Election '82: A Tie That Was Really a Win

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CONNECTICUT. Lowell Weicker, Republican in name but maverick by nature, has always depended on liberal support to win his races. So it looked as if he might be in trouble when he was challenged by one of the state's most popular Democrats, four-term Congressman Toby Moffett. Weicker, 51, resurrected his 1976 campaign slogan, "Nobody's man but yours," and stressed his independence as his prime asset. Moffett, 38, was unable to put enough distance between Weicker and himself to persuade voters to abandon an incumbent. Moffett, who gave up his congressional seat to run, was shaken by the loss. "I couldn't sleep last night," he confessed the day after the election. "It is really hard to say what went wrong. It just didn't click."

It almost didn't click for Senators John Danforth of Missouri and David Durenberger of Minnesota. An heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, the popular Danforth had once expected to glide to victory over his Democratic opponent, a liberal activist and onetime local television hostess named Harriett Woods. But when a St. Louis Globe-Democrat poll showed Woods erasing Danforth's 17-point lead and pulling even last October, the incumbent went on the attack. Depicting Woods as a big-spending liberal, Danforth started spending big himself, upping his campaign budget from $1.4 million to $2 million. Even so, he barely nosed out Woods, 51% to 49%.

Durenberger also faced a persistent liberal challenger, but with a key difference: Mark Dayton, 35, is married to a Rockefeller and is an heir to a department-store fortune. Dayton ended up spending $6.9 million on his campaign, nearly all of it from his own pocket. It was the highest amount spent by a Senate candidate this year. Durenberger spent $3.5 million. Just before the election, Durenberger took the offensive, charging that Dayton's liberal proposals would cost $214 billion. The strategy worked: the Senator beat back Dayton, 53% to 47%.

Republicans like Durenberger and Danforth survived largely because they were moderates; had they been as conservative as Reagan, the G.O.P. might have lost control of the Senate. Ironically enough, it was only by stressing their differences with Reagan that this covey of Republicans enabled the President to realize a major Oval Office goal: keeping the Senate in G.O.P. hands. —By James Kelly. Reported by Benjamin W. Cate/Los Angeles and Peter Stoler/New York