Surviving in Seattle? - Washington state politics and 1996 presidential and congressional elections

National Review, Nov 11, 1996 by Rich Lowry

REP. Rick White (R., Wash.) looks like a L. L. Bean model. He's wearing a blue plaid shirt, khakis, and a green Patagonia wind-breaker. Going door-to-door on a Saturday afternoon in his suburban Seattle district, a dog barking behind every other fence, a pack of teenagers playing touch football in the street, White makes self-effacing introductions -- "Hi, I'm your congressman" -- and quick, smiling small talk. When a young guy in a T-shirt, khakis, and his socks answers the door with his wife and baby, the 42-year old congressman and father of four could easily switch places with him. Can this be the same man who, as the attack ads have had it for months, votes to savage seniors and poison water?

The fresh-faced White hopes voters will take one look at him and answer: of course not. Voters, he maintains, are "looking for someone who is honestly and sincerely trying to do the right thing. They're taking your measure as a human being." So, the message behind White's ads, all of which feature him talking straight into the camera, is that he's a decent one. In one spot he sits with his five-year old son, and talks about the national debt. In another, sitting in his kitchen wearing a red plaid shirt, he decries negative campaigning. White is the congressman as next-door neighbor, just trying, darnit, to do his level best back in Washington, D.C.

He brings his nice-guy smile to the most ferocious battle-ground of the 1996 congressional elections, a Washington state where Democrats rest much of their hopes for re-taking the House. Republicans won an astonishing six new seats here in 1994. Two of them are probably safe this year, but four are up for grabs. If Democrats win back all four, start saying "Speaker Gephardt." But if Republicans hold three of the four, it could be an indicator that Republicans will pick up seats nation-wide. The fight for Washington began almost immediately after 1994. For more than a year, White and fellow Seattle-area freshman, Randy Tate, have been subjected to an enfilade of ads from AFL-CIO and other liberal groups that has been continuous, massive, and damaging.

"When it rains, you get wet," is how one Washington GOP official describes their effect. Tate is now so thoroughly soaked that the word most associated with him around the Beltway is "goner." But it is not all clear that the Democratic formula will have smashing success in Washington. It is equal parts AFL - CIO and Bill Clinton: relying on the unions for million-dollar attack ads, while staking a Clintonesque claim to the political center. The problem is that the AFL - CIO began running its ads so early that by now they have lost some of their punch. And Clinton's success may well be idiosyncratic, a product of his personality, of his willingness to sign recent Republican legislation, and of the general satisfaction of the country. Democratic congressional candidates will have difficulty making the same factors work for them.

Washington is hotly contested and volatile political ground. In 1992, riding the wave of a 11-point Clinton win in the state, Democrats swept eight of the state's nine House seats and the governorship. Two years later, capitalizing on disaffection with the hyper-liberal experimentation of the new governor Mike Lowry and with President Clinton, the GOP swept back. Republican freshmen Jack Metcalf and Doc Hastings, who won districts in the rural northwest and central parts of the state respectively, are generally considered safe this year. But White and Tate are both endangered, as is Linda Smith in her blue-collar district in the Southwest. George Nethercutt, slayer of House Speaker Tom Foley, is in for a tough fight in the farmland to the east.

For most of the Republicans, it's a relief at least to have their opposition finally personified in a Democratic candidate. It is the misfortune of Randy Tate that, in his case, the candidate happens to be a young, smooth-talking lawyer named Adam Smith. When the moderator for a Tate - Smith debate slips and says that Smith graduated high school in 1993 (really 1983) it's an understandable mistake. Tate won a state House seat at age 22, Smith a state Senate seat at 25 and both are now just over 30. Tate, balding with bright, almost infant-like blue eyes, is a conservative Christian who quickly earned the affection and respect of his colleagues in Congress. He is canny, energetic -- and running against stiff odds in a district with as fine a partisan balance as any in the nation.

BY November, the AFL - CIO will have bought more than a $1 million-worth of blows to Tate's solar plexus on TV. Combine that with Smith's war-chest of roughly $600,000 and Tate stands to get outspent as an incumbent -- not the way it's supposed to work. The energy of Smith's campaign clearly comes from the attack ads. In debates, there is almost a passivity to him; the unions, after all, are doing the real work. His positive agenda is a yawner -- "working well with Republicans as well as Democrats"; campaign- finance reform; balancing the budget; and, finally, preserving middle-class entitlements. Smith tends even to soft-pedal his criticisms on Medicare, the scorching attacks already having been made on his behalf.