Hunters and Hunted

BACK IN the late Sixties, Terry Dolan was a youth campaign organizer for a boisterous Connecticut assemblyman named Lowell P. Weicker. "Those were the conservative Weicker days," Dolan is quick to point out. As executive director of the nation's best known right-wing political action committee, he can no longer afford to be associated with Weicker--now considered one of the few moderate-to-liberal Republicans in the Senate. In fact, Dolan is doing everything he can to hasten Weicker's demise on Capitol Hill.

The senator, for his part, thinks Dolan is a twerp. Weicker scoffs at smug predictions that the Republican victories of 1980 portend an era of extreme conservatism in America. He calls Dolan "wacky," even "repugnant," and recalls that he was never very good as a go-fer anyway.

But Terry Dolan has come a long way since 1967. Armed with the most sophisticated mass-mailing system in the country--courtesy of New Right mastermind Richard Vigueric--Dolan helped unseat several of the Senate's most powerful old-guard Democrats last year. Among the "targets" who fell were George McGovern of South Dakota, Birch Bayh of Indiana, and Frank Church of Idaho. Now, Dolan plans to expand his attack--launching his leaflets at several members of the GOP up for re-election in 1982, including Sens. John Chafee (R-R.I.), Robert Stafford (R-Vt.), and Weicker, whom he will stalk with a particular vengence.

"Weicker has the worst reputation of anyone I know of in the Senate, in terms of being pompous and arrogant," Dolan says of his old boss. "Even those on the left wing have congratulated me for going after him."

Indeed, Weicker's gregarious style, immensly popular at home, has won him few admirers in Washington. He takes every opportunity to make long-winded, self-righteous speeches during floor debates, and has been accused of milking his vocal anti-administration stand during the Watergate hearings for more than it was worth. He traditionally sponsors an eclectic array of legislation and though he sits on several influential committees, few consider him an effective lawmaker.

Dolan finds Weicker an unusually easy mark because his "unintelligent, bizarre" votes have fallen consistently on the liberal side of issues such as prayer in school, busing and defense spending. Dolan's National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), specializes in dredging up little-known legislative records. "Our emphasis is not shock value or distortion," Dolan says--though last fall he and his allies distributed literature illustrated with murdered infants to emphasize their opposition to abortion. "The value of our program is that we tell the truth, and people don't like what they hear."

Dolan is not at all concerned that he might alienate his GOP allies by running arch-conservatives against Republican incumbents in the 1982 primaries. He claims the party would be better off without the excess baggage, and calls Weicker and his ilk "completely irrelevent" in the Senate. "The liberal wing of the Republican party," he adds, is finally dead.

Weicker can count 12-15 Republicans in the Senate he considers moderate, but he admits that they have brought a great deal of trouble on themselves. "We meet every Wednesday, have some cheese and wine, and we read The New York Times and Washington Post editorials, and everybody leaves with a great high. Meanwhile the conservatives have done the nitty gritty of politics," he says. Why, then, does Weicker think he can weather Dolan's attack in '82, when other enemies of the New Right--politicians with far more prestige on the Hill--have failed?

The most obvious answer is the state of the economy. The real test of the staying power of the Republican ascendancy will be whether or not President Reagan's scheme of tax cuts and spending reductions makes a visible dent in the federal deficit, unemployment, and inflation. Weicker, for all of his legislative eccentricity, has supported the administration's efforts in general terms. If Reagan succeeds, Weicker can tell his neighbors in Mystic that he was part of the president's team. He will also be able to paint any primary challenge from the far right as an obstacle to further GOP success.

On the other hand, if Reagan flops, Dolan will have a hard time convincing frustrated voters that they want further cutbacks on social programs and money spent on defense. Either way, Weicker figures Dolan will shoot his political wad too early on non-economic issues such as abortion, prayer in schools, and the Panama Canal treaty. "The bulk of the people are too busy worrying about paychecks to be distracted over the long run by the single-issue movement," Weicker says.

ANOTHER FACTOR in the senator's favor is that Connecticut will be a much tougher state than Idaho or South Dakota for Dolan to conquer with his hard-sell campaign. Dolan succeeds by recruiting the support of individual special interest groups--groups much more difficult to pinpoint among Connecticut's dense, and traditionally moderate population. "Is this the same Terry Dolan who was so interested in the election of Jim Buckley to the U.S. Senate in my state?" Weicker asks. Despite hundred of thousands of NCPAC dollars, Buckley, a former senator from New York, lost to Democrat Christopher Dodd in last year's contest for Connecticut's other Senate seat. Buckley was not, of course, the only New Right-supported candidate to stumble. Other incumbents held off challenges from Dolan and Co. in California, Missouri, and Colorado.

Although Weicker will have to renew his struggle to rally the irascible Connecticut Republican party behing his re-election bid he will probably overcome the sniping from the right generated by NCPAC. Confident that the Republican party will be forced to renounce Terry Dolan, Weicker says he is "proud to be a number one on that guy's hit list--wouldn't have it any other way." He predicts that even conservative candidates will disown Dolan--as several did in 1980--in an effort to maintain GOP unity. Raising his voice with characteristic emotion, Weicker has his own view of who will be the hunted in 1982: "It looks to me like Terry Dolan is the target, not moderate Republicans."