Democrats See Midwest as Key to Senate

By ROBERT SHOGAN

Oct. 5, 1986 12 AM PT

Times Political Writer

HILLSBORO, Mo. —

“I want to tell you that I think all of us are tired of hearing a lot of talk about trade from a national Administration that talks like Rambo and acts like Bambi,” Harriett Woods, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Missouri, tells a campaign rally in front of the Jefferson County Courthouse.

Back from the crowd comes an echo of a celebrated Democratic battle cry: “Give ‘em hell, Harriett.”

Hope to Reap Benefits

Dishing out fire and brimstone Harry S. Truman-style is just what Woods and other Democratic candidates are doing all across the nation’s breadbasket these days. As harvest time and Election Day approach, Democrats are laboring to reap the political benefits of what has been a long season of farm discontent.

Republican candidates contend that voters hereabouts, seasoned by long exposure to political rhetoric, will not be swayed by the Democratic barrage. “Farmers have been through the mill and they know who to blame and who to support,” says North Dakota Sen. Mark Andrews, one of the Republicans facing such attacks.

Yet with overseas markets shrinking and grain prices tumbling, the Democrats have enough ammunition to put Republicans on the defensive and to bolster their own hopes of capturing the richest prize of this election--control of the U.S. Senate.

Whether or not a farm-state rebellion occurs and these hopes are realized depends on the interplay of structural and symbolic forces that shape the American political process. The country’s political parties are weak and the responsibility for governing is divided by the Constitution between the legislative and executive branches. Thus, voters are often reluctant to punish individual officeholders whose party controls the White House simply because of economic problems.

Rationalizations Overcome

But when conditions get bad enough, history shows that pain and anger overcome the rationalizations offered by incumbents. Then the electorate decides, in the time-honored phrase, to “throw the rascals out.”

In the Farm Belt, the tension between voters’ customary patience and their occasional indignation is greatest in four Senate races:

--Missouri. Democrat Woods, the state’s lieutenant governor, is battling to retain for her party the seat now held by retiring Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton. Former Gov. Christopher S. Bond is providing formidable opposition. The latest polls indicate the contest is a dead heat.

--North Dakota. Republican Andrews, trying for a second term, faces a stiff challenge from state Tax Commissioner Kent Conrad. Starting out nearly 30 percentage points behind, Conrad has pulled even in the race, according to a recent poll.

--South Dakota. Democrats claim their candidate, Rep. Thomas A. Daschle, leads incumbent Republican Sen. James Abdnor by 10 to 15 percentage points in their own private polls. Abdnor’s staff claims their surveys show the race to be “roughly even.”

--Wisconsin. Republican incumbent Sen. Bob Kasten, leads by about 12 points over Democratic challenger Ed Garvey, nominated in his party’s Sept. 9 primary. But Democrats claim that the troubled farm economy will help close the gap for Garvey, a former assistant state attorney general and former head of the National Football League Players Assn.

Need Four More Seats

Since Democrats hold 47 Senate seats to the Republicans’ 53, the Democrats need to make a net gain of four in the 34 Senate contests being held around the country this fall if they are to achieve a Senate majority in 1987. If they can hold on to Missouri and capture at least two of the three Republican seats in the Farm Belt battlegrounds, Truman’s party will have taken a big step toward that goal.

And controlling the Senate would help the Democrats establish the agenda for the 1988 presidential campaign.

Buttressing the Democratic case is an array of dismal economic statistics. For example, Michael Read, an agricultural specialist advising Democratic challenger Garvey in Wisconsin, cites figures showing that the average dairy farmer now earns the equivalent of $2 an hour. Similarly, he notes that corn is selling for $1.18 a bushel, down from $3.43 in 1980, while wheat has plunged to about $2 a bushel from about $4.20 a bushel during the same period.

Meanwhile, agricultural exports, valued at $44 billion in 1980, are expected by some economists to drop to around $22 billion this year, Read says, while during the same period it is estimated that agricultural imports will climb from $7 billion to around $22 billion.

While no one disputes that the farm economy is slumping, politicians in both parties concede they are uncertain how voters will react. The key question about the elections in the farm states, says Democrat Woods, is whether “the farmers (are) going to register a protest vote or throw up their hands and say, ‘What difference does it make?’ ”

It is not hard to find evidence of skepticism about the gains that can be won at the ballot box, even among the leaders of farmers organizations that have traditionally spearheaded protest movements.

“I don’t know that farmers by themselves can affect the outcome of this election,” says Vernon J. Deines of Ramona, Kan., local director of the Farmers Union, who attended a conference of about 1,500 agricultural activists in St. Louis last month. “We’re less than 2% of the population and we’re split so many different ways.”

Others, such as Wayne Cryts, a leader in the American Agricultural Movement, contend that by making common cause with workers in industries that have suffered along with agriculture from the loss of foreign markets, farmers can wield plenty of political muscle.

“The message I’m trying to carry is not just an agricultural message,” says Cryts, who is challenging Republican Rep. Bill Emerson in the 8th District in southeastern Missouri. “I believe we need to change our trade policies.”

Strident Rhetoric

To stir the farm electorate’s indignation, Cryts and other Democrats are using some of the most strident rhetoric heard in these parts since Truman himself turned the farm states against the GOP in 1948 by accusing the Republican “do-nothing” Congress of “sticking a pitchfork in the farmers’ backs.”

Cryts likens his foe to “the arsonist who works for the fire department. He sneaks around and sets the buildings on fire, and then he jumps on the fire engine and comes rolling in with the sirens blowing.”

Woods charges that, as a result of Reagan Administration efforts to solve the international debt crisis by encouraging Third World countries to export more farm products for world markets, “New York banks got rich while Missouri banks went broke. Our farmers lost their land, our factories shut down, while people in the Third World were pushed over the brink of starvation.”

Responding to such attacks, Republicans contend that the Democratic arguments are simplistic, that they distort Republican positions and that they are far quicker to lay blame than to lay out constructive solutions of their own.

“Farmers don’t hold Jim Abdnor responsible for their problems,” says Michael Freeman, an aide to the South Dakota Republican. “No one believes there is a single culprit or a single answer to the farm problem.”

North Dakota Republican Andrews says of Conrad, his Democratic challenger, “His first challenge is to define the message he wants to send. He needs to say what should be done differently and point out what I haven’t done that should have been done.”

Forced to Defend Vote

Like other Republicans who supported the 1985 farm bill, Andrews is often forced to defend his vote. The bill sought to recapture foreign markets for U.S crops by lowering prices through a new price support policy. Prices went down, but exports slumped too, leading to indignant outcries all through the Farm Belt.

But the legislation, under a provision that Andrews is quick to say he fought for, also maintained substantial federal subsidies to the farmer, supports intended to at least partially offset slumping prices. “This farm program is putting a lot more money into the farm economy in North Dakota than we’ve had in the past,” the senator claims.

Similar assertions of independence are heard from other embattled Republican senators. Aides to Wisconsin’s Kasten point out that he sought to block Adminstration-proposed cuts in dairy price supports and opposed the 1985 farm bill. “We have fought more or less continuously with the Administration over farm policy,” says Kasten’s agricultural adviser, Joseph Britt.

Discouraged Opponents

And in Iowa, incumbent Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley’s reputation for defying the Administration on farm and defense policy helped to discourage potential opponents from challenging him and Democrats privately concede they have little chance to beat him.

Still, Republican strategists concede some of their other Farm Belt candidates do face serious challenges. That is one reason why Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, whose own reelection seems assured because his personal prestige scared off opponents who might have seriously challenged him, is said to be drafting a new farm bill to be introduced before Election Day.

Its main feature reportedly would be to expand the current provision for so-called marketing loans, a form of export subsidy now given to rice and cotton growers, to offer such loans to wheat, soybeans and corn farmers to help them compete in world markets.

Democrats offered their own new farm remedy last month, a measure co-sponsored by Iowa’s Sen. Tom Harkin and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, which calls for a referendum among farmers on whether to reduce production enough to drive prices up, an approach that harks back to the early days of the New Deal.

But given the lack of agreement and prevailing skepticism about the efficacy of any farm proposal, some politicians question whether either of these measures can win many votes.

Woods, for one, is pitching her campaign along more general lines. “There are small groups of farmers who think they have the answer to the farm problem” she says. “But a lot of them are just angry and feel they’ve been let down, and they are the voters who are up for grabs.

“Their votes will be cast,” she says, “on whether they believe one candidate or another is really going to go up there to the Senate and do what they say they will do.”

Influenced by Feelings

Talks with voters here in Hillsboro during Woods’ brief campaign stop tended to support her belief: While the voters interviewed want a senator who can deal with the farm problem, they seem more influenced by their feelings about the candidate’s general background than by any specific policy proposal.

“I like Harriett Woods,” says Robert Moore, a maintenance man from Valley Lake who stopped by the local drug store. “She’s down to earth and she’s not afraid to talk to people about real issues.”

Across the street in the Woodstove Inn, Larry Krodinger, who runs a heating and air-conditioning business polishes off the $2.95 luncheon special--country steak, mashed potatoes and green beans--and explains why he is for Bond. “He did a good job as governor trying to bring in new business,” he says. “And I think the Republicans in general know how to get the economy in good shape.”

As important as the farm issue is politically in this region, because of the workings of the political system, its impact is likely to be limited mainly to the Senate races. That is because most Republican candidates for the House, here as elsewhere, seem protected by the advantages of their incumbency, which allows them to emphasize their role in serving the immediate interests of their constituents rather than in making broad policy.

“Congressmen do vote on national policy,” says Joe Gaylord, executive director of the Republican House Campaign Committee. “But in many instances they function mainly as ombudsmen, like Vin Weber in Minnesota helping farmers restructure their debt or Jim Lightfoot in Iowa getting surplus grain shipped to the South.

As for governorships, Democrats seem more likely to lose ground in the Farm Belt than gain it. One reason is that most of the farm state governorships at stake are already controlled by Democrats and two of their incumbents are leaving. Another factor is that local issues and personalities tend to overshadow the broader national debate over farm policy, which is shaped in Washington.

Republicans now think that their two best chances to pick up governorships are in Kansas, where GOP candidate Mike Hayden, Speaker of the Kansas House, leads Democratic Lt. Gov. Thomas R. Docking in the race to succeed Democratic Gov. John Carlin, and in Nebraska, where Republican state treasurer Kay A. Orr is ahead of Democrat Helen Boosalis, former mayor of Lincoln, for the chair being vacated by Democrat Robert Kerrey.

CAMPAIGN’86 BATTLEGROUND: THE FARM BELT AT STAKE IN THE REGION

Democrat Republican Total Governorships 4 3 7 U.S. Senate seats 3 4 7 Congressional seats 37 27 64

STATE-BY-STATE PROFILES Democrats vs. Republicans North Dakota

Senate: Incumbent Mark Andrews (R) vs. Kent Conrad

House: 0 Republicans, 1 Democrat South Dakota

Gov: George S. Mickelson (R) vs. Lars Herseth (no incumbent, was Republican)

Senate: Incumbent James Abdnor (R) vs. Thomas A. Daschle

House: 0 Republicans, 1 Democrat Nebraska

Gov: Helen Boosalis (D) vs. Kay A. Orr (no incumbent, was a D)

House: 3 Republicans, 0 Democrats Kansas

Gov: Thomas R. Docking (D) vs. Mike Hayden (no incumbent, was Democrat)

Senate: incumbent Bob Dole (R) vs. Guy MacDonald