Democratic And Republican

AMERICA MAY be a two-party country, but in Baltimore one would never know it. The last time a Republican was elected in the city was in 1954, when Harry Cole (now a retired judge) was elected to the Maryland Senate. (The City Council lost its last Republican in 1931.)The Cole victory heralded the end of white machine control of west side politics. But Democrats regrouped and four years later Mr. Cole was defeated. Today, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 9-1.Nowhere is this Democratic hegemony more evident than at the city courthouse.

EVERYONE apparently was a winner in last week's local elections.The spin-meisters of the Democratic and Republican parties declared victory in Tuesday's voting in Frederick and Annapolis -- where results were mixed.But as both parties began shameless posturing for next year's statewide elections, everyone patted themselves on the back.In Frederick, Republican Mayor James S. Grimes solidly defeated Democratic challenger Frances G. Baker with 54 percent of the vote, while in Annapolis, Republican Dean L. Johnson walked to easy victory over Democrat Dennis M. Callahan, taking 55 percent.

WASHINGTON -- Colin L. Powell believes it would be difficult.Newt Gingrich says it would be a disaster.Ross Perot thinks it would be a world-class success.Politicians and historians used to debate whether a presidential candidate running as an independent could win. Now, they are mulling whether an independent candidate, having won the presidency, could govern the nation.That the topic is being debated at all testifies that, perhaps more than at any other time in the last half-century, the notion of an independent or third-party president seems, if not probable, at least possible.

Washington -- THESE ARE heady days in the House.They are no less heady for Republican theorists and consultants, who are working feverishly to fabricate a mandate for all the legislative activity by attempting to elevate the 1994 election and give it meaning.That rush to judgment in the House, they argue, is not mere politics but a contract steeped in all the legitimacy of a popular conservative upheaval.Irving Kristol, co-editor of The Public Interest, calls what Speaker Newt Gingrich is doing "revolutionary."

The television ads have had their chance to work, the mailboxes are crammed with political fliers, and the debates are over.What happens next is up to Maryland's voters.Beginning at 7 o'clock this morning, voters will begin casting primary election ballots at 1,702 polling places across the state, choosing from among 2,800 Democratic and Republican candidates for almost every elective office from the courthouse to the State House. Polls close at 8 p.m.During those 13 hours, Democrats and Republicans will pick their respective nominees to succeed Gov. William Donald Schaefer, and to run for the U.S. Senate seat Democrat Paul S. Sarbanes has held for 18 years and wants to hold for six more.

WASHINGTON -- Republican lawmakers have stepped up pressure on Democrats to schedule congressional hearings into the Whitewater affair, as special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. wound down the initial phase of his investigation of President Clinton's role in the failed Arkansas land venture.Ending what had been the Clinton administration's first extended respite from GOP criticism over Whitewater, more than 90 House Republicans led by Rep. John T. Doolittle, R-Calif., introduced a resolution yesterday calling for concurrent hearings by five congressional committees.

Several of the county's leading environmental and social activists endorsed Democrat Theodore Sophocleus for county executive yesterday.The activists, who have formed a political action committee, said they will support Mr. Sophocleus, a state delegate and former county councilman from Linthicum, with money and volunteers.Mary Rosso, chairwoman for Anne Arundel Voters for Environmental Justice, said Mr. Sophocleus, the Democratic nominee for executive four years ago, expressed the clearest support for the group's goals and was considered the most "electable" of the six Democratic and Republican candidates.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton engaged in fierce "hand-to-hand combat" with opponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement yesterday for the support of the few dozen lawmakers whose votes will decide the fate of the controversial pact tomorrow.As both Democratic and Republican members of Congress shuttled in and out of the White House for some last-minute back-slapping and arm-twisting, Mr. Clinton's aides expressed increasing confidence that he would win the crucial ballot in the House of Representatives tomorrow evening.

WASHINGTON -- Despite all their bravado last night, it's a good bet that most Democrats in Congress woke up this morning with the cold sweats.Their president has asked them to approve huge tax increases and cut popular programs in a quest for economic growth and deficit reduction -- with no guarantee that the plan will work.Phone calls from home districts already suggest that if the legislators heed him they are likely to be punished at the polls. Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, for instance, received 475 calls yesterday, and 90 percent of the callers were opposed to tax increases.

HOUSTON -- One sign on the floor of the Republican National Convention here, copied on T-shirts worn by delegates, told much about the mood of many of them. It said: "I Don't Believe the Liberal Press." Another was even more pointed: "Lynch the Liberal Media Elite."Variations on the same sentiments were heard repeatedly from speakers and Republicans interviewed on television, including first lady Barbara Bush, who complained that the Republican Party, President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle all were getting a raw deal from the Fourth Estate.

WASHINGTON -- Spurred by the public's deepening fears of deadly imports, Congress is moving to give federal health officials the added money and new police powers they have long wanted to fix a broken drug safety system. After years of criticizing the Food and Drug Administration's failures, Democratic and Republican legislators are coming together on strengthening the embattled agency. "FDA is overstretched in terms of its responsibilities and underfunded," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said at a hearing last week on the agency's troubles.

ATLANTA -- About 70 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a striking indication of a profound malaise not seen since the days of Jimmy Carter. In 1980, Ronald Reagan not only defeated Mr. Carter in his re-election bid, but Mr. Reagan also ushered in an era of Republican dominance that lasted for a generation. President Bill Clinton had a great run, capitalizing on a heady time when the Berlin Wall was but a memory to consign budget deficits to the dustbin (temporarily)

Here are the candidates who filed papers by yesterday's 9 p.m. deadline to enter Baltimore's Democratic and Republican primaries for mayor, comptroller and City Council president. Mayor Democrats Phillip A. Brown Jr. Andrey Bundley Jill P. Carter Frank M. Conaway Sheila Dixon (incumbent) A. Robert Kaufman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. Mike Schaefer Republican Elbert R. Henderson City Council President Democrats Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake (incumbent) Kenneth N. Harris Sr. Michael Sarbanes Charles Ulysses Smith Republicans none Comptroller Democrat Joan M. Pratt (incumbent)

What can we expect from the next Congress? Despite the lack of a public blueprint comparable to Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America," there are some reliable signals. It promises to be a dramatic environment characterized by more heat than light, one in which politics consistently trumps policy. Don't bet on bipartisan agreements to slash the deficit or reform Medicare. Let's assume that the conventional wisdom is correct: The House will have a modest Democratic majority and the Senate will be nearly evenly balanced.

Maryland elections officials are scrambling to find and train the thousands of poll workers needed to avoid a repeat of last month's disastrous primary, but find themselves facing serious shortages - particularly of Republican judges - with just a month to go before Election Day. During September's chaotic voting, no-show election judges were a major problem in Baltimore, resulting in about 10 percent of the city's precincts opening more than an hour...

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. secured the Democratic Party's nomination for a second term last night, while two county councilmen effectively won re-election. Smith, who was leading his closest rival in the Democratic primary by a margin of more than 8-to-1, was set to move on to a general election against Clarence W. Bell Jr., a state police lieutenant and the Republican candidate. "I think we carry a lot of momentum into the general election, irrespective of who our opponent will be," Smith said last night at the Holiday Inn in Timonium, where he awaited results with Democratic state's attorney candidate Scott D. Shellenberger and others.

THE QUESTION: When are the city of Annapolis elections? Annapolis will hold primaries for mayor and city council on Sept. 20, and its general election on Nov. 8. In the mayor's race, Democratic incumbent Ellen O. Moyer and Republican George O. Kelley Sr. do not face opposition from candidates within their own party. Still, they will appear on their respective party's ballot on Sept. 20. Moyer is completing her first term as mayor, a post held by her ex-husband "Kip." Kelley is a former Annapolis police officer who switched political parties earlier this year.

WASHINGTON - Democrats are likely to vote unanimously against John R. Bolton when his nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations comes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next week, according to Democratic and Republican lawmakers and aides. It would mark the first time committee Democrats have unanimously opposed a Bush diplomatic nominee and would put the nomination in peril if any Republicans defected to vote against him. But Republicans say they believe the outspoken conservative will win solid GOP backing in the committee, including from the moderate Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who has voiced reservations about Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador.

QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN expressed during this political season about whether black voters need to re-examine their strong support for Democratic platforms and candidates in favor of Republican policies that might now have new relevance for blacks. To say today that the poor must help themselves not by demanding a seat at a lunch counter but by owning that lunch counter and, by inference, that Republican domestic policies would further that aim, requires blacks to overlook decades of history in this country.

WASHINGTON - Hog-tied by politics from getting anything done on the job, members of Congress are rushing home this week to urge voters to send them back for more. With control of the House of Representatives and Senate up for grabs, the Democratic and Republican parties are searching for issues to galvanize voters to give them the slight edge they need to triumph Nov. 5. But while Iraq and the economy dominate conversation in Washington, the picture around the country is much different.