Republican Is Heavily Favored in Texas Senate Runoff : Politics: Victory would make Treasurer Kay Bailey Hutchison the state’s first female senator. Campaign has focused on Clinton deficit plan.

Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison was heavily favored to win a special runoff election Saturday and become the first Texas woman sent to the U.S. Senate.

If she wins, Hutchison, the state treasurer, would make a three-time loser out of interim Democratic Sen. Robert Krueger and put both Texas Senate seats in GOP hands for the first time in more than a century.

The election winner will serve out the remaining 1 1/2 years of Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen’s term. Krueger was appointed by Gov. Ann Richards in January as Bentsen’s temporary replacement.

“The people of Texas are getting ready to send Bill Clinton and the Congress a clear message,” Texas’ other senator, Republican Phil Gramm, said in a recent interview. “The bigger the margin, the louder the message.”

Hutchison made opposition to Clinton’s deficit-reduction plan, particularly its energy tax, a centerpiece of her campaign. Republicans said the expected results of the election should be a wake-up call to Southern Democratic senators to part company with Clinton on those issues.

A victory by Hutchison would cut the Democratic margin in the Senate to 56 to 44. It would also give the Senate a record seven female members, five Democrats and two Republicans.

Hutchison, 49, said her status as a Washington outsider made her the most qualified to represent Texans’ anti-tax, anti-spending attitudes.

Krueger, 57, who lost Senate races in 1978 and 1984, was unbowed.

Campaigning at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio on Friday, he told Texans they need a senator from each party, particularly with a Democrat in the White House.

“Right here in San Antonio, the key question is who can keep Kelly Air Force Base open. And Bob Krueger has access to the majority side of the Senate and Bob Krueger has access to the White House,” he said.

The election is the biggest Capitol Hill race since Clinton took office. Hutchison portrayed a vote for her as a vote against Clinton. Krueger has tried to distance himself from the President, voting against Clinton’s budget proposal.

A Mason-Dixon Poll, released Thursday night by Ft. Worth television station KXAS, showed Hutchison with 53% of the vote to 36% for Krueger. Eleven percent were undecided. Pollsters surveyed 808 likely voters and results had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

It was the first special Senate election in Texas since 1961, when John Tower became the state’s first Republican senator since Reconstruction.

Krueger is a former literature professor and college dean who served two terms in Congress in the mid-1970s before failing in 1978 to unseat Tower.