Democratic And Republican

NOW THAT WE have a president-elect, we hear increasing calls to put partisanship aside. Don't count on it. The Democrats and Republicans are further apart ideologically than they have been for most of this century. They are divided not only on economics, but also on cultural issues that aren't so readily compromised: abortion, immigration, affirmative action and gun control. The number of moderates in each party has plummeted since the 1970s. There are far fewer Southern Democrats or Northeastern Republicans.

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.

WASHINGTON - In the biggest burst of primaries of the election season, voters in 11 states will choose candidates for Congress, Senate and governor on Tuesday in contests that could determine the political future of Janet Reno, the former attorney general, and Republican Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, who is facing an intense challenge from within his party. More than 50 contests are taking place across the country. But much of the strident, last-minute campaigning has been muted by the commemoration of Sept.

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 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 -- Democrats captured gubernatorial victories last night in six states -- including Texas and Florida, two of the year's most highly coveted political prizes.They pulled off a major upset in Texas, with Democratic state Treasurer Ann Richards winning 52 percent to 48 percent over millionaire rancher Clayton Williams in one of the year's most rough-and-tumble political brawls.And in Florida, former Sen. Lawton M. Chiles Jr., 60, was declared the victor over Republican Gov. Bob Martinez, 55, in a contest that should assure Democratic control over the 1992 redistricting process, when the state is expected to pick up four House seats.

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.

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 -- 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."

WEST CHESTER, Pa. -- See Richard L. Thornburgh handshake his way down the leafy sidewalks of this southeast Pennsylvania town and you know you're looking at a front-running candidate for senator.But if Democratic and Republican campaign officials in Washington glimpsed the same scene, they'd see something else: 1992.While the former attorney general works to protect his lead in the race for the seat of the late Sen. John Heinz, who was killed in a midair plane crash last spring, strategists in both parties are watching for clues to next year's national campaign.