■ Everyone from Jimmy Carter to George Meany to Reed Larson (National Right to Work Committee) says it’s going to be a tough one, and it was against his own best judgment that Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd was persuaded to bring the new Labor Reform bill to the Senate floor on May 15. Byrd had insisted before scheduling it for debate that Labor produce the sixty votes needed to cut off an expected filibuster by Sen. Orrin Hatch. Labor was unable to do so. The AFLCIO-backed measure, which would make the job of union organizers easier, slipped through the House last year. . . . Economist Pierre Rinfret, who speaks for the conservative National Association of Manufacturers, estimates a 10 per cent increase in unionization would mean a 3 per cent hike in the inflation rate. . . . Meanwhile, it’s reported on the Hill that President Carter’s welfare reform is dead for this session. It is not on Speaker Tip O’Neill’s list of priority bills to be brought up in the waning months of the 95th Congress; in the Senate, Patrick Moynihan admits it would get only one vote in the Finance Committee—“mine.”. . . The country may or may not be moving right, but its representatives in Congress are, according to a rundown in Congressional Quarterly. CQ finds three liberal organizations rating House members lower in 1977 than in 1976, two conservative organizations rating them higher. . . . Great fun: an expensive propaganda film turned out by the AFL-CIO called The Right-Wing Machine is so heavy-handed, according to the ACU’s Battle Line (now edited by the talented and irrepressible John Lofton), that it has them rolling in the aisles at right-wing gatherings. SRO.
■ On the electoral scene: Conservative Jeff Bell has now gotten endorsements from former Treasury Secretary William Simon and former Senator James Buckley, and from fellow Republican House members Bob Bauman (Md.), John Ashbrook (Ohio), Jack Kemp (N.Y.) in his primary race against liberal Sen. Clifford Case in New Jersey. . . . But not from Ronald Reagan, who has apparently bought the advice of Sen. Paul Laxalt that ifheisto run in 1980 he must widen his base within the GOP. . . . In Massachusetts, the Senate race is getting complicated. Republican Edward Brooke is facing his biggest primary challenge ever from conservative talk-show host Avi Nelson. . . . Now Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, has announced he’ll get in the race—as a Democrat. Phillips has changed his registration (from Independent to Democrat), will run in a crowded (and zany) six-way field in Sept. 19 primary. . . . Also in Mass., the GOP State Convention has endorsed conservative Edward King over two liberals as its gubernatorial candidate. No doubt about where King stands. He worked for Ronald Reagan in 1976, is active in the Massachusetts drive for a tax limitation referendum. … In West Virginia this fall it will be, as expected, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jennings Randolph v. Republication ex-Gov. Arch Moore. Randolph got 80 per cent of the Democratic votes in the primary; Moore 90 per cent of the Republican. Could be a GOP win in November.
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