The Senate: Hugging Reagan's Coattails

Both Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale have said that this election offers voters one of the clearest choices in U.S. history. In two key states, Massachusetts and Texas, ideology is also a major factor in contests for the Senate. In the House, races more often turn on personalities, as evidenced by campaigns in Delaware and Arkansas.

Bay State Upset

Massachusetts has such a reputation for liberal politics that White House Chief of Staff James Baker once jokingly referred to it as a Communist country. But as both parties held primaries last week to nominate candidates for the Senate seat vacated by ailing Democrat Paul Tsongas, there were signs that the political winds were shifting. In a stunning upset, Political Neophyte Raymond Shamie, a conservative Republican businessman and unabashed Reagan booster, trounced former Attorney General Elliot Richardson, a progressive with a mile-long resume of public service, by an astounding 24 points (62% to 38%). Said Boston Political Consultant Michael Goldman: "It is the end of an era."

As recently as last July, polls gave Richardson, 64, a veteran of four Cabinet posts, a seemingly unbeatable lead of nearly 30 points. But his 15-year stint in Washington left him out of touch with the changing Bay State electorate, and his lusterless campaign failed to catch fire.

While Richardson stressed his gold-plated qualifications, Shamie, 63, a self-made millionaire, echoed Reagan's homey themes of patriotism and family values.

In August, Richardson made a fatal mistake: he refused to endorse the conservative G.O.P. national platform.

In November, Shamie will face Lieutenant Governor John Kerry, 40, a liberal who wrested the Democratic nomination from his ideological clone, three-term Congressman James Shannon. Kerry, a handsome and highly decorated Navy lieutenant, benefited from broad, statewide visibility and a reputation as an eloquent spokesman for Viet Nam veterans in the early '70s.

The G.O.P. sees Tsongas' seat as winnable: two days after the primary, Vice President George Bush swung through Massachusetts to demonstrate White House support. But Bay State Democrats still outnumber Republicans 4 to 1, making Kerry the odds-on favorite.

In the Tenth District of Massachusetts, liberal Democratic Congressman Gerry Studds, 47, an avowed homosexual who was censured last year for his 1973 affair with a male Capitol Hill page, drubbed Plymouth County Sheriff Peter Flynn. In the Seventh District, four-term Democratic Congressman Edward Markey, 38, a leading nuclear-freeze advocate, bested former State Senator Sam Rotondi, a conservative, with 57% of the vote.

Wild West Shootout

With its shifting mix of Hispanics, oil entrepreneurs and Yankee yuppie transplants, Texas has as many constituencies as it has recipes for five-alarm chili. Republican Phil Gramm and Democrat Lloyd Doggett have been trying to cope with this volatile hodgepodge as they crisscross the state in their quest to win the Senate seat held by retiring Republican John Tower. The Lone Star candidates are as sharply dissimilar as the voters they are courting. Comments San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, a Doggett supporter: "No one can say it's hard to tell the candidates apart."

Gramm, 42, a three-term Congressman from the largely rural Sixth District, was rated last spring as the most conservative member of Congress by the nonpartisan National Journal. A former economics professor at Texas A & M University, he was one of the Democratic "boll weevils" who supported President Reagan's 1981 budget cuts. In 1983, Gramm changed parties and easily won reelection; last May he captured the G.O.P. Senate nomination with 73% of the vote. Gramm's opponent, State Senator Doggett, 37, is a proconsumer liberal from Austin with more than a decade of experience in the legislature. In a bitter runoff for the Democratic nomination last June, Doggett squeaked in by a scant 1,345 votes.

Gramm has lined up an impressive array of backers from both parties, including 150 campaign aides who worked for Doggett's two primary opponents. Gramm's right-of-center stands on defense and social issues like abortion go down well with a broad cross section of Texas voters. But it is his hard-shell economic views that may lure wavering Democrats and independents in November. Says Bill Daulley, a member of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association: "No one in Congress has fought harder to cut taxes and spending than Phil Gramm."

Doggett peppers away at Gramm for his turncoat switch to the G.O.P. and his pledge to cut Social Security. Gramm has countered by spending $100,000 in denunciatory radio commercials. In August, he embarrassed Doggett by revealing that $354 of the Democrat's campaign funds had been raised by a homosexual-rights group at an all-male strip show.

Two out of three Texans call themselves Democrats, but the state went overwhelmingly for Reagan in 1980 and promises to do so again this year. Presidential popularity, however, may not automatically translate into votes for Gramm. "I'm clearly the underdog," admits Doggett. "No one has mistaken me for Goliath. But no one has any doubt about how the biblical battle turned out."