MUD ON THE PRAIRIE

By ADAM COHEN/SIOUX FALLS

If South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler wins his hotly contested re-election battle, he may owe it to help from an unlikely source: a little-read Washington expose that describes him as "an imbecile of fantastic proportions" and suggests that he is gay. Pressler is making the book's rumors, and his contention that his opponent helped spread them, the cornerstone of his unorthodox bid for a fourth term. Depending on whom you ask, Pressler's crusade is either a principled stand against mudslinging or a shrewdly cynical attempt to win votes by presenting himself as a victim.

The race, which pits Pressler against the state's lone Congressman, the popular Tim Johnson, has drawn attention far beyond this sparsely populated state. The Democrats have long seen it as their best chance of unseating a Republican Senator and a virtual must win if they are to retake the Senate. But the race is turning out to be among the year's nastiest. And because of a combination of huge war chests and cheap media markets, the bitterness is being played out in ads that may reach record levels of saturation for a statewide race.

On paper, Pressler should be having an easy time. He has a dream resume that combines big-league prestige (Rhodes scholar, Harvard Law School graduate) and heartland values (Vietnam veteran, family farmer). He became chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee when the Republicans took over Congress, giving him bragging rights to this year's landmark telecommunications law and helping him raise as much as $5 million for his re-election bid. And he is running in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 49% to 41%. South Dakota hasn't given its three electoral votes to a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson.

But Pressler fever is not exactly burning up the prairies. Despite his lofty education, Pressler has long had a reputation in Washington as an intellectual lightweight, a rap that is by now well known to the voters back home. And critics in South Dakota say their senior Senator, after 18 years of cozying up to lobbyists, has "gone Washington." Six years ago, he scraped by with a 19,000-vote victory against an underfunded Democrat.

This year Johnson may make things even more uncomfortable for Pressler. The boyish Johnson, a fourth-generation South Dakotan and descendant of homesteaders, has a knack for connecting with his state's voters. He is a favorite of farmers, whose interests he has championed on the House Agriculture Committee, and of the state's elderly and Native American populations. He is likely to raise as much as $3 million, an impressive haul for a small-state candidate trying to oust an incumbent. Each side has released a poll putting its candidate ahead 49% to 39%, but most observers are calling the race a dead heat.

The campaign has had its share of ideological fingerpointing--Pressler calling Johnson too liberal for South Dakota, Johnson calling Pressler a Medicare-slashing friend of Newt Gingrich's--but its defining issue appears to be the flap over Washington Babylon, a thinly documented book that accuses Pressler of marrying in 1982 amid speculation that he was gay and of being seen at a "louche rendezvous" in Washington. Pressler, who has blanketed the state with ads attacking the "despicable" charges without stating specifically what they are, blames Johnson and his allies for bringing one of the book's co-authors, columnist Alexander Cockburn, into the state to replay the rumors. Johnson points out that Cockburn's address to a private club in Sioux Falls last month was arranged by former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk, who has his own feud with Pressler. Besides, Johnson says, "if Pressler hadn't made such a big deal about it, there wouldn't be 50 South Dakotans who ever heard of the book."

But many South Dakotans are hearing about it, if only because they are an easy audience to reach. The state's voters are concentrated in two small media markets (Sioux Falls and Rapid City), where 30 seconds of prime-time TV costs $500 (in contrast to $60,000 in Los Angeles). Both sides are gearing up for another roll in the mud, Pressler with a new round of ads attacking Johnson for the Washington Babylon rumors, Johnson with charges about Pressler's use of campaign funds for personal expenditures. South Dakota voters hoping for a probing debate of the issues may be disappointed, but fans of high-level political intrigue are likely to stay tuned.