Democrat limbers up for presidential race

Press, 20 January 1982, Page 18

Democrat limbers up for presidential race

: .By

JOHN HUTCHISON

in San Francisco

In American parlance, politicians do riot stand for office. They run. California’s senior United States Senator, Mr Alan Cranston, has been running well since his school days. He was a member of the national university mile-relay championship team in 1935. and he once ran the 100-yard dash in 9.9 seconds. In the 1980 election he ran up the largest number of votes ever given to any candidate in the history of the United States Senate, substantially outpolling Mr Ronald Reagan in California. Now the 67-year-old Democrat, assistant, leader of the opposition in the Senate, is openly exploring his chances as a candidate for the Presidency. He could campaign for the office without giving up his Senate seat; the presidential term will begin in 1985, two years before his six-year term in the Congress ends. Mr Cranston is already a remarkably successful politician, the first Democrat ever to win election in California to a third term in the Senate and the first of any party to do so since 1930. He has been his-

party's whip since 1977 and is regarded as a master at assessing the prospects of passage or defeat of legislation. He is an influential member of the foreign relations committee, intelligence committee and banking, housing and urban affairs committee. He heads the Senate’s Democratic leadership circle, a party fund-raising group, and he has not been notably productive in his efforts to . raise campaign funds, not just for himself, but for fnany colleagues in the party with whom he has thereby established rich political credits in terms of potential support for 1984. The Senator has an impressive background. Born in a suburb of San Francisco, and a graduate of Stanford University, he then became a correspondent for a major Ameri-. can news service, in England, Germany, Italy and Ethiopia from 1936 to 1938. He continued as a journalist and author, still writing today occasionally for important magazines. His book, “The Killing of the Peace.” about the 191.9 decision of the

Senate which kept the United States out of the League dfNations. was a best-seller in 1945. ~ ' -

In 1939. Mr Cranston was employed in Washington bv an organisation opposing discrimination in immigration and naturalisation policies, and in 1942 he became an official in the Office of War Information, the agency which eventually evolved into a worldwide service to-improve the American image abroad. He resigned from that work in 1944 and enlisted in the Army, leaving as a sergeant at the end of World War 11. After a decade as a business man in real estate and investments he made his first bid for public office and was elected state controller of California in 1958 — the first Democrat to hold that post since 1876. He was reelected by a massive majority four years later and defeated in a third try in 1966. The Senator barely qualifies as a liberal. He seems to choose carefully the issues and occasions on which he criti cises the Reagan Administration, but he does so with

vigour, condemning it as “evangelical New Rightism" conducting a slash-and-burn campaign against social progress and the rights and interests of ordinary citizens. He walks a discreet line, however, to avoid alienating California’s agriculture and defence industries.

Senator Cranston may feel that the disarray of the national Democratic Party, and its present disability to focus on policies or leadership, offer an opportunity for him to emerge as an activist at a time when severe unemployment, financial stress and a questionable foreign policy afflict the Republican establishment.

With the next national election still three years away, this may be very early for him to start testing his spikes on the presidential track. But he still runs every day. and he enters track meets with men younger than he is. Aware that if sent to the White House in 1984. he would be older than Mr Reagan was at inauguration, he told a reporter: "I think Reagan put that issue to rest. I'm in verv good shape."