The Price of Pork

By KAREN TUMULTY/WALLA WALLA

You don't have to look very far into the wheat-stubbled landscape of eastern Washington State to see what it means for this district's dusty towns and rural counties to be served by the most powerful Congressman in America. A few years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers considered moving its regional operations from Walla Walla to Portland or Seattle; instead, the corps' asbestos-ridden, World War II-era barracks is being replaced with a shining $10 million building downtown. Attempts by federal budget cutters to close Walla Walla's underused Veterans Affairs Medical Center met a similar end. And an hour north of town, $94 million in federal money is flowing into the widening of a dangerous stretch of highway.

Just about everyone in Walla Walla can name a favor or two that House Speaker Tom Foley has done, with taxpayer dollars, for someone or some business that they know. But what once was praised as "constituent service" these days also goes by the name of "pork." An unusual number of voters in eastern Washington State -- and in the districts of other powerful Democrats across America -- claim that they are looking beyond the local benefits of federal largess and pondering what it's costing the country to have 435 Congressmen and 100 Senators each forcing the government to keep open another unnecessary hospital or sleepy agency office or subsidy program for well-to-do ranchers. Like other voters around the country, Foley's constituents are questioning whether their Congressman's three-decade struggle to win and wield influence in the nation's capital has torn him out of touch with the folks back home, folks who say they care as much about the debt they're leaving to their children as about how many federal dollars are spent in their state.

But it is hard to judge how serious this talk really is. While they like to think of themselves as flinty and self-reliant, Westerners are in fact heavily dependent on the Federal Government for agricultural subsidies, military bases, hydroelectric power and water projects. As Foley's constituents talk dismissively about pork in one breath, they complain about Clinton Administration efforts to increase grazing fees in the next.

Every Monday morning, five salesmen for an agricultural chemicals firm meet for breakfast at a bustling diner called Clarette's. A few weeks ago, as they were were finishing up their last cups of coffee, talk shifted to politics. Four of the five said they had voted for Foley in the past. This year none of them plan to. Ironically, the Speaker's effectiveness was one of the reasons why. "It's basically pork. Even though we live here, it just isn't right," said Bob Johnston, 37. They also think of Capitol Hill as a place where no favor is done for free. Foley knows who to lean on and which string to pull, they agreed. "But what did he give away to do that?" demanded Gerard Schille, 42.

People everywhere say they're disgusted with Congress, but in eastern Washington, voters enjoy the unique ability to fire the guy who runs the place. No House Speaker has lost an election since the eve of the Civil War, and the parade of national-news reporters trooping around from Walla Walla to Spokane has helped awaken voters to the scent of history in the offing. Having suffered the second-worst showing of his 16 congressional campaigns during the September primary voting, Foley finds himself in the toughest race of his career. Yet only recently has he begun to campaign in earnest, mounting an uncharacteristically aggressive attack that has reduced his opponent's double- digit lead.

The Republican nominee is Foley's strongest adversary in recent memory: not for his political credentials, but for his lack of them. George Nethercutt, an affable, politically moderate 49-year-old adoption and estate lawyer from Spokane, comes across like Ward Cleaver and punctuates his campaign speeches with such cardigan-elbowed jibes as, "I don't want to be the Speaker. I want to be the listener." And while he respectfully and boyishly refers to the Speaker as "Mr. Foley," his hard-edged campaign ads paint the incumbent as the symbol of everything that is wrong with Washington. As Nethercutt spokesman Terry Holt puts it, "Foley is running against a political environment."

The Speaker is also running against his own record on national issues. His past two years of shepherding through Congress the programs of an unpopular Democratic President have taken their toll on Foley's standing in a district where most people generally vote Republican. Foley's efforts to pass an assault-weapons ban have provoked the National Rifle Association, which had once awarded him its Defender of Freedom award, to run TV ads against him. Also weighing in is Illinois-based Americans for Limited Terms, which is outraged over Foley's lawsuit to overturn his own state's term-limit initiative. All told, outside groups are spending an estimated $350,000 to defeat the Speaker.

Foley has had to match that spending, in part to counter an impression that he has grown aloof from the lives of people who raise cattle and run hardware stores in towns like Dusty, Dishman and Spangle. It is hard for many in the district to identify with a Congressman whose fine dark suits come from Brooks Brothers and whose tastes in entertainment run to modern art and ballet. Foley's straight-arrow image also has suffered since the furor last year over $100,000 in gains that he pocketed during four years of buying initial public offerings of stock. These highly profitable deals were legal but not available to the average investor; Foley subsequently closed his account.

Even with his job at great risk this year, Foley initially seemed reluctant to face the rigors of the campaign. While other lawmakers were rushing for the ! first flight home after the close of the congressional session, the Speaker lingered around Washington for five precious days. A prominent Democrat was startled to encounter Foley enjoying a leisurely workout at the exclusive, oak-paneled University Club in downtown Washington.

Voters had sent Foley a message in the primary. But in interviews he insisted that there was nothing unusual about this political year, that voter anger was exaggerated in news reports. Party officials were so dismayed that Tony Coelho, the de facto head of the Democratic National Committee, publicly chastised Foley by calling for him to begin running an "aggressive professional campaign." Translation: go negative against your opponent, and play up the pork.

Meanwhile, as it began to appear that Foley had given up, the whispered criticisms among fickle Capitol Hill insiders grew louder. They have always regarded his speakership as something of an accident. But only five years ago, his gentle dignity and judicious temperament were hailed as just what the House needed after his predecessor, Jim Wright, resigned amid scandal. Now those qualities of Foley's are more often seen as weakness -- something his party cannot afford in the face of the strongest and most confrontational Republican force in decades. Sniped a Democratic House aide: "Many of us are hoping that his constituents will do what we're afraid to."

Foley had something to prove to both Washingtons. In mid-October, like a great bear ending his hibernation, Foley awoke. With a fivefold fund-raising advantage over Nethercutt, the Speaker has blitzed his district with ads that are running everywhere, from prime-time TV to the most humble country weeklies. One spot declares that Nethercutt, whose previous political experience consisted of a few years as a Senate staffer and a stint as Spokane's G.O.P. chairman, is "a politician pretending he's an outsider." Other ads tackle what little record Nethercutt has on the issues, suggesting -- unfairly, he insists -- that he would vote to cut spending on such programs as childhood immunization.

By the brutal standards of Campaign '94 this is tame stuff, but it marks a distinct change for Foley. In past years, he ran his races quietly and mildly, with ads that showed him standing in a wheatfield and talking about his homesteader roots, or walking the Capitol corridors with his beloved Belgian shepherd Alice, who used to go to work with him. He is, after all, a man who began his congressional career three decades ago by holding a reception for the man he defeated. Nethercutt, who had been blasting Foley for months, seemed genuinely surprised by the Democrat's new tone. "This is a different Mr. Foley," he lamented.

Foley is also betting that self-interest will win out in the end. "The majority of people in my district think the job of a member of Congress is to constructively support local education, local transportation and law enforcement," he told TIME. The Speaker announced a blizzard of new federal projects for Spokane, including doubling the size of the survival-training school at Fairchild Air Force Base -- a facility, Foley added, that he had helped save from closure. He also noted that Spokane, a city where violent crime already runs well below the national average, will get more new cops than San Francisco from the recently enacted crime bill.

In his first of half a dozen scheduled debates with Nethercutt, Foley even managed to muster something that resembled a sneer as he suggested that his opponent would help "move the speakership of the House from eastern Washington to Georgia," an allusion to would-be Speaker Newt Gingrich's district, in exchange for "the lowest position on the House Agriculture Committee," Nethercutt's presumed assignment. His face deeply flushed, Foley shouted, "I fight every day with greater influence on issue after issue for the people of this district!"

Meanwhile, an increasingly defensive Nethercutt keeps trying to steer the debate back to the waste and corruption of the system at large. "Everything that comes from Washington comes with a price," Nethercutt says. But there was almost a plaintiveness in his voice as he reassured a local group that they need not suffer a pork-free diet: "Don't be fearful that the world will come to an end if Tom Foley is defeated."

For all Foley's newfound energy, it is far from clear that he will win back enough voters by Election Day. Loyal Democrats in the district are demoralized. If the election were held today, even Foley's advisers admit that he stands a good chance of being washed away in the national anti-insider tide. Says Seattle pollster Stuart Elway: "People in the Fifth District have the loudest voice in America if they want to see some changes in Congress, or to send a message to Congress." True enough, admits a Foley campaign strategist, but he warns: "It would be the most expensive telegram they've ever sent."