Building a Byrd House

At first glance, this week's contest for Senate majority leader looks like no contest at all: a dour conservative from West Virginia who is shadowed by past membership in the Ku Klux Klan, v. an exuberant former Vice President who is esteemed as an elder statesman of the Democratic Party. Yet the heavy betting favorite is shrewd Robert C. Byrd, 58, and not Minnesota's liberal crusader, 65-year-old Hubert Humphrey.

What makes Byrd the likely successor to Montana's patient, low-keyed Mike Mansfield, now retired after 16 years in the post? Hardly a popular Senate member or even a "Club" insider, Byrd has made the Senate work. He has labored relentlessly and generally with fairness to satisfy the whims and needs of his fellow Democrats. During his six years as majority whip, Byrd has stayed on the floor through long dreary hours, rounding up Senators for an important vote or delaying action on a bill when a legislator was on a campaign tour, a junket or simply a binge. Byrd's skills have earned him numerous chits, which he has been cashing in for his final assault on the top post.

Hard-Earned Favors. Byrd won a Senate term in 1958 after six years in West Virginia state politics and six more in the U.S. House. With his seat securebills favored by labor unions, and doling out some of his unused campaign money to liberal as well as conservative Democrats. In 1967, he took over the obscure and little-wanted post of secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference. Byrd quickly ingratiated himself with the majority whip, Louisiana's Russell Long, who then was drinking heavily and neglecting his duties. Soon Byrd was doing Long's errands and collecting lous. After Ted Kennedy upset Long for the whip's seat, in 1969, Byrd performed the same tasks for the Massachusetts Senator, who had little enthusiasm for the housekeeping chores that the job requires. But in 1971, secure in his nest of hard-earned favors, Byrd turned around and knocked off the shocked Kennedy for the whip's job.

The only hitch in Byrd's arduous climb to the top may be the secret vote in the 62-Senator Democratic caucus. Head counters give Byrd 30 votes, two 14 short of a majority, and Humphrey 22. Humphrey hopes to pick up the ten votes he needsthat Byrd is acceptable to labor. He wasn't about to go against a sure winner." Humphrey's health also worries Senators, who wonder whether he will have the vitality for the job after undergoing removal of his cancerous bladder. Says Hubert, who insists that he has been advised he is healthy enough: "I prefer to rely on my doctors for medical opinions." What apparently reassures some liberals who distrust Byrd is that Jimmy Carter will be calling most of the shots for the majority leader and the new whip--California's Alan Cranston, 62, who is running unopposed.

On the Republican side, the favorite to succeed the retired Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania as minority leader is Michigan's Robert Griffin, 53, one of Gerald Ford's closest allies. Griffin might be challenged by Tennessee's Howard Baker. Another Ford ally is in line to succeed Griffin as minority whip: the now familiar Senator from Kansas, Robert Dole.

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