Seven Sorry Senators

By MARGARET CARLSON

It may be unique in the annals of excuses for leaving the bride at the altar. California Senator Alan Cranston, 75, indefinitely postponed his Christmas Eve wedding to real estate broker Cathy Pattiz, 49, on account of the turmoil caused by his receipt of $850,000 from Charles Keating, the former owner of Lincoln Savings and Loan. "When the press pounced upon us before we filled out the marriage-license forms, it became clear to me that this is not an appropriate time to start a marriage," said Cranston, who has started two marriages before. "It would not be fair to Cathy to bring her into the middle of a stressful situation."

Cranston's love life is the latest casualty of the Keating Affair, named for the high-flying owner of Lincoln S&L. Federal investigators charge Keating with looting his bank of millions of dollars while driving it $2.5 billion into debt. When Cranston returns to Washington next week, he will be one of an unprecedented seven Senators -- the so-called Keating Five plus two others -- facing investigation by the Senate ethics committee. If the past session of Congress was a nightmare for the House of Representatives, with the resignations of Speaker Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho and the launching of twelve other ethics investigations, this session promises to be even worse for the Senate.

For company, Democrat Cranston has the four other colleagues who with him received a total of nearly $1.4 million from Keating: Democrats John Glenn of Ohio, Donald Riegle of Michigan and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, and Republican John McCain of Arizona. The two other Senators mired in their own scandals are Republicans Dave Durenberger of Minnesota and Alfonse D'Amato of New York.

Durenberger's transgressions involve much less money than those laid to the Keating Five, but they are just as seamy. In 1985 Durenberger found himself strapped for cash. His marriage was breaking up, and he had four sons to send to college. That year and the next, he collected a total of $100,000 through the book-promotion deal, more than double the Senate's $46,000 limit on honorariums. His aides told groups to send their checks to Piranha Press, the Minnesota publisher of his two books. Piranha passed the money along to him as a "stipend" for promotional work.

At the same time, Durenberger was drumming up speaking engagements in Boston to coincide with visits there to a marriage counselor, so he would not have to pay for the trips out of his pocket. Although these arrangements were disclosed last year, Durenberger still fought his way through a re-election campaign, refusing to discuss his finances. He won with 56% of the vote.

But allegations continued to trickle out. Last month the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that since 1983, Durenberger had charged the Senate nearly $10,000 for rental of a condominium he had owned, which he used while in the state. To justify the reimbursements, Durenberger transferred title on the condo to a partnership he set up with a local businessman; the partnership billed the rent. The new deed was drawn up in mid-1984 but backdated to July 1983, when Durenberger began claiming the expenses.

Senate rules are intentionally as expandable as a hot-air balloon. Nevertheless, there is a point of rupture, and Durenberger must have sensed he / was getting close with the latest disclosures. Over the Christmas recess, Durenberger broke his yearlong silence on his financial sleights of hand. "I have let you down," he told constituents in a radio address apologizing for "the disappointment and embarrassment I have caused." Abiding technically by the Senate rules, he admitted, "isn't the end of my obligation to Minnesotans."

It may not be the end of his obligation to the Senate either. Skirting the limits on outside income through a publishing deal was a major factor in Wright's resignation from the House last June. The other charges against Durenberger are embarrassing to the Senate because they reveal some of the many ways in which a Senator can play by different rules from those for the rest of the citizenry.

Different rules have long applied to Alfonse D'Amato, whose political strength in New York made him seemingly invulnerable to a string of allegations about influence peddling. Now some 20 possible ethical violations are being looked into by outside counsel at the Senate's behest. The counsel will look at telephone calls D'Amato made to then U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani in 1984 and 1985. D'Amato reportedly urged Giuliani to review the charges or sentences against two convicted mobsters, Paul Castellano, reputed head of the Gambino family (since murdered), and Mario Gigante, brother of the reputed boss of the Genovese family. The committee will also look for D'Amato's fingerprints on numerous grants awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in New York and Puerto Rico.

The Durenberger and D'Amato affairs have yet to hit the public like the Keating Five, who have become symbols of the nation's $300 billion savings and loan crash. In 1987 the five Senators met in secret with Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman Edwin Gray to urge him to conclude an investigation of Lincoln S&L. Gray later called the meeting "tantamount to an attempt to subvert the regulatory process." It has become a scandal everyone can understand and get angry about: a taxpayer could get a feel for what the government bailout of Lincoln alone will cost him by taking a $10 bill out of his wallet and tearing it up.

The five Senators are busy offering explanations and excuses, even when that means pointing fingers at one another. McCain has accused Riegle of trying to "throw reporters off his scent" by pointing the finger at McCain. So wary is Riegle of McCain, the Wall Street Journal reported, that he burst into ! McCain's mail room in November to retrieve his misdirected response to the Senate ethics committee, which presumably would have given away his defense strategy.

Initially, Riegle's strategy was to claim he had no ties to Keating -- until he was confronted with them. Riegle failed to disclose, for instance, that he had made a solo visit to Keating's empire, including a helicopter ride to survey the Phoenician Resort in Arizona in 1987. The Senator's stonewalling has hurt him enough (the Grand Rapids Press, which endorsed him in 1988, has been blasting him) that he embarked on a whirlwind of talk shows and town meetings in Michigan over the Christmas recess.

Glenn will always have his Mercury space flight to fall back on. Polls in Ohio show that his popularity remains high, despite what he calls "the toughest, most vexing thing I've ever gone through in my life." He broke from the pack on a television talk show in November, saying, "We're not five peas in a pod." He claims that when he learned during the meeting with bank-board chairman Gray that Keating could be criminally charged, he backed off. "I folded my tent. I did nothing more," Glenn told TIME.

McCain's strategy has been to apologize again and again, perhaps because he has more than campaign contributions to apologize for. He had to reimburse Keating for $13,000 for trips he and his family took, including vacations to the Bahamas, on Keating's corporate jet. He was the only other Senator to appear with Glenn on This Week with David Brinkley and, like Glenn, he broke off relations with Keating once he learned of the criminal investigation. Arizona's other Senator seems to be in more trouble: in congressional testimony, Gray identified DeConcini as the host of the 1987 meeting and the Senator who made Keating's case for him.

Cranston has fared worst in the scandal, in part because elderly investors in California have publicly blamed him for having their life savings wiped out by questionable Lincoln bond sales. Cranston also took the most money from Keating and maintained contact with him after learning of the criminal investigation. At an appearance in Santa Ana, frail, diabetic bondholder Shirley Lampel bored in on the Senator: "Keating said he bought something from you for all his money. What do you think you sold him?" A Mervyn Field poll shows a striking reversal of Cranston's popularity, from a 64% approval rating pre-Keating to 33% now. Moreover, 62% told Field they are not inclined to vote for Cranston if he should seek re-election in 1992.

Finally, Congress may be sufficiently worried about its reputation to consider reforming the way money buys access on Capitol Hill. Campaign-finance reform, always a tough sell, has even attracted the support of so unlikely a backer as D'Amato. Still, no one is holding his breath. In November, with the seven Senators already sliding toward ethics investigations, the Senate refused even to join the House in accepting new restrictions on outside income.

With reporting by Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles and Nancy Traver/Washington