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For his part, Harkin, 44, was merely obliged to make explanations, if not apologies, for being a liberal. A five-term Congressman from a rural district, Harkin was aptly described by Jepsen as a "slick-talking lawyer." Harkin is also something of a populist. The race, though, really pivoted on the issue of Jepsen's character. Harkin seemed sturdier. The Democrat's slogan: "Tom Harkin: A Senator Iowans Can Be Proud Of."
In Massachusetts, the winner was a former antiwar activist whose 55% to 45% victory is sure to restore some of the commonwealth's old reputation as a leftist bastion. The image is not altogether accurate, but John Kerry, 40, will be one of a trio of liberal Senate freshmen. An attractive Yale graduate decorated for naval heroics in Viet Nam before he turned against the war, the Irish-American Kerry is conspicuously Kennedyesque.
His opponent, Republican Raymond Shamie, 63, was considered a hopeless right-wing political adventurer when he ran against senior Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1982. But Shamie's surprising landslide victory against former Attorney General Elliot Richardson in the primary two months ago had excited the state's Republicans. They suddenly saw a chance that the manufacturing millionaire's Archie Bunker affability might actually win him the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas, even though Shamie has never held public office. But Shamie responded ineptly when it was revealed that he had flitted around the John Birch Society in the early '70s.
Lieutenant Governor Kerry kept his cool, making literary allusions and articulately advocating a standard agenda: for a nuclear freeze and controls on pollutants that cause acid rain, against expanded U.S. military involvement in Central America. But his election may not presage any liberal renaissance. "What happened is that this race became a referendum on Ray Shamie's ideas and past associations," says Kerry Pollster Tom Kiley. "Shamie lost largely for these reasons." —By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Christopher Ogden/Chicago andB.J. Phillips/ Raleigh, with other bureaus