Fall brings new zest to election talk. Evans & Novak float this one: Former UN Amb. Jeane Kirkpatrick has told White House aide Ed Rollins that if Sen. Mac Mathias retires she’ll go for his Maryland Senate seat. . . . It’s conservative money v. conservative money in North Carolina, where Jesse Helms’s Congressional Club will back former ambassador to Rumania David Funderburk in primary for John East’s Senate seat (East is retiring), while Robert Heckman’s Fund for a Conservative Majority supports longterm conservative GOP Rep. James Broyhill. Funderburk is East’s choice. . . . Republican Phil Crane could give up his safe House niche and take on Sen. Alan Dixon in Illinois. If he wins, Crane positions himself for another run at White House; if he loses, he could still get good Administration job. … In Nevada, former conservative Democratic Rep. Jim Santini, now a Republican, would like Paul Lax- alt’s Senate seat since Laxalt is stepping down. … In this year’s only two gubernatorial races it looks like a split: Republican Gov. Thomas Kean winning an easy re-election fight in New Jersey, and the Democrats probably retaining state house in Virginia. Polls show Democrat Gerald Baliles nine points ahead of Republican Wyatt Durrette, but there’s still time to reverse that.
Troubles on the Hill for the President. Republican senators, in secret caucus, have voted not to push for tax reform this year if it means remaining in session in December—which it would. This decision won’t improve relations between Ronald Reagan and Majority Leader Bob Dole. … In the House, it’s a chicken-and-egg situation: 49 Democratic congressmen have written Donald Regan to warn him that if Republican Congressional Committee goes ahead with $4-million campaign to oust twenty to fifty Democratic congressmen, Reagan may lose support he very much needs on tax- reform votes. . . . In the farm belt, recent polls show alarming drop in President’s popularity: It’s in 30 to 40 per cent range as contrasted to 60 per cent and better nationwide. . . . And White House may have trouble with James C. Miller III, who has been named to replace David Stockman at OMB. In Senate testimony last week, Miller said he had come “dangerously close” to accepting the theory that “there is some deliberate intention to use deficits to get us to denationalize the financing of public services.”
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