The President's Candidates

The U.S. Senate is President Nixon's domestic Cambodia, providing privileged sanctuary to an aggressive band of tormentors. But the Senate's border is vulnerable every two years on election day, and looking to Nov. 3 Nixon is fashioning an attack unmatched by modern Presidents.

If his assault succeeds, he will change the view he now sees when he looks east from the White House to the Capitol: a Senate that is too liberal for his taste and his plans. It has handed him two humiliating defeats on Supreme Court nominations, challenged his prerogatives in Cambodia and permitted him a one-vote victory on the anti-ballistic missile issue.

Personal Line-Up. Nixon's aim is to engineer a Republican takeover of the Senate, now 57-43 Democratic. Although history is against him, since the President's party almost always loses seats in off-year elections, few Presidents facing an opposition Congress have had a better opportunity. Of the 35 seats up for election, 25 are now held by Democrats, and Nixon needs a net gain of seven for the G.O.P. to take control. To achieve his goal, he has personally put together a line-up of nine candidates, eight of them House Republicans, to run for the Senate. The President's men and their prospects:

> Tennessee's William Brock III, 39, heir to a candy fortune, is favored to defeat incumbent Albert Gore, one of Nixon's leading critics on the Viet Nam War. Brock faces an August primary but is expected to have no trouble.

> Texas' George Bush, 46, son of former Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush, is an even bet to defeat Lloyd Bentsen for the seat that Liberal Ralph Yarborough lost in the Democratic primary in May.

> Minnesota's Clark MacGregor, 48, an able, articulate campaigner, faces a long uphill battle to thwart Hubert Humphrey's return to the Senate. They are competing for the seat Eugene McCarthy abandoned. Both have minor primary opposition.

> Utah's Laurence Burton, 43, who first came to Congress as a legislative assistant, trails Incumbent Frank Moss.

> Wyoming's John Wold, 53, long a party stalwart, may get enough help from a third-party peace candidate to unseat Gale McGee, the Democratic incumbent who is generally a liberal but a consistent supporter of the war. Wold faces insignificant primary opposition.

> Delaware's William V. Roth Jr., 49, once head of the state's G.O.P. organization, is regarded as certain to defeat state legislator Jacob Zimmerman for the seat being vacated by Republican John J. Williams.

> North Dakota's Thomas S. Kleppe, 51, who lost a Senate race in 1964, is trailing Incumbent Quentin Burdick.

> Florida's William Cramer, 47, who in 1954 became the first Republican House member from his state since the Reconstruction, is now in a tough primary battle with George Harrold Carswell, Nixon's rejected Supreme Court nominee. The winner's Democratic opponent will be chosen in a September primary. The election is for the seat of retiring Democrat Spessard Holland.

> Nevada's William Raggio, 43, Washoe county district attorney, is trailing--but not by much--Incumbent Howard Cannon. Raggio, who also faces a lightly regarded primary opponent, is the only one of Nixon's starting nine who is not now a House member.

Not surprisingly, the President's men share something with the Richard Nixon of 1950, who left the House to seek a Senate seat: they are relatively young, aggressive, thoroughly partisan and largely conservative, and they have the reputation of being able legislators and attractive candidates. If they win, they will probably vote with the President at least as consistently as the Democratic liberals have voted against him. To help them, Nixon has become more personally and deeply involved in a congressional campaign than any White House occupant in memory.

Dispatched. To begin with, he has helped some candidates even while they faced primary opposition, despite the traditional presidential disclaimers of interference. He has himself searched out and persuaded his men, when persuading was needed, that they should not cling to a safe House seat and duck the challenge of a Senate race. "I did it myself," he told Burton, "and you can see what happened to me."

The President has also dispatched Spiro Agnew on successful fund-raising trips for his men in Minnesota and Texas. The TV impresario who packaged Nixon's successful election campaign two years ago, Harry Treleaven, is now heavily involved in the campaigns of Bush, Brock, Kleppe and Cramer. In addition, Nixon's two resident political lieutenants, South Carolina's Harry Dent and longtime California Aide Murray Chotiner, hold frequent strategy sessions with the President's candidates, conveying the President's considerable political wisdom as well as their own. The President also keeps an eye on detail. He has discussed with MacGregor the type of TV tapes they could make together and tipped him to a weakness Nixon thinks Humphrey displayed in 1968. "Hubert has a tendency to say one thing to one audience, the opposite to another. Watch that," Nixon told MacGregor.

Job Offer. The extent of Nixon's involvement in the Senate battle is nowhere more evident than in two cases where he failed to get the candidate he wanted. In Massachusetts, to run against Ted Kennedy, it was Representative Margaret M. Heckler. Nixon sent Chotiner to see her. He offered a campaign theme, a million dollars to start her campaign fund and a high appointive office if she lost--an offer that could not have been made without Nixon's approval. But Chotiner could not provide the one thing that might have persuaded her: a more beatable opponent. She declined.

In Nevada, Nixon wanted Governor Paul Laxalt to run against Cannon and told him so in a White House talk. "I need friends bad," the President said. When Laxalt insisted on retirement and his decision threatened a party split in the state over his successor, Nixon sent Agnew to persuade Raggio, one of two Republicans who wanted the governorship, to run for the Senate instead. Agnew succeeded. Raggio then got the Washington treatment: a chat with Nixon and briefings from Agnew, Dent and four Cabinet members. "I will run as a Nixon man," says Raggio. In Texas and Tennessee, Bush and Brock are already proudly and publicly running that way.

The Nixon blitz has stirred professional envy among the opposition. Said one high-ranking Democrat: "He's done the kind of job I wish my cats [former Democratic Presidents] had done. Nixon and Agnew have played cold-blooded politics, and they have been goddamned aggressive." If it turns out to be a winning game, Nixon will have overcome severe odds. Only once since 1934 has the President's party gained Senate seats in an off-year election. That was in 1962, when Democrats benefited from a spurt of national unity after the Cuban missile crisis and added four seats to their existing majority during the presidency of John Kennedy.

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