Iraq Factor May Surface in This Fall’s Elections : Politics: Anger over gas price hikes and anxiety over the military situation have replaced the S&L; crisis and budget deficit as the hot voter issues.

Until recently, when folks at the Point After restaurant talked politics, they mostly groused about the budget deficit and the savings-and-loan fiasco.

But the Mideast crisis has provided them with a fresh target--the high price of gasoline.

“You’d better believe people here are good and sore,” says Ken Beer, operator of the local Sunoco station in this east Iowa town, who has been forced to boost prices by 22 cents a gallon since the Iraqi army swept into Kuwait. “The government ought to do something,” Beer contends. “If they can control wages, they can control gasoline prices.”

Beer isn’t alone in his frustration. Two weeks after Iraq’s attack on Kuwait, voter resentment over the gasoline price hikes--combined with anxiety about the U.S. military commitment in the Middle East--is painfully evident from talks with voters and politicians here in the Hawkeye State, an important battleground in the 1990 midterm election. And opinion polls show similar feelings are widespread across the entire country as the struggle for the House and Senate gets under way.

By a comfortable margin, Americans generally support President Bush’s decision to commit U.S. troops to the area to block further Iraqi military action. Yet, politicians of both parties fear that unless the nation’s first post-Cold War international crisis is resolved quickly, it could produce a serious backlash, intensifying the mood of discontent that already had pervaded the electorate. “It’s shocking to me to see the cynicism and disillusionment about politics,” Democrat Eric Tabor, making his third attempt to win the House seat here in Iowa’s 2nd congressional district, told a group of his supporters over lunch at the Point After last week. “The savings and loan scandal and the big oil companies getting away with raising prices are all lumped together by people as a case of us-versus-the-politicians.”

Jay White, a county coordinator for Tabor’s Republican foe, Jim Nussle, agrees. “Voters are more pessimistic than ever,” White says. “There’s a lot of hesitation and caution about the economy and a lot of anger at special-interest gouging.”

“We have a lot of spineless people out there in Washington who are not making decisions,” Nussle himself told a reporter as he prepared for a meeting with supporters at Big Bill’s farm supply store in Wyoming, Iowa, a town of 700 about 40 miles west of Clinton where shopkeepers complain that business is on the skids.

At the meeting, a Wyoming housewife complained that “people on welfare can live high on the hog in a little town like this. The system should be set up differently.”

The crisis in the Middle East is only the latest in a series of shocks and frustrations that have unsettled the electorate here and elsewhere in the country.

The rapidly expanding cost of the savings and loan bailout, the slowdown in the economy and the prolonged wrangling over the federal budget deficit--dramatized by President Bush’s abandoning his vow not to raise taxes--have added visibly to voters’ anxiety. Even before the Middle East crisis erupted, a Market Opinion Research survey showed that, by a margin of 57% to 29%, Americans believed that the country was heading down “the wrong track”--a figure that one GOP congressional strategist labels “horrendous.”

The confrontation with Iraq has only added to such apprehensions. Soon after the fighting broke out, a Washington Post-ABC poll showed that 60% of Americans believed that U.S. involvement would lead to outright war with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad. On the question of gasoline price hikes, 87% said they believed “the oil suppliers are just using the situation to make more money.”

It’s still too early to tell how much--and to whose advantage--the Middle East crisis will influence voters in November. But based on early evidence, some fundamental conclusions emerge:

THE PRESIDENT: Bush enjoys overwhelming public support for his decision to send U.S. troops to blunt Iraq’s threat to Saudi Arabia, but he does not have a blank check.

Even as loyal a supporter as Iowa Rep. Tom Tauke, who is challenging Democrat Tom Harkin in one of 1990’s most closely contested Senate races, makes clear that although he supports the use of U.S. economic sanctions and air power against Iraq, he is opposed to any land war. “If Bush would announce tomorrow that we’re going to have a ground invasion of Kuwait, count me out,” he said.

Moreover, Tauke worries that even Bush’s current support may erode rapidly. “Americans like things like this to get over quickly,” he said.

Indeed, Tauke’s opponent Harkin already is voicing concern about what he contends is the failure of America’s NATO allies to do their part. “I am getting more and more uncomfortable every day that goes by that our allies aren’t helping us,” he said.

Some Republicans hope that public support for the President’s actions will help cushion them against the losses that the party that controls the White House ordinarily suffers in an off-year election. But others dismiss the notion that GOP candidates can ride to victory on a wave of patriotic fervor. “This isn’t Panama or Grenada,” GOP pollster Linda DiVall warns.

THE ECONOMY: Some Democrats worry that the Middle East crisis has taken voters’ minds off the fast-weakening economy, which some of their strategists believe is heading into recession.

But a good many voters appear to believe that the recent boost in oil prices and other dislocations in the economy could make the situation worsen more rapidly. The Washington Post-ABC survey showed that nearly 40% of the electorate expects the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to have “a major negative impact on the U.S. economy.”

Republicans point to different polling data that shows that, by a margin of 44% to 33%, Americans believe that the Republicans in the White House can do a better job than Democrats in Congress of managing the economy. “The Democrats are deluding themselves if they believe voters think they are the party to fix the economy,” says Richard Billmire, consultant to the Republican Senate Campaign Committee.

INCUMBENCY: Until the Middle East crisis, Republicans had been pointing hopefully to polling figures that showed unusually high voter dissatisfaction with incumbents--an attitude that extends to the local level here in Iowa.

“People tell me they don’t care what party I belong to as long as I don’t hold office now,” says Hugh McAleer, a supporter of Tabor, who is running for the state Legislature here in DeWitt.

But the crisis has given an offsetting advantage to current office holders by putting a premium on the supposed wisdom that comes with their experience on the job. Democratic Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, facing a stiff challenge from Republican Rep. Lynn Martin, has benefited from valuable media attention during the Middle East crisis because of his post on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Challengers, meanwhile, have to struggle to get the attention of a public preoccupied with the Middle East crisis. “It’s an incumbent’s protection-plot,” Republican consultant Eddie Mahe says.

The bevy of imponderables surrounding the Middle East developments makes the task of forecasting House and Senate contests even more difficult than usual.

In the battles for the Senate, where the Democrats now hold a 55-to-45 majority, the Republicans would need a net gain of five seats to regain the control of that chamber, which they lost to Democrats in 1986.

As of last week, however, the polls showed only one Republican challenger either even or ahead of a Democratic incumbent--Hawaii’s GOP Rep. Patricia Saiki, whose forceful personality and reputation for effectiveness is helping to offset the partisan appeal of her Democratic incumbent opponent, Daniel K. Akaka, in that heavily Democratic state.

But Republicans are still hopeful. Wendy DeMocker, spokeswoman for the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, contends that with more than 11 weeks left before Election Day, “We feel fortunate to have so many of our challengers behind incumbents by just single digits or low teens.”

Other states, besides Illinois and Iowa, where Republican Senate hopes are high include:

--Rhode Island, where Rep. Claudine Schneider opposes incumbent Sen. Claiborne Pell, whom Republicans contend is preoccupied with foreign policy.

--Nebraska, where Democratic Sen. J. James Exon, whom critics charge has lost touch with the folks back home, is being challenged by former Rep. Hal Daub.

Democratic strategists believe their best chance of taking away a seat from the Republicans is in Kentucky, where former Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloan is challenging one-termer Mitch McConnell, whom polls show to be vulnerable.

They are also hopeful about Colorado, where their party’s candidate, Josie Heath, is vying with Republican Rep. Hank Brown for the seat left vacant by retiring Republican incumbent William L. Armstrong.

Another likely target, Democrats believe, is North Carolina, where former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, a black man, is challenging right-wing icon Jesse Helms--a matchup that has galvanized liberals and conservatives around the country.

The contest for the House of Representatives is no contest at all. The Democrats’ 257-to-176 advantage simply is too large for the GOP to surmount, so Republican strategists say their aim is simply to break even while Democrats predict gains of two to five seats.

Democrats say the most vulnerable Republicans are two who have been accused of improper involvement with savings and loan institutions--Rep. Charles Pashayan Jr. of Fresno, and Denny Smith of Oregon.

Republicans are planning to use the savings and loan issue themselves against Democrats such as James McClure Clarke of North Carolina, Elizabeth J. (Liz) Patterson of South Carolina, Doug Barnard Jr. of Georgia and Frank Annunzio of Illinois.

But GOP efforts to reduce the Democrats’ huge majority face an obstacle of the Republicans’ own making:

With eight Republican House members running for the Senate and three others running for governor and lieutenant governor, there now are 18 Republican seats that will be open this November, compared to only 10 House seats being vacated by Democrats.

Saddam Hussein may influence them all.