Latter-day liberal: the senior senator from Utah is not all he's hatched up to be - but he could yet become a conservative hero

Orrin Grant Hatch, the senior senator from Utah, has compiled a 92 per cent rating from the American Conservative Union during his twenty years in office. He came to prominence by successfully filibustering Hubert Humphrey's last major legislation (a union power grab). In 1983, his interrogation of Sen. Paul Tsongas exposed the Equal Rights Amendment as a blank check for the Left's law-school. In 1991, he helped turn back the lynch mob pursuing Clarence Thomas. Last year his legislative maneuvering saved the bill banning partial-birth abortion from its own near-death experience in the Senate. C-SPAN junkies these last few weeks have gotten used to seeing him fight tirelessly for the Balanced Budget Amendment.

So why do conservatives inside the Beltway tend to say his name in the same tone Jerry Seinfeld greets Newman? A partial answer hangs on the wall of the reception room to his Senate office, in the form of a painting by Sen. Ted Kennedy. Below, the artist has written, "We'll leave the light at the compound on for you anytime." The senators' friendship -- "We're like brothers," says Hatch --appalls some conservatives, but not as much as the effect most observers think it's had on his politics. In a Republican cloakroom meeting about the Ryan White Act (an AIDS treatment bill), Hatch asked Sen. Jesse Helms (N.C.) what amendment he'd offer, and Helms suggested that he may as well tip off Kennedy himself.

"Orrin was frequently inclined to cut deals with Kennedy" and "buck the [Republican] leadership," recalls former colleague Malcolm Wallop. "Conservatives would forever try to rein him in." When Helms tried to prohibit National Endowment for the Arts funding of obscenity, Hatch and Kennedy pushed a compromise that, in the slightly hyperbolic words of then-Helms aide Mike Hammond, said, "If you're a fundee and you violate federal law, get prosecuted and convicted, we'll consider not giving you any more money." Hatch was a leading voice for the Americans with Disabilities Act, the most burdensome regulatory initiative of the Bush years.

Hatch also clashed with conservatives on child care. In the late Eighties, liberals were invoking a day-care shortage "crisis" to justify an array of federal subsidies and regulations. Robert Rector, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, recalls telling Hatch in 1988 that the crisis was illusory and that a better way to help families would be tax cuts. "And he looked me right in the face and told me I was out of my mind," says Rector. At one point, Hatch was floor manager for the Republican side while co-sponsoring a bill with Chris Dodd (D., Conn.).

And so it goes. In the late Seventies he took on Alice Rivlin and Ed Muskie to make the case for tax cuts; in 1995, he called for whittling down the Contract with America tax cuts. In the early Eighties he forcefully criticized race and gender preferences --and in 1991, he supported their extension. In early 1995, when Republicans were considering rolling back preferences, Hatch said it wasn't a priority. (He has since said he might again lead the fight in the 105th Congress.)

Hatch lobbied the Bush Administration to appoint his former staffer David Kessler to the Food and Drug Administration, which Kessler proceeded to turn into a servant of the Clintons' political agenda and his own megalomania. Hatch, a proponent of FDA reform and hero to the "alternative medicine community," now regrets his role in Kessler's appointment. When pro-lifers wanted to block Bush's appointment of Louis Sullivan as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Hatch provided crucial cover for the hire.

Has there been any give from Kennedy in return for Hatch's complaisance? Wallop laughs at the idea: "No, Kennedy's always been all take." Hatch insists that Kennedy is less ideological than many liberals and that they've both moved to the center. Perhaps. But you don't hear many complaints about Kennedy from his side of the aisle.

The Kennedy seduction theory does not explain all of Hatch's leftward lurches, of course. Co-sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act, a brainchild of radical feminists that directs millions of dollars to left-wing organizations, looks like penance for his questioning of Anita Hill. His attempts to gut the work requirements in last year's welfare-reform bill -- at one point he managed to push the Republicans' main bill to the left of Sen. Daschle's and President Clinton's on the issue -- were based on genuine belief: "Orrin Hatch seems to be the last person in the known universe who believes that vocational education is the key to reducing welfare dependence," says Rector.

Theories abound to account for Hatch's political transformation. In 1979, political operative Roger Stone sent Hatch a memo arguing that the senator had already "established a conservative base" and had to "tone down the rhetoric, avoid the 'New Right' label," and "begin systematic withdrawal of appearances at New Right functions." Conservative activist Paul Weyrich says that Hatch's behavior toward conservatives changed around that time. At first he regularly attended conservative conferences and sat on the boards of conservative groups. "We had meetings in his office plotting legislation," remembers Weyrich. These days, he's spotted at conservative meetings only when he's considering running for President.