Nation: Reagan Gets a G.O.P Senate

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A chummy, folksy sort with a penchant for apples and not always dazzling one-liners, Symms put steady pressure on his opponent, trying to smoke him out as a snake-in-the-grass liberal in a state where conservatives abound. Symms focused his attack on Church's dovishness on foreign affairs, his support of the Panama Canal treaties and his occasional kindly remarks about Fidel Castro. Said Symms: "I say we must keep our commitments to our friends. Church favors throwing our friends to the alligators and hopes they'll eat us last." Stressing that he was conducting a "hometown campaign," Symms implied that his opponent was the darling of the Eastern liberals.

Near the end of the campaign, the Symms camp zeroed in on Church's role as chairman of the Senate committee that investigated the CIA. The Republicans echoed frequent attacks on Church for undermining the agency, and they even produced a letter purportedly written by John Wayne in 1975 castigating the Senator for ruining the CIA and the FBI. There were obviously enough John Wayne types alive in Idaho to take the message to heart and vote Church out of office.

Indiana. No U.S. Senator has ever been elected to a fourth term in Indiana. That precedent survived when Republican Congressman Dan Quayle, 33, handily defeated Incumbent Democrat Birch Bayh, 54% to 46%. Bayh, 52, also had a more important disadvantage of being too liberal for his solidly conservative state.

Quayle kept pounding away at Bayh's liberal record, reminding voters of their state's almost 12% unemployment rate, and calling for the Kemp-Roth 30% tax cut. Quayle accused Bayh of wanting to "spend, spend, spend our way to prosperity." He added: "If that were true, New York would be the most prosperous city in the country."

To counter Bayh's charge that he was the tool of out-of-state interests, Quayle emphatically dissociated himself from the right-wing groups that worked on his behalf. In the final weeks, Bayh produced some rather startling TV footage showing Quayle, cocktail in hand, at a party with oil lobbyists in Houston. The ad accused Quayle of soliciting campaign funds from Big Oil and ended with the slogan: "Birch Bayh—fighting for Indiana, not Texas." Quayle riposted with ads charging that Bayh, too, had accepted plenty of Texas money. In the end, Texas spending seemed to matter less than federal spending, and Bayh lost.

Iowa. The Scriptures have served as ammunition in many battles over the centuries, yet their prominence in the Iowa contest was startling. Trading biblical quotations blow for blow, Democratic Incumbent John' Culver, 48, fought evangelicals and fundamentalists who backed his G.O.P. opponent, Congressman Charles Grassley, 47. Culver even wrestled one of his foes to the ground when the man grew violent at a rally. Culver may have won the wrestling match, but he lost the battle to Grassley, 54% to 46%.

In contrast to Culver's stormy stumping, the tall, lanky, rather disheveled Grassley took a low-keyed approach. At his best with small groups, he supported standard conservative positions. In the final weeks of the campaign, he made an effort to broaden his appeal by touring-the state with Robert Ray, Iowa's popular and moderate Republican Governor.