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Symms is helped and occasionally hindered by the right-wing groups that are determined to defeat one of the public figures they hate the most. Since ABC was organized nearly two years ago, it has kept Church on the defensive with a ceaseless barrage of charges. "I don't know what else they can say about me," says the bewildered Senator. Under the guidance of the Virginia-based National Conservative Political Action Committee, ABC has poured more than $200,000 into its attack on Church. The organization can raise and spend an unlimited amount because it is legally considered an independent committee. Says ABC Chairman Don Todd: "We are critical in softening Church's support. We've made the race what it is today." Adds N.C.P.A.C. Chairman Terry Dolan: "We're not people who crave respectability. We care about winning elections. If we have to step on a few toes, we'll do it."
Once well known as a boy orator, Church still casts a spell in a land where the spoken word is revered. He has struck back at his tormentors by labeling them "scummy and fraudulent" and comparing their technique to Hitler's "Big Lie." The right-wing radicals, Church trumpets, are trying to take over the "entire American political process." He does not go out of his way to bring up national or international issues or boast of his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But he defends his past stands and reminds critics: "Once I was against the war in Viet Nam, and the people of this state were overwhelmingly for it. But I think time proved I was right." When he was asked why he gave the Panama Canal to the Communists, Church shot back: "We didn't give it to the Communists. We may have saved it from going Communist by making Panama a working partner. We made a friend instead of an enemy."
Mainly, Church portrays himself as Idahoan to the core. A campaign leaflet shows him in Western garb toting a shotgun, by a barbed-wire fence. Declares his campaign literature: "Church puts Idaho first." The Senator claims that he has responded to 110,000 pleas for assistance since he was first elected 24 years ago. He takes credit for reclamation projects, rangeland improvements, recreation areas and dairy-farm price supports. He has kept the votes of many conservative businessmen by cutting red tape in Washington for them. He defends his support of the wilderness bill, which would set aside 2.2 million acres in the state, by insisting: "Idaho is not for sale." Some of his supporters are slinging a little mud of their own. They are distributing bumper stickers in heavily Mormon eastern Idaho that read WINE, WOMEN AND SYMMS—a reference to a remark the Congressman is reported to have made after a 1977 trip to Libya: "There was no chance to drink or chase women."