the House to oppose one of the chief targets of Agnewian attacks. Tydings is rated high on the White House target list, and Beall will not lack support, financial and otherwise, from the Administration. Beall is running a classic middle-of-the-road, low profile campaign. He has refused Agnew's direct help; he supports the Nixon Indochina policy, and he opposes gun control.

If Beall upset Tydings it will be a major victory for the Administration and the gun lobby as well as a grave loss for liberals in the Senate.

( The second part, including Maine will appear in Monday's CRIMSON.)