ESTRANGED BEDFELLOWS

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT/WILLIAMSBURG

There is something charming about a dignified--some say stuffy--Senator, age 69, leaning cheerfully into a question about his lady friend, ABC's Barbara Walters. "She is the only woman I've dated for the past six years," says Senator John Warner. With a twinkle, he adds, "You should be a fly on the wall when we're debating some issues. I'm a conservative, and I guess she would characterize herself as something of a liberal."

If Warner has to defend his ideological credentials, it's because he's suddenly vulnerable. While he's the most durable Republican in Virginia history, his nomination for a fourth term is now in doubt. James Miller, 53, once Ronald Reagan's Budget Director, is challenging Warner from the right in next week's primary by playing the populist against Warner's clubby image as a moderate Senate elder. The contest is full of ironies. For one, Warner supported Miller against Oliver North when the two were vying for the state's other Senate seat in 1994. For another, in that campaign it was Miller who cast himself as the establishment Republican against North's insurgent, red-meat campaign.

Despite a career spent in government, colleges and think tanks, Miller portrays himself as the pickup-driving, gun-owning Virginian whose onetime political benefactor betrayed the state's true Republican principles. "Two years ago," Miller tells Republican audiences, "John Warner stabbed this party in the back and now expects this party to raise him on its shoulders. That is wrong!" His fund-raising letter describes Warner as a Beltway insider more likely to be "dining at the elegant Palm restaurant in Washington with liberal TV 'journalist' Barbara Walters than testing his hunting rifle." That is Miller's way of reminding social conservatives that he is happily married to his college sweetheart while Warner, divorced from a Mellon heiress and Elizabeth Taylor, is a bachelor who has supported some forms of gun control.

On the Potomac's Washington side, Warner remains the choice of Republican barons. Bob Dole and his likely successor as majority leader, Trent Lott, have helped him raise an intimidating war chest. On the Virginia side the party is dominated by Buchanan-style conservatives who want the senior Senator's scalp. His counterattack is to twit Miller for accepting his help two years ago and to cast his own deviations from conservative orthodoxy as principled ones. "It is the way I have lived my life," Warner says. But his advertising betrays his nervousness. A sailor in World War II and a Marine officer in Korea, he is airing an ad that accuses Miller of having "intentionally avoided military service" during Vietnam. (Miller married while in college and then had student deferments.)

Warner has reason to worry. At gatherings of G.O.P. regulars it is Miller, with his backers from the Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Association, who seems to have intensity on his side. Fearing catcalls, Warner ducked a formal speaking role at last Saturday's state party convention, leaving Miller and North to dominate the stage. A poll in mid-May gave Miller a tiny edge among the most committed Republicans, those who tend to dominate Virginia's rare, low-turnout primaries. In Warner's favor is the fact that all registered voters are allowed to participate in the June 11 primary, which means the Senator's fate depends on his attracting independents and even a few Democrats. Just the kind of voters who might look kindly on his dalliance with a certain celebrity journalist.

--By Laurence I. Barrett/Williamsburg