Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta
Journal and Constitution
November 23, 1999, Tuesday, Home Edition
NINTH IN A SERIES OF PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN PROFILES.
SECTION: News; Pg. 10A
LENGTH: 1250 words
HEADLINE:
ON THE TRAIL;
Hatch unfazed by being an underdog;
Clean-living Utah Republican is known as a gentlemanly conservative. Just
don't bad-mouth his beloved Senate.
BYLINE: Tom Baxter,
Staff
SOURCE: CONSTITUTION
DATELINE: New Orleans
BODY:
It wasn't at all hard to pick out Orrin Hatch in the crowd
Saturday night as the senior senator from Utah made his way from one Republican
post- election party to the next in Baton Rouge and the New Orleans suburbs of
Metairie and Kenner.
"I'm going to go tell him he needs to loosen his
tie a little," said a reveler at Orleans Parish Councilman John Lavarine's
victory party, which he eventually did as the GOP presidential candidate was
leaving. Hatch listened to the advice with a chuckle and walked
out of the Kenner Knights of Columbus Hall, without a button loosened.
Hatch is so sober he can make drinking two Dr Peppers
over dinner sound like he went on a bender. Slim-Fast-thin, ramrod-straight, he
seemed as out of place on a Saturday night in Louisiana as he did when he joined
an already crowded and heavily funded field of Republican presidential
contenders last July.
The day Hatch got into the race,
Texas Gov. George W. Bush announced he'd already raised $ 36 million.
Hatch seized on the number for his "skinny cat" campaign,
urging a million voters to send him $ 36 each.
So far he's raised less
than $ 2 million and doesn't scratch in the polls. But with a self-confidence
found to a peculiarly high degree on the north side of the United States
Capitol, he believes he is by far the most qualified candidate in the
presidential field, and could win if he can make people understand that.
"People start realizing that here's a guy who's got the most experience,
who's got the best record of accomplishment, who literally can bring people
together and force the most liberal to work with the most conservative to get
things done. And that's something we've got to have now going into this next
century," Hatch said as he rode toward Baton Rouge with three
aides and a reporter before the polls closed Saturday.
Hatch is a United States senator through and through:
protective of his colleagues on either side of the aisle, particular about his
status and not shy to boast of the legislation that bears his name. Elected in
1976 with the help of Ronald Reagan to the only political office he has ever
held, Hatch dresses the part, right down to the Senate emblem
on his suspenders.
He does not claim to have invented the Internet like
Vice President Al Gore, himself no stranger to Senate culture. On the other
hand, he'll tell you, " most intellectual property bills are
Hatch bills," and he was the senator who took on Microsoft in
Senate antitrust hearings.
As one of a "handful, four or five," who
convinced President Reagan to cut marginal tax rates, he believes he should
share credit for the economic prosperity that he believes that act triggered. He
authored the bill that " saved the dietary supplement industry" and in the past
session sponsored the " most sweeping patent law reform in the past
half-century."
Nor has his senatorial range been only domestic, he
notes. He flew to Asia on Vice President George Bush's plane in the 1980s, he
recalled, to seal the deal giving Stinger missiles to Pakistan and the Afghan
mujahadeen --- what some consider the straw that broke the back of the Soviet
Union.
In his spare time, Hatch has blossomed as a
lyricist, sharing songwriting credit for several songs with religious and
patriotic themes. "I Am Not Alone, " co-written with Madeline Stone, recently
hit No. 9 on the Christian Research Report chart of contemporary Christian
music. Hatch has also written two novels, neither published to
date.
He and his wife, Elaine, have six children, all now grown.
Given his position as a ranking Republican, chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, it seems paradoxical for Hatch to run as a
grass-roots challenger to his party's establishment. But Hatch
maintained he has never been a part of that elite, and said he has set foot in
the headquarters of the Republican National Committee fewer than five times in
his 23 years in Washington.
A metal lather's son who worked his way
through college as a janitor, Hatch combines a dapper image and
conservative politics with the hint of hard- scrabble beginnings in a way that
calls to mind another Republican, Georgia's 11th District Rep. John Linder.
A certain amount of prejudice against him as a Mormon is one of the
reasons he's been written off by many in the media, Hatch said.
He dismissed the importance of Mormons as contributors --- "by the time they get
through paying 10 percent of their gross income for tithing they're not too
enthused about spending their money for anything else." But his church links
provide a national network. Before heading out for the post-election parties
Saturday, Hatch met with a Mormon group at a reception in Baton
Rouge.
Hatch canceled part of his Saturday Louisiana
trip because the final votes on the budget agreement kept him in Washington
until late the night before. Arizona Sen. John McCain's criticism of this year's
Congress did not sit well with this Senate loyalist.
"Spoken by somebody
who's missed 160-something votes. Somebody who was not there during most of the
battles that have been fought in the last throes of this thing,"
Hatch said of McCain's comment in Atlanta on Friday that the
budget deal was "obscene."
"I tell you, he offended a lot of members of
the Senate, especially the Republicans who have been fighting their hearts out,
knowing the President has a veto that's sustainable," Hatch
said.
If in Hatch's perspective Bush is the unseasoned,
undeserving front-runner, McCain is his nemesis --- another senator from the
West, another conservative who claims the ability to work with Democrats, who is
currently riding higher in the polls. He faults McCain for "cheap shots" at his
beloved Senate, and for espousing changes in campaign finance laws that he ought
to know would kill the Republican Party in a couple of years.
"Real
campaign reform is what Orrin Hatch does, running on small
contributions from people who don't usually give to political campaigns," he
said.
Hatch can sport an impressive list of bills that
pair his name with a Democrat's: the Hatch-Waxman generic drug
bill, the Hatch-Biden violence against women bill and the
Hatch-Lieberman capital gains tax reduction bill, among others.
But he was an early Reagan supporter in the days when they were considered
pretty far right by many in their own party, and his cultivation of Senate
manners hasn't changed his politics much.
"Much as I like them
personally, they are far-left committed ideologues," he said of Gore and his
Democratic rival, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, summing up the senator
and the conservative in him.
"One of the biggest reasons I feel I've got
to run --- and I think I can win --- is by the end of eight years Bill Clinton
will have appointed 50 percent of the federal judiciary and two U.S. Supreme
Court justices. This is a third of the separated powers of government, and
people don't center on it," Hatch said.
Unlike his
opponents with no experience in federal judicial matters, he said, "I know who
to pick, how to pick 'em and how to make sure they do their job."
With
little money or support base, Hatch has little chance to fill
that role in the Oval Office, but since his Senate term is up next year also, he
could be a contender for a Cabinet post in a Republican administration, or
possibly on the vice presidential list. He has criticized his opponents, but
like a true senator, not so harshly he couldn't work with them in the future.
GRAPHIC: Photo
Sen. Orrin Hatch of
Utah chats amiably in Tempe, Ariz., after Sunday night's Republican presidential
debate. He's proud of his Senate record, but it has done him little good in the
polls./ LEAH FASTEN / Associated Press
LOAD-DATE:
November 23, 1999 
