Seven Sorry Senators

It may be unique in the annals of excuses for leaving the bride at the altar. California Senator Alan Cranston, 75, indefinitely postponed his Christmas Eve wedding to real estate broker Cathy Pattiz, 49, on account of the turmoil caused by his receipt of $850,000 from Charles Keating, the former owner of Lincoln Savings and Loan. "When the press pounced upon us before we filled out the marriage-license forms, it became clear to me that this is not an appropriate time to start a marriage," said Cranston, who has started two marriages before. "It would not be fair to Cathy to bring her into the middle of a stressful situation."

Cranston's love life is the latest casualty of the Keating Affair, named for the high-flying owner of Lincoln S&L. Federal investigators charge Keating with looting his bank of millions of dollars while driving it $2.5 billion into debt. When Cranston returns to Washington next week, he will be one of an unprecedented seven Senators -- the so-called Keating Five plus two others -- facing investigation by the Senate ethics committee. If the past session of Congress was a nightmare for the House of Representatives, with the resignations of Speaker Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho and the launching of twelve other ethics investigations, this session promises to be even worse for the Senate.

For company, Democrat Cranston has the four other colleagues who with him received a total of nearly $1.4 million from Keating: Democrats John Glenn of Ohio, Donald Riegle of Michigan and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, and Republican John McCain of Arizona. The two other Senators mired in their own scandals are Republicans Dave Durenberger of Minnesota and Alfonse D'Amato of New York.

Durenberger's transgressions involve much less money than those laid to the Keating Five, but they are just as seamy. In 1985 Durenberger found himself strapped for cash. His marriage was breaking up, and he had four sons to send to college. That year and the next, he collected a total of $100,000 through the book-promotion deal, more than double the Senate's $46,000 limit on honorariums. His aides told groups to send their checks to Piranha Press, the Minnesota publisher of his two books. Piranha passed the money along to him as a "stipend" for promotional work.

At the same time, Durenberger was drumming up speaking engagements in Boston to coincide with visits there to a marriage counselor, so he would not have to pay for the trips out of his pocket. Although these arrangements were disclosed last year, Durenberger still fought his way through a re-election campaign, refusing to discuss his finances. He won with 56% of the vote.

But allegations continued to trickle out. Last month the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that since 1983, Durenberger had charged the Senate nearly $10,000 for rental of a condominium he had owned, which he used while in the state. To justify the reimbursements, Durenberger transferred title on the condo to a partnership he set up with a local businessman; the partnership billed the rent. The new deed was drawn up in mid-1984 but backdated to July 1983, when Durenberger began claiming the expenses.