ASHINGTON - Eyeing a powerful committee chairmanship, New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith yesterday abruptly abandoned his sputtering, independent run for president and prepared to rejoin the Republican Party just four months after bolting the GOP in a blaze of acrimony.
Smith's remarkable turnabout foreshadows a showdown between two staunch conservatives over who will succeed the late Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode Island as head of the Senate panel responsible for the nation's environment: Smith, who would have seniority if he had remained Republican, or the committee's next senior Republican, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma.
In a move that also could influence the course of New Hampshire politics, Smith was poised to lay claim to the chairmanship by vaulting back to the Republican Party that he denounced in July as a meaningless bastion of hypocrisy.
Although Smith declined to formally announce his plans until after Chafee's funeral tomorrow, the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, yesterday cast Smith's return to the GOP as a virtual certainty.
''He is coming back to the party, I believe,'' said Lott, who has met with Smith regularly in recent weeks in a prelude to Smith's expected turnabout.
Smith's return to the Republican camp was seen as his best chance of reviving his damaged political standing in New Hampshire, where his defection outraged many GOP activists. The move also could short-circuit whatever plans either of the state's two Republican House members - US Representatives Charles F. Bass or John E. Sununu - might have to challenge Smith if he seeks reelection in 2002.
In a news conference outside the Capitol, Smith said he was shuttering his presidential campaign for lack of grass-roots and financial support. His fund-raising had grown increasingly meager, as polls showed scant interest in sending him to the White House. ''It wasn't meant to be,'' Smith said.
If Smith's rise to the environment panel's chairmanship is meant to be, his colleagues said, he has no choice but to embrace the GOP membership he so recently renounced. Senate Republicans elect the committee chairs and several members said they would not vote for Smith unless he reclaims his GOP seniority by returning to the party.
Inhofe would rank second among committee Republicans if Smith returned to the GOP fold.
''I'm quite certain Senator Smith will not get it unless he rejoins the Republican Party, commits to working with the party and ceases his criticisms of the party,'' said Senator Susan M. Collins, a Maine Republican.
Collins said Smith's GOP seniority would all but guarantee his chairmanship. Other senators said Inhofe is not expected to shrink from the challenge, particulary amid lingering resentment among some Republican members over Smith's defection.
In leaving the GOP, Smith called the Republican platform ''a fraud.'' Speaking on the Senate floor, he said, ''Maybe it's a party in the sense of wearing hats and blowing whistles, but it's not a party that means anything.''
Lott, who needs every Republican he can get to control the GOP's Senate majority after the 2000 elections, said he welcomes Smith's expected return from the independent ranks. But he alluded to the lingering disdain for Smith's parting comments.
''He knows we were not pleased with that,'' Lott said, ''and he has already indicated he understood.''
Asked if he stood by his criticism, Smith said, ''Yes,'' though he suggested his remarks had been misunderstood or misinterpreted.
With some foes preparing to portray him as a blatant opportunist for switching allegiances so soon after Chafee's death, Smith said he has spent weeks privately discussing his return to the GOP with party leaders in Washington and New Hampshire.
''The perception that it might be something else is just wrong and unfortunate,'' Smith said. ''We had a death here, and that kind of got in the middle, but we had been talking'' about returning to the GOP.
Meanwhile, Smith's surge toward the committee chairmanship sent a chill through the ranks of environmental advocates. Smith, who consistently opposes the advocates' agenda, received a 13-percent score in the most recent tally by the League of Conservation Voters.
Senator John F. Kerry, a senior Democrat on the environment committee, struck a diplomatic tone, hailing Chafee for working ''with Democrats to prevent dozens of pieces of devastating environmental legislation from becoming law.''
But Ken Cook, president of the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, said he and his colleagues were ''extremely nervous'' about the prospect of Smith or Inhofe succeeding Chafee on the panel. Inhofe's most recent score from the League of Conservation Voters was zero.
''You're talking about the bottom of the barrel and the metal band that runs around the bottom of the barrel,'' Cook said of Smith's and Inhofe's environmental records. ''If either of these gentlemen had been in charge of this committee in recent history, we would have dramatically different environmental laws, and they would be bad.''
