Road Warriors

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Buoyed by this glimmer of hope, Reagan met privately with the 13 recalcitrant Republicans in Dole's office. Most spoke of how their anguish about deserting the President was outweighed by the highway needs of their states; some cited the bill's provision raising the speed limit to 65 m.p.h. on rural interstates. Reagan restated his position that all he wanted was a clean bill, one stripped of the $890 million for 121 local "demonstration projects" that had fueled his charges of pork barrel. At that point Missouri Senator John Danforth revived the Symms bloc-vote proposal, and Senator Alfonse D'Amato of New York said he was thinking of going along.

For a moment it looked as if Reagan might snare a dramatic last-minute victory. But then Senator Arlen Specter, a moderate, wielded his own veto. Specter, whose home state of Pennsylvania reaped one of the largest bonanzas from the demonstration projects ($78 million, including a sorely needed $45 million road improvement near Altoona), said he had too much at stake in the bill to give it all up. None of the 13 Republican defectors were willing to switch their votes and support the President unless all did; they remembered that G.O.P. Senator Slade Gorton of Washington lost his seat last fall after admitting he had traded his vote in a similar last-ditch situation to win White House support for a judicial appointment he favored. With Specter refusing to go along, the plan fell apart.

The drama of the final showdown was heightened by the fact that Reagan had won an initial Senate roll call the previous day. At the last minute of that tally, freshman Democratic Senator Terry Sanford of North Carolina broke party ranks and voted to sustain Reagan's veto. Majority Leader Robert Byrd, after some deft parliamentary maneuvering, forced a reconsideration of the vote. Then he went to work on the 69-year-old Sanford, a courtly former North Carolina Governor and president of Duke University. Within a few hours, confessing that he was "slightly confused" during the initial vote, Sanford executed an awkward pirouette.

Sanford's brief apostasy illustrates the pressures that can overwhelm a new legislator during the final moments of a climactic roll call. Picture the chaotic scene on the Senate floor: Sanford, who has not yet voted, is surrounded by a tight knot of Democrats demanding party loyalty. Sanford owes his seat to last year's Democratic tidal wave in the Senate, but he has promised state officials back home that he will vote to sustain the veto -- not because the bill is a bloated budget buster but because the overall funding formula does not provide enough for North Carolina. Like a commando operating behind enemy lines, Assistant Republican Leader Alan Simpson of Wyoming moves in for a word with Sanford. The Democrats literally try to elbow Simpson away. Simpson has just seconds to deliver his message to Sanford: "Five years from now, no one will remember how you voted on the highway bill. But they'll remember if you didn't keep your word." Simpson's warning had enough weight to sway Sanford's vote, at least for a day. But in his vacillation, Sanford left Senate Democrats with bitter memories that may also outlast the highway bill.