Oregon daily emerald., June 21, 1972, Page 5, Image 5

Commentary
Scott Bartlett
Hatfield sheds liberal image
Republican U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield’s steady
downplaying of an anti-war image to one of Nixon
supporter, underscores the key role traditional GOP
funding and conservative Oregon business executives
are playing in his campaign against Democrat Wayne
Morse’s comeback drive.
Hatfield’s expressed support for Richard Nixon’s
reelection falls within a consistent pattern in his career
as an Oregon Republican. This is the fifth Nixon White
House bid that has gained Hatfield backing against
democrats; the first two as vice-Presidential
Eisenhower running mate (1952-1956 against Adlai
Stevenson); then Nixon’s 1960 race against John F.
Kennedy, Nixon’s 1968 race against Hubert Humphrey,
and Nixon’s probable 1972 race against liberal Democrat
George McGovern.
Ever since Spring 1970 when he co-sponsored the
deemphasizing foreign policy public ly in order to mend
conservative fences in Oregon. Unlike the maverick
Morse, who is sharply critical of Nixon’s economic and
Vietnam air war policies, Hatfield is attempting to
remove his prime vulnerability, mainly a public image
of low Senate attendance, too much jet setting and
banquet speaking, and not enough Oregon homework.
The Hatfield campaign which, according to GOP
colleague Robert Packwood’s estimate, may soar to a
$750,000 cost, is attempting to reshape the Senator’s
image with the theme “We Can’t Afford To Lose Him.”
The advertising effort is being run by the national ad
agency McCann-Erickson from within Portland’s
Georgia Pacific building. Vietnam is omitted entirely
from the Hatfield campaign brochure.
Faced with the prospect of strongly anti-war Wayne
Morse returning to the Senate, Republican con
servatives at the Oregon and national level are rallying
to finance the Hatfield effort.
Powerful segments of Oregon Republican business
are providing the backbone for the Hatfield campaign.
Two of the Republican senator’s four finance chairmen,
men with excellent connections in Republican money
circles, were key figures in California’s Ronald
Reagan’s 1968 Oregon Presidential Primary campaign.
Bob Hazen, the hawkish Portland savings and loan
chain president (Ben Franklin), is Hatfield’s Portland
metropolitan area finance chairman, a man with vital
links to powerful Republican financiers. His past
political efforts include acting as Reagan’s 1968 Oregon
chairman. Peter C. Murphy, a Eugene lumberman (The
Murphy Co.) is in charge of fund raising throughout
eight southwest Oregon counties. He was Reagan's 1968
Lane County chairman.
The Nixon forces, also alarmed at Morse’s return
drive to the Senate, are lending strong support to Hat
field’s campaign. Stories in the Oregon press have
reported the recent Hatfield fund raising party hosted by
arch-conservative Martha Mitchell, wife of 1972 Nixon
reelection chairman, John Mitchell. The $100 per ticket
Capitol Hill Club affair was attended by former Attorney
General Mitchell, current Attorney General Richard
Kleindienst, recently the focus of the ITT controversy.
Such Senate Republicans as Nebraskans Curtis and
Hruska and Coloradans Allott and Dominick, politicians
from the party's right wing, flocked to the occasion.
Hatfield has been a ready ally of the Nixon-Mitchell
“law and order” campaign. A recent campaign position
paper entitled, “Memorandum: President Nixon and
Senator Hatfield,” proclaims credit for "voting for the
D.C. Crime Bill (which contained such controvercial
measures as “no-knock” and preventive detention)."
The same paper cites Hatfield's votes for Nixon
Supreme Court members Burger, Blackmun, Powell,
and Renquist, described as “crucial Supreme Court
nominations.”
Kleindienst, director of field campaign operations
for Goldwater in 1964 and Nixon in 1968, has been
credited by Goldwater for urging his fellow Arizonan to
“make law and order my principal issue.” Together
with Mitchell, the chief architect of the Nixon con
servative strategy with its emphasis on wiretaps,
conservatives on the Supreme Court, no-knock house
entry powers, preventive detention, and mass arrests,
Kleindienst and William Renquist, another Arizonan
recently seated on the Supreme Court, have attempted
to reverse policies of past liberal Democrat ad
ministrations.
Renquist, while under Mitchell’s employ at the
Justice Department, testified for the unrestricted use of
wiretaps—without a court order. Hatfield justified his
pro-Renquist vote before a UO Law School audience by
citing a long-standing personal friendship dating back to
college days, and what he feels is Renquist's
“brilliance.” “Besides,” responded Hatfield to an
audience questioner, "I don't agree with my wife on
every issue.”
Hatfield’s long standing political alliance with
Richard Nixon seems to discount some feeling within the
press that the recent switch from anti-war to pro-Nixon
image is only an attempt to keep Oregon Republican
Gov. Tom McCall from entering the Morse-Hatfield race
as an independent candidate.
Hatfield, during the 1960 Chicago Republican
Convention, put Nixon’s name in nomination, praising
him as “a fighter for freedom and a pilgrim for peace.”
Although Hatfield has attained an anti-war image, his
Vietnam stand has undergone periodic fluctuations. In
1966, one year after having dissented at a governor’s
conference against Pres. Johnson’s Vietnam policies,
Hatfield called at a Salem Marion Hotel speech, for the
blockading of Haiphong Harbor. This was seemingly
reversed in 1970 with the Hatfield-McGovern Amend
ment setting a troop withdrawal date. Yet. in light of
Hatfield’s lack of any steady attack on Nixon’s bombing
step-up, Haiphong mining, and most recent aerial
assault within 40 seconds flying time of the Chinese
border, his traditional Republican connections are
taking priority in what primises to be an all-time Oregon
classic with liberal, pro-labor Morse.
In sharp contrast to Hatfield's political kinship with
Nixon, was Morse's 1965 Salem predicition that “Lyndon
Johnson will leave the White House as the most
discredited President in American History.” Morse, who
bolted the Republican Party in the early fifties and then
became a Democrat, was the first Congressional op
ponent of the Vietnam War. In 1954 he warned in a
Senate floor speech that, “tens of thousands of our boys
would be sacrificed if we are catapulted in a war with
Indo-China.” He went on to predict that “history will
prove it an unjustifiable and unnecessary war.”
At the root of Morse’s Vietnam position is the charge
that only Congress, as specified in the U.S. Constitution
(Article I, section 8) has power to declare war. Nixon,
then, like his White House predecessors, is violating the
Constitution every day, according to the Con
stitutionalist Morse, who was Dean of the UO Law School
at age 31.
Nixon’s record, Morse asserts, “is the major issue in
all campaigns across the country.” The Hatfield-Nixon
relationship may be a key factor in the up-coming
Morse-Hatfield election.
Hatfield’s strategy seems to be twofold: first,
discard the liberal anti-war image throughout the
summer to stress an allegiance with Nixon and
homestate concerns, and then revive a mildly anti
establishment image after Labor Day in order to attract
a liberal Democratic cross-over. Democrats outnumber
Republicans in Oregon 656,572 to 464,797.
Whether the professional McCann Erickson ad
vertising effort, with its emphasis on graphics and
media can aid Hatfield, is uncertain.
What is more certain is that the Conservative-liberal
nature of the Hatfield-Morse race will take on an in
creasing dimension to the contest. While Hatfield will
stress committee appointments and his 71st (out of 100)
seniority rank, Morse will stress his 4 terms experience
and contacts with Senate Majority Leader Mansfield and
other Democratic Senate leaders.
Clearly, Hatfield’s muffled Vietnam position is
demonstrating a tactical decision to conservatize the
Republican senator's image in Oregon. The 1972 Morse
Hatfield race will be in the national limelight, perhaps as
much because of the contrast in political forces backing
the two candidates, as in the particular images of the
men themselves
Right now, it is anyone's guess as to who shall
emerge the winner.
Oh 3chn-X th\nh you
ought'a 5GG uViat X
found in Juniors' room/
A
GosVi looK at those
naKed toimmen lyin’
in the sun...
they sure do looK
y-uV- healthy
n
Sigh- such strong
looking young men -
they 1°°K <*live...
o
o
o
That does it/ I rn
<^oin(j to hai/e a
talk witK that
boy/ r~-,
L
I dont ever oant to
See this fiLthy trash
in my house dfiain ^