Keep The Bums In

By NANCY GIBBS

In years to come, scholars sifting through the sediment of last week's midterm elections may not find many clues about the shape of American civilization in 1990. Every pillar of conventional wisdom turned to dust in the voting booths -- leaving hardly a trace of the S&L crisis, or the debate over war in the Persian Gulf, or the backlash against the budget deal finally signed by the President last week. Perhaps the lessons of the election will be found in what was missing: any consistent theme, any tidy conclusions, any sense that voters had found a way to make themselves heard.

Where, after all the rumblings of autumn, was the wrath of constituents who were thought to be savoring the chance to vote the bums out? In the end the electorate managed to reduce the re-election rate of House incumbents from 98% to 96% -- at a time when polls found that a majority of voters believed Congress was doing a bad job. Sitting Governors fared less well, as 14 of 36 states threw out the governing party. But that result too was typical for a midterm election and merely proved once again that in the civil war between embittered voters and embattled officeholders, incumbency is the most powerful weapon and voter turnout the first casualty.

The anti-incumbent mood, so widely chronicled in the weeks before the voting, did show up in bits and pieces. In Minnesota a scrappy college professor, Paul Wellstone, unseated Senator Rudy Boschwitz by campaigning out of the back of a bus. Several Capitol Goliaths, notably Democratic Senator Bill Bradley in New Jersey and Republican Representative Newt Gingrich in Georgia, reeled and very nearly fell to obscure challengers with tiny war chests. Other smug incumbents saw their margins of victory cut in half since the last go-round. Wherever voters could opt for "none of the above," they did. Independent candidates won the Governor's races in Connecticut and Alaska, and Vermont will be sending to Congress a socialist who ran as an independent.

But an overwhelming majority of Americans chose to send their signals by staying home: the 36.4% turnout rate among eligible adults tied 1986 as the second lowest since 1942. The low participation left politicians and pundits scrambling for an explanation -- and failing to come up with any that was convincing. "If you are asking me what the mood of the people is, I have to tell you I don't know," mused New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who saw his share of the vote drop from 65% in 1986 to 53% as he won a third term over a trio of political nobodies. "How would you know?" he asked. "They don't vote. Is it that they are pleased? Is it that they are despairing? Is it that they think it's futile? Are they egocentric? Are they ignorant? I don't know. You can't poll the people who don't vote."

Cuomo's puzzlement was somewhat disingenuous. Americans certainly showed no signs of being pleased with their government at any level, nor of being ignorant. If any signal came through last week, it was a primal scream of disgust with politics-as-usual, a blunt and resounding no! No to the lies and intrigues of Washington, no to spending by politicians who can't be trusted with the public's dollars, no to a money-greased political system dedicated to self-preservation rather than leadership.

In this surge of reflexive rejection, some worthy initiatives went down to defeat. And the restless electorate showed itself capable of disingenuousness as well. If voters truly wished to engage in some creative destruction, they might have started with the incumbents close at hand, in their own districts. As it turned out, voters only wanted to vote out other people's bums. "People are looking for simple answers, and they talk a good game about 'none of the above,' " explained retired Methodist minister Orval Strong of Austin. "But in the end they don't want to forfeit their vote by leaving the balloting to others."

There was something painful about watching the electorate trying in vain to make itself understood. Every message was mixed. Is there a gender gap? Dianne Feinstein lost California and Ann Richards won Texas, each carrying the women's vote by nearly 3 to 2 -- but Lynn Martin in Illinois actually did worse among women than among men. Is there a tax revolt? Virtually every new tax was voted down -- but so were a host of proposals to freeze or slash present tax levels. Has America turned Green? Any environmental measure that meant new levies or bigger state debt went down to defeat. "The most important conclusion is that there was no theme at all," says former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt. "To quote Winston Churchill, we had a pudding without a theme."

One message, however, was very clear. The voter cynicism that such elections . have bred will not be easily healed -- not by campaign-finance reform, or voter education, or easing registration requirements, or tinkering with term limitations. Though such measures would help to restore voter faith in the system, they could not alter the fact that an entire generation of young voters has rarely had the experience of going to the polls to vote with any enthusiasm for a candidate they trust, instead of to choose the lesser of two evils. At the moment, even if such candidates emerged, they probably could not win. If they won, they could not govern. Until that changes, it may be unreasonable to expect more than one-third of voters even to bother going through a process that mainly serves to remind them that they vote their fears, not their hopes.

The Mighty Fortress. For all the ardent pandering of politicians, all the carefully manufactured suspense of network election coverage, voters in congressional elections did not have much of a choice. In most states, by the time the ballots were printed the decisions had been made. Voters could pick between the bums they knew, the bums they didn't know and fringe candidates they feared might be worst of all. Only 1 in 5 challengers had ever held any public office. "The first law of politics still applies," says Charles Black, the Republican Party spokesman. "You can't beat somebody with nobody."

The whole spectacle left many voters with the sense that the real competition was not between Republicans and Democrats but between all those already in office and those seeking to replace them. Sitting Democrats and Republicans alike share a dread of doing anything that threatens their tenure by angering voters: making hard decisions, putting limits on their powers or engaging in serious debate. "The problem is that politicians are fixed on self-preservation," says Chicago Democratic Party consultant David Axelrod. "They are offensive to voters because of all their efforts to be inoffensive." Members of both parties are equally beholden to contributions from political-action committees, wealthy benefactors and single-issue lobbyists. Thus both the Democrats, who have been shut out of the White House since 1981, and the Republicans, who have been shut out of control of the House since 1954, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Voters' choices are also reduced because so many potential opponents do not see much point in mounting a challenge. The advantages of incumbency are virtually insurmountable: voluminous free mailings, easy fund raising, large staffs, access to the press. That power creates a vicious circle: incumbents are so entrenched that few challengers of any caliber will run against them -- and the few who do cannot count on much help from their national parties. This leaves voters with little alternative but to send incumbents back for another term, in the process reinforcing the holdovers' aura of invincibility.

"Most normal people, not to mention the best-qualified people, will not tolerate this system," says Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington. "So even the worst of the incumbents, who can use their positions to rake in special-interest money year after year, have an enormous advantage."

In many tight races this year, both parties lost opportunities by failing to find and support strong challengers. The Democrats gave Newt Gingrich's opponent, lawyer David Worley, only $5,000 -- and Gingrich won by fewer than 1,000 votes. Other sacrificial lambs turned into lions on election day, most notably Christine Whitman, the invisible woman in New Jersey's Senate race who nearly toppled Bradley -- despite being outspent 20 to 1.

But upsets were the exception to the rule. Better than 1 in 6 House members had no major-party opposition. Of the 406 incumbents who sought re-election, 79 ran unopposed and 168 faced foes who had raised less than $25,000, nowhere near enough to finance an expensive televised campaign. Only 23 challengers were able to raise even half as much money as the incumbent -- in part because political-action committees gave 19 times as much to sitting lawmakers as to their foes. In fact, as of Sept. 30, two Congressmen alone -- Stephen Solarz of New York and Mel Levine of Los Angeles -- had raised more campaign money than all 331 challengers combined: $3,385,606 vs. $3,320,672. Says Common Cause president Fred Wertheimer: "House members are shielded by a wall of political money that makes them nearly invincible."

What rankled many voters was that so much of the money was poured into television ad campaigns that were at best amusing, at worst deceptive and almost never substantive. "I don't even know who stood for what issues," says Mindy Tornatore, a cosmetics-company account executive in St. Louis. "All I know is who trashed who."

The mudslinging might have been even worse had not local newspapers and television stations acted as watchdogs, correcting the worst distortions. In some cases, candidates' high-priced hired guns became issues. Republican consultant Roger Ailes, the self-styled dark prince of political advertising who helped to fashion George Bush's rough-and-tumble 1988 campaign, came under fire for branding Democratic Senator Paul Simon a "weenie." Ann Richards' adviser, Robert Squier, produced one ad that altered a newspaper headline to make it seem that the paper, rather than Richards, was criticizing Clayton Williams. The commercial had to be withdrawn.

Despite many pious promises by candidates to forswear such tactics, negative campaigning is here to stay, in part because it is easier to tear down an opponent's reputation than to take strong positions on controversial issues. "If there hadn't been negative campaigning, no one would have had anything to talk about," says political scientist Paul Green in Chicago. "Politics is a giant minute waltz."

Meanwhile, Back Home. In addition, incumbents could take advantage of the old saw that "all politics is local." "It's the self-preservation instinct at work," says political scientist Greg Thielemann of the University of Texas at Dallas. "Pork-barreling in our direction is O.K." Ironically, a general anti-Washington feeling can work to an incumbent's advantage. The more people distrust the yahoos in Congress, the more inclined they are to cling to "their guy" as their one defender against congressional tomfoolery.

Especially in uncertain times, fear can quickly overtake fury. The folks back home develop warm feelings toward the legislator who sends out chatty newsletters (printed at government expense), who traces Grandpa's lost Social Security check (by turning the chore over to a government-paid assistant) and fights to keep the local airbase open (though it contributes nothing to the national defense).

As last week's cliff-hangers made clear, politicians ignore such tasks at their own peril. Big-name national figures learned they could not take local issues for granted while they pursued a national agenda. For all his stature as a potential presidential candidate, Bill Bradley very nearly fell victim to a local political battle over New Jersey Governor Jim Florio's detested $2.8 billion tax hike. Bradley tried to hide from voter wrath against Florio, but he was the only target in sight; in the end he squeezed into office with 51% of the vote, down from 64% six years ago. Florio heard the message as well: the next day he agreed to rethink his tax plan.

But Bradley and his colleagues in tight races were merely chastened. Nothing short of a scandal could oust most sitting lawmakers. Because of his unseemly ties to defense contractors, Maryland Democrat Roy Dyson was defeated by a high school teacher. Voters ousted Minnesota Republican Arlan Stangeland after questions were raised about his charging to his House expense account several hundred phone calls to a female lobbyist. Two West Coast G.O.P. Congressmen, Oregon's Denny Smith and California's Charles Pashayan, were crushed beneath the weight of the savings and loan mess, though other S&L joyriders survived. California Senator Alan Cranston, also tainted by the S&L debacle, announced that he would not run for a fifth term in 1992. He cited health as the reason. However, his home-state standing has plummeted.

Setting Limits. Presented with few real choices, voters found other ways to make themselves heard. By wide margins, voters in California, Colorado and Kansas City passed resolutions that would force legislators to leave office after 12 years. Polls elsewhere showed strong support for limiting Congressmen and Senators to 12 years in office, even though that would mean that many popular lawmakers would be forced to step down long before voters are ready to retire them. On one level, term limits are no more than a Republican ploy to break the Democrats' grip on state legislatures and Congress. Moreover, it is not clear that states have the constitutional right to determine the qualifications of members of Congress; the Colorado bill is sure to go to the Supreme Court. But it is also a measure of voter despair that so many people see no other way to bring in fresh blood than by ejecting incumbents across the board.

One better way, of course, would be for Congress and the White House to support genuine campaign-finance reform as at least a start in making the electoral process look more like a competition than a coronation. Providing incumbents and challengers with equal amounts of public funds and access to the airwaves would weaken the special interests and open the races to genuine challenge. Last week's dispiriting results raised some hopes that reform might finally stand a chance. "I see a glimmer, like Rome in decay," says Texas environmental activist Diane Wilson. "We're nearing a point where it's so bad, the system will be forced to reform."

But the House has avoided taking action, and Republican filibusters blocked votes on reform measures in the Senate. If anything, the narrow escapes of so many incumbents are likely to make them all the more protective of their privileges -- now, of all times, they cannot afford to play fair. That, in fact, is just what many voters expect incumbents to do. "They all got back in," complains Jack Vanden Brulle, 55, a Berkeley printer. "Oh, sure, they say that some races were closer than those people have been accustomed to, and that therefore they may have got a message. But I don't believe that -- you can't scare these guys."

A small bit of good news last week was that money, while it never hurts, does not guarantee victory. In Florida, Democrat Lawton Chiles was outspent 2 to 1 by Republican Governor Bob Martinez. Yet Chiles prevailed by capitalizing on the revulsion with politics-as-usual in a conspicuously populist campaign. "I'm really frustrated with politicians, but I just liked Chiles for how he ran his campaign. It wasn't the issues at all," said Elizabeth Bardfeld, a 26-year-old law-school graduate. Some analysts saw Florida's election as a trendsetter, proving that a plain-speaking candidate with a low budget can beat a flush Republican with a slick advertising machine. "Chiles got off the big-money wagon and he walked the streets," says Carmen Morris, 32, president of a Miami public relations firm. "And we ate it up."

Nor could money prevail in Texas, where multimillionaire Republican Clayton Williams spent $8 million of his own funds ($4.40 a vote) running against state treasurer Ann Richards. He made his humiliation only more expensive. "It was the stupidest campaign run in the country this year," declares Emory University political scientist Merle Black. The race was Williams' to lose: he led by as much as 15 points over the summer, until his sexist buffoonery, his ignorance of state government and his admission that he paid no income taxes in 1986 made a lasting impression on voters.

For all the talk that George Bush's coat had no tails, the President may have made the difference in the most crucial race of all: helping Senator Pete Wilson defeat Feinstein in California. The state will gain seven new congressional seats as a result of the 1990 census, and will account for 20% of all the electoral votes needed to win the White House.

Analysts trying to assess the long-term impact of last week's voting point above all to the redistricting battle that will soon unfold in many states. Despite holding the governorships in California and Illinois and gaining those in Michigan and Ohio, the Republicans are still in a weaker position than Democrats to draw new congressional district lines. The Democratic losses were more than made up for by their victories in Florida and Texas, key Sunbelt states where the G.O.P. had expected to make major inroads this year.

The Season of Discontent. Midterm elections are traditionally an expression of discontent with the party that controls the White House, and 1990 was no exception. Earlier this year, when the President's approval rating floated up to 80%, the G.O.P. had hoped for a big upset that would open the way to Senate control in 1992, when 20 Democrats will be defending their seats.

But then, to the horror of Republican candidates and strategists, Bush squandered the most powerful asset of all. By abandoning his "no new taxes" pledge, Bush stripped his party of its most effective electoral theme. The battle over the budget, during which Bush waffled repeatedly and reinforced his image as a champion of the rich, was a political nightmare come true. "Bush had led all the Representatives to run against taxes," says Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University of Illinois-Chicago, "and he had to hurt all of them."

Despite Bush's tumble, Democrats were not able to clean up. One reason was that they already held such a heavy majority in the House of Representatives, 258 to 175. "There are so many of us now," notes Speaker Tom Foley, that "we may be bumping up against the ceiling." But it was also clear last week that Democrats were hurt by the budget battle. Their vaunted attempt to exploit the "fairness issue" by raising taxes on the wealthy fizzled in a generalized rejection of tax hikes of all kinds.

No New Taxes. The ingrained distrust of government's ability to spend money wisely was even more pronounced at the state level. In contrast to previous elections, voters refused to impose new taxes even when they were earmarked for specific popular causes like fighting drugs and crime or protecting the environment. "Last time we were ready to pay, and we got taxed for it," says Sunny Merik, an editor in Santa Clara, Calif., who in the past supported measures that underwrote highway improvements and other public works. "But then the people in Washington put some ((fuel)) taxes on top of that, and then gas prices went up because of the Middle East. People would be crazy to tax themselves on top of all that. I have one friend who said he voted against everything that cost money."

Fear of an economic recession and painful cuts in services dissuaded voters from approving draconian cuts in present tax levels. In California, Montana, Nebraska, Colorado and Utah, they rejected initiatives that would limit spending or roll back taxes. A similar measure in Massachusetts would have cut the state budget by 8% by reducing fees to 1988 levels. The proposal was supported by the Republican candidate, William Weld, and opposed by Democrat John Silber, who warned of a "meltdown" of the state economy. In the end voters accepted Weld -- and rejected his tax rollback.

There were similar mixed messages in other states. In Illinois, Democrat Neil Hartigan promised to remove an unpopular 2% income tax surcharge, while Republican James Edgar admitted he would keep the levy in place. Edgar privately asked George Bush to stay away, fearing the anger that Bush's tax reversal had bred. Voters overwhelmingly wanted a rollback -- but did not trust Hartigan to do it. Edgar won by 52% to 48%. Nebraska's Republican Governor, Kay Orr, went back on her pledge not to raise taxes, as did Florida's Martinez and Governor Mike Hayden in Kansas. All three lost.

In many cases, the Governors who fell were victims of an electoral irony. The anger at politicians in Washington was felt more on the state level than on the national level. Throughout the 1980s, Reaganomics shifted much of the burden of government to the states -- whether for providing services or finding ways to pay for them. Incumbent members of Congress can hide from their responsibility for such steps, but sitting Governors cannot. As chief executives, they directly bear the blame for policies that affect the voters. That wrath accounts for the decisions by Connecticut's William O'Neill and Massachusetts' Michael Dukakis not to seek another term after imposing tax increases. Special-interest money also plays a smaller role in state races -- which means that voters can more easily make themselves heard.

A Gender Gap? When it came to the "woman factor," the patterns were just as difficult to discern. This was supposed to be the year that women candidates would pour into office in record numbers. More women were running for top posts than ever before: eight each for the U.S. Senate and governorships, 67 for the House of Representatives. With few exceptions these candidates were experienced politicians who had worked their way up through the system and established networks of support that might carry them into high office at last.

Yet as the election approached, events seemed to conspire against female office seekers. The Persian Gulf crisis pushed abortion and other social issues off the front pages, making it harder for challengers like Claudine Schneider, who tried to upset Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, the veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in Oregon Barbara Roberts used a breezy style and support for abortion rights to stage a come- from-behind victory over an opponent who spent almost twice as much money. There was still a gender gap: women turned out heavily for Richards in Texas and Feinstein in California. But one result of the coming of age of female candidates is that their gender is no longer a novelty, no more potent than specific concerns over taxes or crime -- or war and peace. " 'Women's issues' is a misnomer," says Richards. "They care about crime, the environment and other things besides abortion."

In some cases, women exerted more influence on the outcomes by their absence than by their presence. Democratic Governor Jim Blanchard of Michigan was tossed out by voters who were irritated by, among other things, his less than courtly dumping of Lieutenant Governor Martha Griffiths, 78. His ex-wife also made a contribution to his defeat by selling her titillating memoirs to the Detroit News.

Back in Washington, the increased Democratic strength in Congress promises even more polarized policymaking. In the House, Speaker Foley is likely to press populist bills on health care, civil rights and an income tax surcharge on millionaires. Foley's strategy is to confront Bush with an unpalatable choice: if the President signs the legislation, Democrats will get the credit, but if he vetoes the bills, Democrats will gain an issue for 1992. Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who like Foley had leaned toward conciliation with the White House in the past two years, will take the offensive now that Bush has proved vulnerable. That could lead to yet more partisan battles over issues that Americans care deeply about: civil rights, environmental protection, education and the war on drugs.

In a sense this has been a month of civics lessons, which, when studied together, confirm the deepest anxieties of the most disheartened voters. It | began with the budget battle, a bloody, ugly brawl that left no winners and many scars. All the boasts about statesmanship and responsibility could not hide the fact that few hard decisions were made by either the White House or the Congress. Even the handful of officials with the best intentions and purest hearts could not find a way to make policy out of principle. And even if they had, there is no certainty that voters would have rewarded them for their courage.

Then last week it became clear why. Anger could not be channeled into action; the crippling of the policy process begins with the electoral process. Hate mongering, deception and mudslinging are all widely deplored, and then used to great effect. How can voters fail to be cynical when politicians buy their jobs by selling favors and use the money to ensure that voters don't get much of a chance to punish them? Public opinion surveys around the nation registered disgust and sorrow at the processes by which lawmakers are elected and through which they govern. As long as American politics drifts away from democracy's dreams, the voters' only real choice will be to say no.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/ Los Angeles, Hays Gorey/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Houston