MRS. SMITH TO WASHINGTON?
BARNES, FRED
MRS. SMITH TO WASHINGTON? by Fred Barnes Seattle Rep. Linda Smith of Washington drives Republican honchos crazy. She voted against Newt Gingrich's reelection as House speaker. She opposed the...
...This has changed GOP calculations for capturing the five seats needed for a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators...
...Smith is "very, very vulnerable," said Del Ali of the Mason-Dixon polling firm...
...The next year, Smith spearheaded an initiative that holds down state spending and taxes...
...Republicans figured Murray would be difficult to beat whomever they nominated, and impossible to defeat if Smith won the nomination...
...one more poll showing her close or in a dead heat is needed to cinch that...
...Smith beat Bayley by 32.3 percent to 14.9 percent...
...Smith has a solid chance and needs money...
...But Smith, married just before she turned 18 and a tax preparer for H & R Block for years, has never lost an election...
...Jennifer Dunn, had just been elevated to a House GOP leadership post...
...He is totally ruthless...
...I talk to Mitch every day," Gorton says...
...I've got his phone number, but I haven't talked to him recently," she says...
...Only Bayley had a chance, a senior member of the Washington congressional delegation told me...
...She opposed the balanced-budget agreement in 1997 because it borrowed money from Social Security funds, and she voted against the $80 billion tax cut crafted by House Republicans in September for the same reason...
...In Congress, she voted against most-iavored-nation status for China and fast-track authority on trade agreements...
...She won what was thought to be a solidly Democratic seat in the state senate, got the GOP nomination for the U.S...
...Smith is hardly a down-the-line Perotista...
...Yet the state party, led by Gorton and Bayley, has rallied behind her...
...By late September, two polls found Smith was running roughly even with Murray among likely voters...
...He injected $1 million of his own money, ran ads attacking Smith, and outspent her by more than 21 in the primary...
...Her biggest achievements as a state senator were not legislative...
...When Smith announced for the Senate in mid-1997, GOP congressional leaders were apoplectic...
...But the likeliest opponent, Rep...
...Collectively, GOP candidates got 50 percent of the vote, Democrats 48 percent—another ominous sign for Murray...
...In Washington's blanket primary, incumbents are judged by how much they exceed 50 percent of the vote...
...Smith, never reticent, has publicly chastised Boeing for contracting out airplane parts to China...
...McConnell refused to meet with her, prompting Smith to issue a press release zinging him...
...Smith won by better than 2-1, defeating Bayley in each of Washington's 39 counties...
...Her willingness to go outside normal political channels, her reluctance to compromise, and her sometimes annoying style make people mad...
...And then she feuded with Sen...
...After introducing legislation to curb the power of the Internal Revenue Service, she voted against IRS reform (she disliked an amendment limiting medical coverage for veterans who smoke...
...But he expects McConnell, whose committee could provide in excess of $500,000, to give her more money...
...Like Barbara Boxer in California and Carol Moseley-Braun in Illinois, she cited the Senate's treatment of Anita Hill during the confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas as a reason for her decision to run...
...But it's her position on trade that really rankles...
...House seat in southwest Washington in 1994 on a write-in, and was reelected in 1996 with the help of a late count of absentee ballots...
...She's ardently pro-life, pro-school prayer, anti-gay rights, and so on...
...He has said he doesn't want to fund landslides, and he won't fund anybody who doesn't have a chance...
...That's something money can't buy...
...Says Gorton: "The Boeings and the Weyer-hausers and the wheat exporters and Microsoft will all be on the other side, partly because they usually go with incumbents, partly because of trade...
...Murray, on the other hand, is a free trader...
...Now she takes on Democratic senator Patty Murray, a conventional, though pleasant, liberal...
...Rather, she used Washington's initiative process in 1992 to enact paycheck pro- tection, blocking unions from arbitrarily spending dues for political purposes...
...She bucked Republican leaders and voted for campaign-finance reform favored by Democrats...
...In the Senate, Murray instantly became a reliable liberal vote and supporter of Clinton's proposals...
...Washington (along with Arkansas) had been relegated to the second tier...
...Ali had to eat those words...
...Establishment Republicans searched for another candidate in the September 15 primary...
...In this and on certain other issues—campaign-finance reform, the idea that the system in Washington, D.C., is corrupt—she reflects the views of her friend Ross Perot...
...She declined...
...Slade Gorton, says Smith's race is not top tier yet...
...Through an intermediary, Perot asked her to be his vice-presidential running mate on the Reform party ticket in 1996, Smith says, "but I said no...
...And though the North American Free Trade Agreement passed before she arrived in Congress in 1995, she has become a fierce critic of it...
...Republican strategists had been focusing on six Democratic seats—California, Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and Nevada...
...She doesn't, and she called him "one belligerent person who likes the laundering of money...
...Washington's senior Republican, Sen...
...In 1994, Gorton got 53 percent, then won the general election with just under 56 percent...
...Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, boss of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, over taking money from political action committees...
...On taxes and government spending and social issues, she's far more conservative than Perot or many Republicans...
...A state senator who dubbed herself "a mom in tennis shoes," Murray was elected in the so-called Year of the Woman, 1992...
...She has few friends in big business, normally a Republican con- stituency...
...Finally, a wealthy ex-prosecutor from Seattle, Chris Bayley, jumped into the race...
...Along the way, she has generated a reputation for being strong and independent...
...But that may change...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...So far, McConnell's committee has given Smith less than $20,000...
...Murray got an anemic 45.9 percent, though she spent several million dollars, mostly on TV ads, in the primary...
...Polls showed the race to be close...
...Gorton says he admires her sticking to principle in not taking PAC money, even though he thinks "it's a stupid principle...
...Smith's greatest strength—her prickly, populist brand of conservatism—has a downside...
...And Murray is in trouble...
...Smith won't take money from business PACs anyway, and she won't get many individual contributions from big-business types either...
...As tough as she was on Senate Republicans and Thomas then, Murray is merely "disappointed" with President Clinton's sexcapades today...
...Wrong...
Vol. 4 • October 1998 • No. 5
