NEWS ANALYSIS : Races Lacking Focus With Big Issues Avoided

The November election finds the United States teetering on the brink of war in the Middle East and on the verge of a potentially painful recession at home. But you’d never know it from listening to the candidates.

Professionals in both parties agree that neither of these towering issues--nor any of a flock of other substantive national concerns--has had much impact on the contests for House and Senate seats.

Instead, two weeks before voters go to the polls to choose among candidates for Congress and for state and local offices, they face a blur of contradictory claims, personality clashes and hazy promises, lacking any focus or direction.

“There is no national theme that holds across the board,” says Charles Black, spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman agrees. “Right now there are no clear heroes, and no clear villains and no clear plot line,” he says.

Some Democratic strategists contend that as the candidates approach the homestretch, they will be able to transform the campaign into a national referendum on economic policy.

They note that traditionally this is the period when voter interest heightens--and the adjournment of Congress frees incumbent lawmakers to roam the hustings.

“Now the debate is going to shift to the question of which party is putting up a fight for the little guys as opposed to the big guys,” says Paul Tully, political director of the Democratic National Committee.

But turning that prospect into reality will be no easy task. The Democrats will have to overcome Republican counterattacks, their own images as free spenders and heavy taxers, and other factors that have so far shaped the campaign and blurred the issues.

Meanwhile, the campaigns around the country have been dwelling on issues that Curtis Gans, executive director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, describes as “peripheral, pernicious, or both.”

One extreme example is the Minnesota gubernatorial contest, where incumbent Democrat Rudy Perpich was considered vulnerable because of his idiosyncratic behavior--such as selling his official state car to cut the costs of running the governor’s office.

Republicans sought to present their candidate, businessman John Grunseth, as a pillar of stability. But their efforts may have been undermined by published charges that Grunseth once enticed four teen-age girls into swimming nude in his home pool. Grunseth has denied the story.

Few other campaigns have been so titillating. Most of them turn on matters that Democratic pollster Celinda Lake calls “micro-issues”--ranging from taxpayer peeves, such as Congress’ pay raise, to the emotionally charged questions surrounding the right to abortion.

Important as some of these matters are to individual voters and communities, however, airing them sheds little light on major questions of public policy, such as war or peace and boom or bust.

It isn’t uncommon for off-year elections to seem parochial and disjointed. But the fuzzy and fragmented nature of this year’s races is particularly striking because of the urgency and seriousness of the problems facing the country.

Besides the confrontation in the Persian Gulf and the slumping economy, the country is facing a serious savings and loan crisis, a continuing high trade deficit and growing concern about the environment.

“I’ve never seen a campaign cycle that is so poorly defined in terms of the political environment,” says Douglas Sosnick, political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Meanwhile, as candidates in both parties seem to be trying to duck the hard questions, opinion polls reflect an increasingly grim public view of the national condition.

A Washington Post poll published last week found that nearly 80% of those interviewed said the country was “pretty seriously off on the wrong track”--the lowest measurement of public confidence since the Watergate era.

Predictably, voter apathy also seems to be on the rise, as reflected by the low turnout in the 1990 primaries and by opinion survey results. “Polls are showing the level of interest in this election is the lowest we’ve ever seen,” pollster Lake says.

Some analysts put the blame for the hollow nature of the races on both parties. “There has been a conscious national Republican strategy not to try to present a strong national message, and a consistent inability of the Democrats to define a message,” Gans says.

And Republicans privately acknowledge that their approach to the elections has been mainly defensive--designed to protect the offices they already hold against the historical trend that the party that controls the White House almost invariably loses ground in off-year elections.

That has left it up to the Democrats. They mounted their first assault early last summer after President Bush retracted his “read my lips” campaign pledge of no new taxes--and when the escalating cost of the savings and loan crisis made the Republicans seem vulnerable.

But then the Persian Gulf crisis erupted, and Democrats concluded it would be politically imprudent to do anything but give their full support to the commander in chief. That, in turn, eliminated any opportunity for serious political debate over Bush’s Middle East policy.

Meanwhile, the drama and tension surrounding Operation Desert Shield distracted voter attention from the economy and other domestic issues, and sent Bush’s poll ratings soaring--making it difficult to challenge him on any grounds.

Now, Democrats believe Bush has given them another opportunity to take the offensive after his nationally televised speech urging public support for the ill-fated White House-congressional budget agreement reached last month.

Democrats think the TV speech boomeranged not only because the agreement was rejected by the House but because the speech called attention to the seriousness of the deficit issue, which Democrats believe favors them more than Republicans in the elections.

“That speech convinced a lot of people that there are big stakes involved in the budget discussions,” the Democratic National Committee’s Tully says. “We think this will move the debate in the closing days of the campaign and we will benefit.”

Democrats got further help when Bush appeared to waffle in his stand on raising tax rates for the wealthy. “The President appeared to be moving around a lot on that issue,” says Black, the Republican National Committee spokesman. “The Republicans ticked down” in the polls.

But Republicans seem convinced that both their President and their candidates will weather that storm. At any rate, they clearly have no intention of letting the Democrats have their own way in the economic debate.

Even as Congress was moving toward a bipartisan compromise on the budget, GOP leaders from Bush on down denounced the version of the budget adopted by House Democrats, which would have deferred for one year the indexing of the federal income-tax brackets to allow for inflation.

“There they go again,” the GOP’s Black declared. The proposed House budget, he contends, “does everything every other Democrat tax plan in recent memory does--sneaks a tax increase on the middle class.”

Moreover, as the campaigns move into their final stage, the Democrats have to contend not only with what the Republicans say about them but also with what voters think about them.

As Democrats acknowledge, the party still suffers from memories of the skyrocketing inflation that the country endured the last time a Democrat ran the economy.

“Just as the Great Depression cast a long shadow over the Republican Party, the Jimmy Carter presidency still casts a pall over the Democrats,” pollster Mellman says.

Here’s a brief look at prospects for both parties at the state and congressional levels:

The Governorships

These races are getting extra attention this year because of the key role that governors will play in the reapportionment of congressional delegations after the 1990 census.

Democrats, who already control 29 of the 50 governorships, are predicting they will gain two or three more in November. But they’ll have a hard time winning those they want most--California, Florida and Texas, states that together are expected to gain 15 House seats.

The contests in California between GOP Sen. Pete Wilson and Democrat Dianne Feinstein and in Florida between incumbent Republican Gov. Bob Martinez and former Democratic Sen. Lawton Chiles are both rated as tossups.

In Texas, Democrat Ann Richards, the state treasurer, trails Republican Clayton W. Williams Jr., though polls show that she is cutting into his big early lead.

Among other big states now governed by Republicans, Democrats are hopeful of capturing Illinois, where Republican Gov. James R. Thompson is retiring. In New England, they claim to be confident of winning Rhode Island and Maine.

But Republicans expect victory in now-Democratic Vermont, and possibly two other states governed by Democrats--Massachusetts and Connecticut. Republicans also are favored to take Ohio away from the Democratic column.

The Senate

Although Republicans have more seats at stake in this election than the Democrats--18 to 16--they are nevertheless hoping to gain enough ground to be in position in 1992 to take over that body, which currently is controlled by the Democrats, 55 to 45.

The four best Republican prospects are Hawaii, where polls give Rep. Patricia Saiki a narrow lead over Democratic incumbent Daniel K. Akaka; Massachusetts, where businessmen Jim Rappaport is hoping to exploit discontent with the governorship of Michael S. Dukakis to upset Democratic incumbent John Kerry; Iowa, where Rep. Tom Tauke is challenging Democrat Tom Harkin, and Nebraska, where former Rep. Hal Daub is battling Democrat J. James Exon.

Democratic hopes for making gains of their own are highest in North Carolina, where former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt is trying to upset longtime conservative hero Jesse Helms and become the second black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

Also high on the Democratic target list is Oregon, where four-term Republican Sen. Mark O. Hatfield is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Democratic businessman Harry Lonsdale. In four weeks, Lonsdale narrowed Hatfield’s lead in the polls from 36 points to 6.

The House

Democrats are expected to increase their 258-to-176 majority between five and 15 seats.

Among half a dozen or so Republican incumbents considered vulnerable, the two considered most likely to fall are Rep. Charles Pashayan Jr. of Fresno and Denny Smith of Oregon, both of whom have been charged with improper involvement with savings and loan institutions.

For their part, Republicans have targeted a like number of Democratic incumbents, including Frank Annunzio of Illinois, whose own involvement with the savings and loan industry, Republicans say, is costing him support.

But the Democrats have a significant advantage: They have 18 open GOP seats to aim at--11 vacated by House members who are seeking higher office--contrasted with only 11 Democratic open seats.

And Democrats contend their candidates are leading in contests for five of these seats--those of Saiki in Hawaii, Tauke in Iowa, John G. Rowland in Connecticut, Claudine Schneider in Rhode Island and Tommy F. Robinson in Arkansas.