Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 10, 1995                   TAG: 9510100093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Medium

NUNN'S EXIT FROM THE SENATE DEALS DEMOCRATS A BLOW

The Democratic Party's long-shot hope to retake the Senate in 1996 became one seat harder Monday when the party's most popular politician in Georgia, Sen. Sam Nunn, said he would retire after this term.

``I know in my heart it is time to follow a new course,'' Nunn told friends and politicians packed in the chamber of the state House of Representatives for the long-awaited announcement.

Nunn's exit brings to eight the number of Democrats who are leaving the Senate when their terms end after the 1996 elections. The four open seats in the South - Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and now Georgia - are especially vulnerable because of the GOP's dramatic growth in the region.

Nunn, who was almost universally considered unbeatable in Georgia, told reporters in March 1994 that he was considering leaving, and he repeated Monday that his motivation was almost entirely a personal desire for change.

``I would be 64, 65 at the end of another term,'' he said. ``I don't want to be recalled by the grim voter or the grim reaper.''

The Democrats' loss of power in Congress was only one factor, he said. ``The decision was hard enough and close enough that I wouldn't want to say that nothing could have changed it, but I don't know what it would have been.''

Nunn's departure is a watershed.

He ``is the last of the great moderate Southern Democrats. This creates a huge hole for the party,'' said Merle Black, a specialist on Southern politics at Emory University in Atlanta.

An expert on national security and ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Nunn, 57, has for years occupied a position near the ideological center of the Senate, a spot that allowed him to lead swing voters and amass great power.

He warned that both parties could face new competition from a third party in the next four to six years if they don't pay more attention to the large ideological middle ground that he thinks most Americans occupy with him.

Even as the GOP is making a mistake in trying to enact a tax cut while cutting entitlement programs such as Medicare, the Democrats also are to blame for making ``a brain-dead defense of the status quo,'' Nunn said.

Nunn, like President Clinton, helped organize a group of moderate Democrats, the Democratic Leadership Council, in an attempt to move the party toward the right after the 1984 landslide re-election of President Reagan.

``He has been fighting the liberal wing of his party for over two decades,'' Black said. ``It's been a losing battle.''

Clinton hailed Nunn for his ``tireless devotion and steady leadership. He has earned the respect and appreciation of all Americans for his leadership in national security, defense and foreign policy.''

Keywords:
POLITICS