Pick of the Biennial Races

ONE reason that Congressmen may seem lacking in their grasp of the larger affairs of state is that they spend so much of their two-year terms trying to get reelected. It can be a draining, humbling and sometimes compromising rite. The process does, however, keep Congressmen close to the people, and it produces a biennial crop of interesting political personalities. Herewith the pick of the 435 races now being contested:

>Massachusetts' Twelfth Congressional District is a kind of political Wimbledon where the best two out of three sets mean a winner. Roughly one-third of the district--Cape Cod and the Nantucket Sound islands--is Yankee Republican. Another third--the depressed onetime whaling capital of New Bedford--is ethnically Democratic. The South Boston suburbs stretching from Weymouth to Plymouth are fiercely independent; the candidate who can conquer them while holding his own bloc takes everything.

This year two personable contestants face one another in the Twelfth. Democrat Gerry Studds, 35, is a former prep school teacher and Foreign Service officer who even learned Portuguese to improve his image among immigrant New Bedford voters. Opponent William Weeks, 46, is strictly Brahmin: Father Sinclair was Dwight Eisenhower's Commerce Secretary; Grandfather John was Coolidge's Secretary of War. After graduating from Harvard, Weeks himself served for a time as an assistant dean of freshmen at the college. The two are running neck and neck, but McGovern liberalism is hurting Studds.

> Boundaries and numbers have changed but to New Yorkers it is still the "Silk Stocking District." This year's challenger, Republican Jane Pickens Langley, 56, one-third of the once renowned singing Pickens Sisters, seems to think that the House seat can be had for a song. It goes, "Jane Pickens Langley is a woman who cares./ Jane Pickens Langely is a woman who dares./ So pick good Pickens." This singing commercial, taped in German, Italian, Spanish and Yiddish, underpins a breezy, almost folksy campaign against Incumbent Edward I. Koch, 47, a hard-working Democrat. In his appearances at subway and bus stops, Koch stresses his attempts to wrest mass-transportation money from road-subsidy funds, and emphasizes his recent proposal to admit Soviet Jews and Asian Ugandans to the U.S. without regard to immigration quotas. Given Koch's popularity in the Silk Stocking District, there seems slight chance that the voters will pick Pickens.

> Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is not known for missing political opportunities. Thus when reapportionment became necessary, he neatly obliterated the South Side congressional district of Abner Mikva, 46, a respected Democratic independent. Forced to run elsewhere, Mikva chose a newly created, relatively conservative district on Chicago's North Shore. Opposing him is Samuel H. Young, 49, a suburban attorney and political activist in search of his first public office. Young's campaign strategy is simple: to hang the McGovern albatross around Mikva's neck.

> Because of the 1970 census two U.S. Representatives now find themselves struggling for the same seat: David Obey, 34, a popular Democratic liberal; and Alvin O'Konski, 68, the 14-term Republican incumbent noted locally for his support of Project Sanguine, a costly Navy communications system that would involve burying 6,000 miles of antenna throughout northern Wisconsin's forests. That issue, coupled with the farmers' anger over the controversial Russian wheat deal and George McGovern's surprising strength in the area (polls show him even with Nixon), has put Obey in a strong position. Concedes O'Konski: "It'll be the toughest race I have ever had. No question about that."

> Where else but in South Carolina would a congressional candidate named Julian Sidi Limehouse III campaign in red, white and blue tennis sneakers? Yet Limehouse, 33, a Republican cattleman, is certainly considered more progressive than his opponent, Incumbent Democratic Representative Mendel J. Davis, 29, godson of Mendel Rivers, the late autocratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Davis is banking on the "Mendel mystique" and his role as protector of the military installations that were his godfather's legacy to the district. Limehouse, who goes about coatless and tieless and shows up at Democratic rallies to hand out free soft drinks, accuses Davis of being "pure old Southern Claghorn."

> Republican David Treen of Louisiana's bayou country is nothing if not persistent. Three times he ran against Congressman Hale Boggs and three times he lost. But each time he improved his percentage--34%, 44%, 49%--and this February he ran a strong but losing campaign for Governor. Now Treen, 44, is taking on J. Louis Watkins, 43, an attorney who managed both winning campaigns for retiring Democratic Congressman Patrick Caffery. Politics can be largely personal in southern Louisiana, and on that score Watkins is a formidable opponent. He is a French Catholic whose roots reach back 150 years in his predominantly French Catholic district; his manner, relaxed and amiable, appeals to the Cajun voters. Treen, a solemn and somewhat humorless Methodist, is counting on Nixon's coattails.

> Paul ("Pete") McCloskey, 45, the maverick Republican from Northern California who waged a quixotic campaign against Nixon in the presidential primaries, now finds himself in a tightening race against James Stewart, 35, a similarly liberal lawyer and Democrat who McCloskey once said "would make a great Congressman if he has the privilege to beat me in November." At the beginning of the campaign, both men agreed to a schedule of 33 debates; so far, only 13 have been held, and the tone has been more courteous than antagonistic. Their major point of disagreement is over whether McCloskey has become too absorbed in national issues to represent the district properly.

> California gained five congressional districts in the latest reapportionment, and one, covering a part of Watts and Los Angeles' southwest sprawl, seems tailor-made to be a new power base for a black politician. That, at any rate, was the way Yvonne Brathwaite, 40, read the 37th District. An articulate, sunnily beautiful black state legislator--one of 14 women ever to serve in the California state assembly --Brathwaite scored high points in her role as vice chairman of the Democratic National Convention in July. Now she wants to go to Washington. Chances are excellent that she will get there against unexperienced antibusing, antiabortion, pro-death-penalty Gregg Tria, 31.

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