Haig Says Elections in Fall Will Decide Fate of ‘Reagan Revolution’

Congressional races this fall will be a turning point for the nation, proving whether “the Reagan Revolution will be a brief, although very happy, footnote in American history or a long-term trend that will guide this country to the turn of the century,” former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said Friday in Irvine.

Haig, a secretary of state under President Reagan and chief of staff under President Nixon, was the keynote speaker at a $1,000-per-couple fund-raiser for five-term Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach).

In remarks before dinner, Haig warned that a midterm election was frequently a time of “weariness, complacency and a tendency to seek change for change sake.”

“This midterm election is the most important we’ve had in America since World War II,” Haig said, “because it will in fact decide if the renaissance in the American spirit, what has been called the Reagan Revolution, will continue to happen or if it will be an all-too-brief footnote in American history.”

If Republicans fail to gain seats in the House and lose the Senate to the Democrats, “President Reagan will find himself even more frustrated than he is now,” Haig said.

Haig, 61, is frequently mentioned as a 1988 Republican presidential candidate but, at a press conference before the dinner Friday, he declined to describe his own political plans. For now, the race is “wide open,” Haig said. Still, he said that he thought he could appeal to “the kind of majority that President Reagan put together . . . those that place love of country and patriotism as a centerpiece.”

Haig has formed a political action committee that expects to spend $1 million on Republican candidates this year. Badham’s campaign may get some of that in his race against retired judge Bruce W. Sumner, but at the moment he doesn’t appear to need it, Haig associate Dan Clemente said Friday.

Haig told about 50 people at a $250-per-couple cocktail party for Badham before the dinner that Badham’s legislative efforts for national security were “absolutely superb.”

The congressman arrived at his own fund-raiser more than an hour late because of an unexpectedly late vote Friday on a defense procurement bill in Washington.

Badham aide Bill Schreiber said the fund-raiser had met its goal, raising $70,000 for a reelection campaign that is expected to cost several hundred thousand dollars.

In other comments to reporters before the fund-raiser, Haig deplored as “blatant and base partisan politics” the Senate Judiciary Committee’s recent scrutiny of Justice William Rehnquist, Reagan’s nominee for chief justice.

“I empathize with Bill Rehnquist,” Haig said, recalling that in 1981 before he was confirmed as secretary of state, “I had an unprecedented five-day orgy with some of the same characters who are picking on him.”