For the Record

Shifting winds: In the 97th Congress, five of the six Republican leaders in the Senate come from west of the Mississippi, a total eclipse of the once dominant Rockefeller wing of the party. (The sixth: Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee.) … A January ADA rating of the 96th Congress shows the three most consistently leftist Republican senators, Lowell Weicker (Conn.), Charles Mathias (Md.), and John Chafee (R.I.), coming in with same 72 per cent ranking as Democrats Moynihan (N.Y.)—he knows better— and Williams and Bradley (N.J). Only Republican to get ADA gold-star zero was ! Barry Goldwater ! with Gordon Humphrey (N.H.) and John Tower (Tex.) in hot pursuit at 6 per cent. . . . Another gauge: the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress has sent questionnaires to the 18 incoming senators, estimates on the basis of their answers that the Class of ’81 is 71.1 per cent conservative as against a 38.6 conservative record for the senators they are replacing. . . . This is the first Senate the GOP has controlled in 26 years; the only sitting Republican senator ever to have chaired a committee before is Strom Thurmond—who was a Democrat at the time. … In the House, 39 Democrats have set up a Conservative Democratic Forum to put pressure on the leadership. That pressure is working. Speaker Tip O’Neill has just appointed three of them to key committees: Kent Hance (Tex.), Ways and Means; Wes Watkins (Okla.), Appropriations; Phil Gramm (Tex.), Budget.

Attempted nailing of Gen. Haig for Watergate connections never got off the ground after first flurries. Liberal Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.) of Foreign Relations Committee said, before hearings started, “The only issue that doesn’t concern me is Watergate.” Biden was more interested in U.S.-USSR SALT talks, he said. Sen. Christopher Dodd, junior Democrat on Foreign Relations, was uninterested. “I’ve never been a Watergate junkie,” said Dodd. Unlike his Connecticut colleague Weicker, Dodd confined questions to foreign-policy matters. . . . Looking ahead: Before Jerry Brown can make another presidential bid, says Federal Election Commission, he will have to pay back to the FEC $72,000 for undocumented expenditures as well as having overdrawn matching funds in last year’s endeavor. . . . Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), former head of the Black Caucus, knows where he’s putting his money in ’84: on Fritz Mondale. “Carter is through,” he says; “Kennedy doesn’t have it.” … In California, liberal Republican Rep. Paul McCloskey is getting ready for a run for Sen. Hayakawa’s seat in 1982, never mind that Republican Hayakawa denies he’s retiring. . . . Retired Sen. Gaylord Nelson has landed job as head of 45,000-member Wilderness Society, from which platform he is fulminating against Sec. of Interior-designate James Watt, whose nomination is “a disaster.”

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Shifting winds: In the 97th Congress, five of the six Republican leaders in the Senate come from west of the Mississippi, a total eclipse of the once dominant Rockefeller wing of the party. (The sixth: Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee.) … A January ADA rating of the 96th Congress shows the three most consistently leftist Republican senators, Lowell Weicker (Conn.), Charles Mathias (Md.), and John Chafee (R.I.), coming in with same 72 per cent ranking as Democrats Moynihan (N.Y.)—he knows better— and Williams and Bradley (N.J). Only Republican to get ADA gold-star zero was ! Barry Goldwater ! with Gordon Humphrey (N.H.) and John Tower (Tex.) in hot pursuit at 6 per cent. . . . Another gauge: the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress has sent questionnaires to the 18 incoming senators, estimates on the basis of their answers that the Class of ’81 is 71.1 per cent conservative as against a 38.6 conservative record for the senators they are replacing. . . . This is the first Senate the GOP has controlled in 26 years; the only sitting Republican senator ever to have chaired a committee before is Strom Thurmond—who was a Democrat at the time. … In the House, 39 Democrats have set up a Conservative Democratic Forum to put pressure on the leadership. That pressure is working. Speaker Tip O’Neill has just appointed three of them to key committees: Kent Hance (Tex.), Ways and Means; Wes Watkins (Okla.), Appropriations; Phil Gramm (Tex.), Budget.

Attempted nailing of Gen. Haig for Watergate connections never got off the ground after first flurries. Liberal Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.) of Foreign Relations Committee said, before hearings started, “The only issue that doesn’t concern me is Watergate.” Biden was more interested in U.S.-USSR SALT talks, he said. Sen. Christopher Dodd, junior Democrat on Foreign Relations, was uninterested. “I’ve never been a Watergate junkie,” said Dodd. Unlike his Connecticut colleague Weicker, Dodd confined questions to foreign-policy matters. . . . Looking ahead: Before Jerry Brown can make another presidential bid, says Federal Election Commission, he will have to pay back to the FEC $72,000 for undocumented expenditures as well as having overdrawn matching funds in last year’s endeavor. . . . Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), former head of the Black Caucus, knows where he’s putting his money in ’84: on Fritz Mondale. “Carter is through,” he says; “Kennedy doesn’t have it.” … In California, liberal Republican Rep. Paul McCloskey is getting ready for a run for Sen. Hayakawa’s seat in 1982, never mind that Republican Hayakawa denies he’s retiring. . . . Retired Sen. Gaylord Nelson has landed job as head of 45,000-member Wilderness Society, from which platform he is fulminating against Sec. of Interior-designate James Watt, whose nomination is “a disaster.”