Clinton Tax Plan Facing Test in Texas Election

The Democrats in the House of Representatives had scarcely finished celebrating their nail-biting passage of President Clinton’s economic plan last week when Kay Bailey Hutchison began fashioning a spear from their success.

In Washington, the House victory is being hailed as a sign of political recovery for Clinton. But in Texas the vote has just provided another weapon for Hutchison, the Republican candidate in Saturday’s special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.

“This will be the first election where we can show them (in Washington) just what we think of that tax bill,” she declared repeatedly as her campaign bus rolled through small towns in East Texas renowned as breeding grounds for conservative “yellow dog Democrats.”

“On June 5, we can send a message to Washington that we don’t have a deficit . . . because we’re being taxed too little, we have a deficit because government is spending too much,” she said.

That’s a message many Texans apparently are eager to post. With her tear-down-the-foundations assault on Clinton’s economic plan, Hutchison has assumed a commanding lead in the polls over interim Democratic Sen. Robert Krueger, a former congressman making his third bid for the Senate. In a Dallas Morning News survey conducted last week, Hutchison, the state treasurer, led Krueger 54%-35%; private Republican polling through Sunday found a 20-percentage-point gap.

Voting for Hutchison “is a way to slap at Clinton,” says Jim Dyer, director of the Texas Poll at Texas A&M; University. “And it appears that enough people will take the chance.”

Texans are generally more allergic to taxes than most Americans. But many observers see Hutchison’s single-note anti-tax assault as a forerunner of what the Democrats may face next year, when they must defend 22 Senate seats to the GOP’s 12.

Hutchison’s campaign strategy, the carbon-copy message delivered by the Republican candidate earlier this year in the Wisconsin special election to fill Defense Secretary Les Aspin’s House seat, and the GOP’s scorched-earth resistance to Clinton’s economic agenda in Congress all send the same signal, says Stuart Rothenberg, editor of The Political Report, a Washington newsletter.

“The Republicans have decided they are going to run 1978 and 1980 all over again. They are back to their themes of government is too big and taxes are too high.”

In the Wisconsin race, Democrat Peter Barca narrowly defeated conservative Republican Mark Neumann.

In the Texas campaign’s final days, Hutchison is hammering at that fundamentalist message as methodically as if she were pounding nails into a coffin. Given the opportunity, she says she would blue-pencil every dollar of Clinton’s proposed spending programs. And she promises to fight his new income, corporate, Social Security and energy taxes “with every breath in my body.”

“All these programs (Clinton has proposed) are terrific,” Hutchison said in an interview. “National service is something I would love to have in this country. . . . But we just can’t afford it. I think that people are of the mind that if you leave them alone and not give them this great service, all these extra things, but let them keep their paychecks and spend it the way they want to, they will be very happy.”

If Hutchison holds her lead, she would give Texas its first woman senator--and, with Phil Gramm, its first all-Republican Senate delegation since Reconstruction. But she may still face some nervous hours before Saturday.

Hutchison remains entangled in several lingering accusations of impropriety, including charges from a former aide that Hutchison struck her and compelled her to perform personal chores on state time.

Potentially more serious are charges from two former aides to Tom Bowden, a county judge who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for state treasurer in 1990, the year Hutchison was elected.

These aides have alleged that Bowden told them Hutchison offered him a state job in return for his endorsement in the general election. On Sunday, a third Democratic activist also claimed Bowden had told him of such a deal.

Krueger has seized on the allegations, calling them “an indictable offense.” Hutchison and Bowden, who now holds a government relations position in the treasurer’s office, have both denied any deal. The accusations are coming from “active Democrats,” maintains Dave Beckwith, Hutchison’s communication director. “They are all being put up to this.”

These exchanges have provided the only hint of Texas spice in the campaign. In a state that likes its politicians larger than life, both candidates have had difficulty catching voters’ attention. State officials are expecting a very low turnout.

As a campaigner, Hutchison is smooth and personable, if neither particularly charismatic nor overly comfortable explaining details of her agenda. By comparison, though, she has excelled: Operatives on both sides say Krueger has been numbingly lackluster and colorless.

As a former English professor and dean at Duke University, Krueger has never mastered the down-home patois of Texas politics. In his first debate with Hutchison last month, he told one questioner that he had posed a “Hobson’s choice.” With the help of Clinton political consultant Paul Begala, Krueger tried to poke fun at his starchy image in May with avant-garde television ads in which he imitated Arnold Schwarzenegger and declared himself a “terrible politician.” But all the gambit seemed to do was confirm his assessment.

For all Krueger’s difficulties, Clinton’s problems have unquestionably compounded them. Republicans say Clinton’s approval rating in the state has dipped to the low 30% range--though Krueger strategists say the numbers may be even lower than that.

“The fundamental problem for Bob Krueger is Bill Clinton,” said one longtime Texas Democrat who was among Clinton’s earliest supporters here. “He has not played well here from day one. He’s just not the Democrat we were promised. We were promised focus on the economy, middle-class values, priority on the deficit. He just hasn’t been that. He’s been on the left on everything.”

Originally, Krueger emphasized his independence from the president. In March, he was one of just two Democrats who voted against Clinton’s economic plan, primarily because of the proposed new energy tax, which the oil industry bitterly opposes.

Since then, Krueger has modestly revised his course to enhance his partisan appeal. He still criticizes Clinton’s economic plan, but now he insists that as a Democrat, he would have more opportunity to influence the White House’s thinking. He is now highlighting issues dear to Democrats: warning against cuts in Social Security, urging a freeze on health insurance premiums and prescription drug costs and charging that Hutchison’s health care proposals would undermine employer-based insurance.

Hutchison’s plan is to build a health care system around tax credits targeted to individuals.

But the man who placed health care on the national agenda--and has recently stumped from coast to coast for his economic plan--has been conspicuous by his absence here. Krueger’s campaign has formally asked both Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton to the state, “but we asked in such a way that they could politely say no,” said one Krueger adviser. “Frankly, there are certain liabilities for us to have him here, and there are certain liabilities for him to be here.”

On both ends, that calculation rings down to the same bottom line: In politics, no one likes to be around a loser, and in Texas right now, both Krueger and Clinton are answering to that name.