Nation: A Rowdy Campaign of Personalities

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Idaho voters are faced with a bitter, invective-filled Senate race —one of the nastiest political contests of the year. But in two other states, candidates for the House are mostly staying away from personalities: in North Carolina's Piedmont region, an old-school Southern gentleman is fighting genteelly to retain his seat, while in central Indiana, a moderate-conservative Democrat and a conservative Republican are debating issues and ideology.

No. 1 on the G.O.P. Hit List

Of all the embattled liberal Democrats this election year, none has come under more heavy and sustained fire than Idaho Senator Frank Church. No. 1 on the Republican hit list, he has had to fend off attacks not only from his feisty opponent, four-term Republican Congressman Steven Symms, but also from combative conservatives who have formed an organization called ABC—Anyone but Church. Amid Idaho's piny woods and parched plains, where voters peer skeptically out from under their cowboy hats and pop questions like gunshots, the candidates are waging one of the rowdiest, most name-calling campaigns in the nation.

The race is all the more contentious because it is ideological. While many candidates elsewhere are diving for the middle, where they think the votes are, Church, 56, and Symms, 42, stand sharply apart on the spectrum. In a traditionally conservative state, which is likely to go heavily for Reagan, Church's record is vulnerable. Says Symms' campaign manager Philip Reberger: "Church on the issues is the issue." Symms keeps pounding away at the incumbent's support of the Panama Canal treaties, SALT II and deficit spending for social programs. He attacks Church's chairmanship of the committee that investigated the CIA and in the process, many believe, seriously damaged the agency. Symms often recalls Church's flattering remarks about President Fidel Castro after visiting Cuba in 1977: "I leave with the impression I've found a friend."

The energetic Republican challenger, who is the strongest opponent Church has ever faced, boasts a 100% rating among conservative groups for his voting record. He also has the appealing grace to appear to take himself less seriously than the issues. Outfitted in a brown suede jacket and cowboy boots, the stocky, cherubic-looking fruitgrower hands out his wife's apple recipes to voters who respond warmly to his hearty greeting. The apple, in fact, is his campaign symbol. In past years, he would take a bite and ask: "Wouldn't you like to take a bite out of government?" His TV ads portray him as a down-home boy driving a tractor, while a voice-over sings: "I was born to be an Idahoan at heart."