GOVERNMENT

Elections To Bring Few Changes In Congressional Offices

Most committees that oversee science and technology issues will retain their current makeup, but there will be some interesting races

David J. Hanson, C&EN Washington

It's hardly worth getting out the crystal ball for the 1988 Congres­sional elections. Except for a hand­ful of seats, incumbents are expected to retain their offices handily, in part because incumbents find it so much easier than their challengers to raise large war chests for their campaigns. Thus, no major changes are foreseen in the makeup of the Congressional committees that over­see science and technology issues, either in the House or Senate, but there will be some retirements and some interesting races that bear watching.

Two years ago, the Republican Party lost its brief, six-year reign as the Senate's majority party when the Democrats regained control. Rea­sons behind the shift included the bad luck of having 22 (out of 34) Republican Senate seats up for re­election at one time and not having the powerful coattails of Ronald Reagan pulling some of the closer contests into the Republican column. This year, the Democrats go into the election with an eight-seat ma­jority in the Senate, and political prognosticators believe that, at the most, they will lose one seat to the opposition party. Conversely, un­less George Bush's Presidential cam­paign has coattails of its own, there is a better than even chance that the Republicans could lose a couple of seats they now hold.

Finding Senate candidates this

Lautenberg: environment is big issue

year who are emphasizing scientific or technical issues in their cam­paigns is difficult. The Supercon­ducting Super Collider, human ge­nome sequencing, or National Sci­ence Foundation funding are not the local issues on which politicians make speeches. But a few candi­dates are making an issue of the environment, and one of them is Democrat Frank R. Lautenberg, run­ning for re-election to a second term in New Jersey. On the Environment & Public Works Committee, Lauten­berg has made Superfund one of his priorities. He also has backed increased patent protection, tried to strengthen copyright protection abroad, and was successful in get­ting a supercomputer center for Princeton University.

A former businessman, he was an early Republican target as he won with only 51% of the vote in 1982. Running against Lautenberg is Pete Dawkins, a former Army General and Rhodes Scholar who has been

criticized because he hasn't lived in New Jersey very long. Republicans' first choice might have been New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, but he declined to run. The election prom­ises to be tight, but Lautenberg is given the edge to keep his seat.

On the Republican side, Robert T. Stafford, senior Senator from Ver­mont, is retiring. Stafford is the ranking minority member of the En­vironment & Public Works Com­mittee and was its chairman during the first six years of the Reagan Administration. Over the years he has been a strong supporter of en­vironmental issues, including expan­sion of the Superfund program in 1986, and, watching out for Ver­mont's lakes and streams, he has backed tough legislation against acid rain.

Stafford's most likely replacement is Vermont's Congressman-at-large, Republican James M. Jeffords. Jef­fords has been in the House since 1975 and is the senior minority member on the Education & Labor Committee. He is also a member of the House Environmental Study Conference and one of the six founders of the Congressional So­lar Coalition. Labeled as one of the most liberal Republicans in the House, Jeffords is seen as appealing to a wide spectrum of Vermont vot­ers and likely will be able to pull out a victory over his opponent, former U.S. attorney William Gray.

Democrat William S. Proxmire of Wisconsin is also retiring after this term. Proxmire has been in the Sen­ate since 1957, and has earned a reputation as one of the most vig­orous opponents of wasteful gov­ernment spending. As head of the Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee, Proxmire has been able to use his thriftiness to the best advantage. His most well-known ac-

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tivity is his "Golden Fleece" awards to the government office or agency that has, in his opinion, squandered taxpayers' money in the worst way. Scientific research projects have of­ten been the target of these jabs, and Proxmire is not well loved in the scientific community because of it.

Wisconsin experienced a wild pri­mary season as at least eight candi­dates vied for their party nomina­tions. Winning the September pri­mary were Democrat Herbert Kohl, owner of the Milwaukee Bucks bas­ketball team, and Republican Susan Engeleiter, the state senate minori­ty leader whose moderate positions will make this a close contest.

Several incumbent Senators with strong environmental backgrounds are facing close elections, although at this time most of them seem as­sured of returning. These include 79-year-old Quentin Ν. Burdick (D.-N.D.), chairman of the Environ­ment & Public Works Committee. Although during his tenure the Sen­ate has passed a clean water bill, a pesticide bill, and a clean air bill, Burdick has a fairly low profile. His biggest problem is his age, and his opponent, Republican Earl Strinden, has been plugging away at that. Re­publican John H. Chafee is also in a tough struggle against Rhode Island Lt. Gov. Richard A. Licht. Chafee, going for his third term, has worked closely with Stafford on Superfund and clean air legislation. His elec­tion in 1982 was a close call, and it could be again this year.

Another Senate race to watch is that of incumbent Republican David F. Durenberger against Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H. "Skip" Humphrey III. Running only a few points behind in the polls, Hum­phrey is attacking Durenberger's past personal problems and his stand on health care issues. But Duren­berger remains a popular figure, and he has worked hard on clean water legislation and is active in clean air and biotechnology issues.

In the House, at least 28 seats will change hands, just because there are that many retirements or mem­bers seeking other offices. Early pre­dictions of which incumbents may be vulnerable to losing their seats don't include any Congressmen

Scientists gamely attacking entrenched incumbents Generally speaking, scientists and en­gineers who run for public office do not do so well as lawyers and busi­ness executives. A quick survey of this year's Congressional races reveals only a few candidates describing them­selves as chemists, and all of them are facing formidable odds in their efforts to get elected. Overall, how­ever, there seem to be more chemists running for national office this year than in the past three general elec­tions. Whether this is a sign of in­creased frustration in the technical community over Washington lawmak­ing, or just a coincidence, is unknown. Whichever is the case, it's likely that all will probably lose, and some of them heavily, to incumbents.

In Michigan's First District, in De­troit, Republican William Ashe is run­ning for the second time. A research manager at BASF Corp.'s central R&D lab, Ashe is a Ph.D. chemist. He lost to John Conyers Jr. in 1986, getting 10% of the vote. Ashe says his scien­tific knowledge would be helpful in a Congress that passes laws regulating technical industries. He hopes to do better this year because of problems incumbent politicians have had in the district. Ashe also expresses his frus­tration at some of the regulations chemical companies have to comply with, stating that someone should be able to help Congress pass better laws.

Wallace Embry in Tennessee's Sixth District shares these frustrations. A Ph.D. chemist and technical manager for Rhône-Poulenc in Mt. Pleasant, Tenn., Embry says he quit his job to devote all of his time to running for Congress. His opponent is incumbent Democrat Bart Gordon, who has served two terms in the House. "There are just too many off-the-wall regulations," Embry says, and there are not enough technical people in Congress. Two of Embry's campaign issues are improv­ing science education and accelerat­ing technology transfer from research labs to industry.

Another industrial chemist who suc­cessfully won the Republican nomina­tion is Stephen J. Evans, an analytical chemist running his own company out­side Chicago that does toxic chemical

analyses, environmental assessments, and the like. Evans says that, if elect­ed, he would concentrate on a number of local issues like the cleaning up of Lake Michigan and better education and health. He says the best place to make changes is at the federal level, noting that he has been frustrated by the inaction of local agencies on tech­nical issues in the absence of federal directions. He is facing Democrat Charles A. Hayes, who has won his past two elections with greater than 95% of the vote.

From academe, chemist Gordon R. Johnston is trying to defeat incumbent Democrat Joseph P. Kolter in Pennsyl­vania's Fourth District. Johnston says Kolter has failed to serve the district well and needs to be replaced. A re­searcher at the Manaca campus of Penn State University, Johnston says he could provide objective views on environmental and energy issues. He is especially interested in moving toward a hydrogen economy, and calls for more funding of research on fuel cells and nuclear fusion.

Jack L. Rhyne is not a chemist, but he is the vice president for administra­tion of a chemical specialty company in North Carolina that makes products for car cooling systems and other automobile-related chemicals. Running for office on the Democratic ticket, Rhyne would like to see more com­mon sense devoted to the labeling requirements and toxicity listings of chemicals. He says some of these requirements are actually forcing U.S. companies to abandon their products and import them from overseas. "It is like someone is trying to drive the chemical industry out of the coun­try," Rhyne says. His opponent in the Tenth District is Republican Cass Ballenger.

There are other chemists, and other scientists, trying for federal office this year. The most common theme among those running is to bring more techni­cal knowledge to Congress and to write laws that the technical community can better work with. But the most oft-repeated reason, among all the oth­ers, given by scientists running for Congress is "there are just too many lawyers."

October 10, 1988 C&EN 19

Government

holding influential committee posts. The Democratic majority holds 90 seats over the Republicans and that is not expected to change much. Changes will take place in some committees, however, and there are several House races of interest.

One such change comes from the retirement of Republican Manuel Lujan Jr. from New Mexico, leaving the ranking minority position open on the House Committee on Sci­ence, Space & Technology. This com­mittee is chaired by Robert A. Roe (D.-NJ.), who worked closely with Lujan on various big-spending projects. But Lujan probably will be replaced by Robert S. Walker (R.-Pa.), who is widely known for his attempts to cut federal spending. How this matchup will handle the research projects being discussed is a question mark, as Walker has of­ten voted against expensive, high-technology research projects, call­ing them science pork.

One of the Representatives be­lieved to be in some trouble is Marilyn Lloyd (D.-Tenn.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy Re­search & Development. Coming from a district in Tennessee that lost the Clinch River breeder reac­tor four years ago and includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lloyd faces signs of erosion among her supporters. Challenged this year by Republican Harold L. Coker, a tire company president from Chatta­nooga, Lloyd will be fighting a Re­publican trend in her area that will keep her re-election bid close.

One Congressman who will have no trouble is the powerful Demo­cratic chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee, John D. Dingell of Michigan. Running for his 17th term in the House, Dingell is considered by many to be one of the best legislators in Congress. With control over House consideration of environmental, health, trade, and financial issues, Dingell paints with a broad brush. Recently he has been involved in controversial provisions to a proposed clean air bill that would control acid rain. He also held hearings this year that were extremely critical of the way the National Institutes of Health han­dled an issue of scientific disagree­ment among some researchers, label-

Jefiords: appealing to wide spectrum

ing the problem one of fraud that NIH didn't seem prepared to han­dle. Dingell is running unopposed for re-election.

One of Dingell's subcommittee chairmen is another powerful leg­islator, Henry A. Waxman (D.-Calif.). Waxman heads the health and en­vironment panel that has been trying, unsuccessfully to this point, to get a comprehensive clean air law rewrite to a House vote. In the past, he has been critical of the chemical industry for emitting what he considers toxic chemicals and has worked for more generic drug use

Roe: retains science committee role

and for extended patent protection for pharmaceuticals. With a strong political base in his district, which includes Hollywood, Waxman is running against Republican busi­nessman John N. Cowles and prob­ably will win handily.

Members of Congress with scien­tific and engineering degrees are few. There has not been a Ph.D. chemist in Congress since Republi­can James G. Martin left four years ago to become governor of North Carolina. The few there are are in the House and will likely continue to serve in the next Congress. One of these is Democrat George E. Brown Jr. from California. Brown has a degree in physics, and has been in the House since 1972. As the fourth-ranking Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, Brown chairs the Subcommittee on Depart­ment Operations, Research & For­eign Agriculture and sits on the Investigations & Oversight Subcom­mittee of Roe's Science & Technolo­gy Committee. He has spent much of his time on environmental clean­up in his district and on support for a stronger civilian space industry. Brown is being challenged by in­surance broker John Paul Stark in November.

Donald L. Ritter of Pennsylvania has an M.S./Sc.D. degree in metal­lurgical engineering and taught at Lehigh University before becoming a Republican Representative in 1978. He serves on Dingell's Energy & Commerce Committeee, but as a Re­publican has little to say in moving things forward. He is the ranking minority member on the investiga­tions and oversight panel, however. Overall, Ritter is a well-informed member on many trade and techni­cal issues. This fall, Ritter meets Ed Reibman of Allentown, but Ritter is expected to win.

As with most Congressional elec­tions, scientific and technical knowl­edge is not likely to increase in Con­gress because the members who han­dle these issues probably will be re-elected. Seemingly, it's econom­ic and social issues that win elec­tions, and most scientists don't feel comfortable in making the shift from academe or industry into the political arena to tackle these prob­lems. D

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