NAFTA Fight Moves to the Home Districts

As House members fanned out to their districts across the country, the White House and its opponents in the fight over the North American Free Trade Agreement pressured wavering legislators Friday where they are most vulnerable--among their constituents.

One by one, undecided House members are taking sides on the controversial trade agreement. Four from California announced they would vote for the pact, while one announced he would vote against it.

President Clinton engaged in long distance lobbying, “making calls like crazy” to reach members in their districts, said William Daley, who is coordinating the White House campaign. Meanwhile, organized labor, which is opposed to the trade pact, and groups supporting it held competing rallies.

Clinton pressed his argument that the trade pact is as much a foreign policy matter as an economic one.

“It’s an important part of our foreign policy for the future,” he said. “It will develop America by reaching out to the world.”

And amid reports that the White House was willing to offer any and all inducements for votes, the President emphatically denied that he would consider lowering the proposed 75-cents-a-pack cigarette tax in return for a half-dozen votes from the Carolinas.

“I cannot foresee circumstances under which I would be willing to change that position, because it would imperil the whole health care program,” Clinton said.

The focus of the trade campaign is a shrinking number of House members, perhaps no more than two dozen, who have yet to declare their intentions.

The House is scheduled to vote on the trade deal on Wednesday. If approved by a simple majority there and then by the Senate, the North American Free Trade Agreement would eliminate tariffs among the United States, Mexico and Canada over the next 15 years, beginning Jan. 1, 1994.

Clinton said that he was “very upbeat about this. But I think there’ll be, you know, clouds around this issue right until the last.” Vote-counters on both sides say that the White House remains short of a majority.

Among those declaring their support for the agreement on Friday were California Democrats Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, Anna G. Eshoo of Atherton, Richard H. Lehman of North Fork and Republican Howard P. (Buck) McKeon of Santa Clarita. Henry A. Waxman, a Los Angeles Democrat, announced he would vote against the pact.

Uncommitted members of the California delegation include Bill Baker (R-Danville); George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton); Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar); Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale); Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) and Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

The White House dispatched Cabinet members around the country for 21 separate events between Thursday and Saturday, with the focus on California, the Carolinas, Illinois, Ohio, Florida and Maine. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen were both in California Friday.

Rep. Nathan Deal, a freshman Democrat who represents a Georgia district that bills itself as both the poultry capital of the world and the carpet capital of the world, may very well have wanted to duck the attention.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, after four previous meetings at which he was unable to get a commitment from Deal, showed up in Gainesville, Ga., on Friday for a pro-NAFTA rally. Representatives of the Citizens Trade Campaign, fighting the pact, showed up outside. Truck drivers, electrical workers and carpet workers picketed Deal’s office, and a member of the legislator’s staff said telephone calls to his field office in Dalton, Ga., were running 2 to 1 against the trade plan.

The tension between the White House and the AFL-CIO continued in Washington, too.

Clinton on Sunday criticized the “roughshod, muscle-bound tactics” of organized labor in opposing the pact. On Friday, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said that the future relationship would depend on whether Clinton, “as he has been in NAFTA, becomes the darling of Wall Street and of big business and of the country club elite, or whether he returns to this original position of representing the people first for a change.”

Republican votes for the agreement showed signs of some erosion during the earlier part of the week, a shift that some pro-NAFTA leaders ascribed to Ross Perot’s visits Monday and Tuesday to a series of congressional offices. Particular pressure was felt by conservative Republicans with strong Perot support in their districts.

In a telephone interview, Perot said that his United We Stand, America, Inc. organization would hold town meetings “all across the country” over the weekend, and that he would return to Washington Monday to press his argument against the trade pact. His organization has pledged to picket every member’s district office.

Democrats asserted that the erosion in support seemed to slow after the Tuesday night debate between Vice President Al Gore and Perot, which they said added momentum to the pro-NAFTA effort. “The debate seems to have stabilized the losses,” one official said.

Rep. Robert T. Matsui, (D-Sacramento), a leader of the Democratic effort for NAFTA, said that the Democrats now have 90 votes of the 100 they expect; the Republicans have 100 of the 118 to 120 that they may ultimately get to vote for the pact, he said.

Leaders of the pro-NAFTA effort from both parties plan to spend hours during the critical weekend on the telephone urging undecided members to commit themselves, and supporting others as they come under pressure from pact opponents. Pro-NAFTA Democrats have set up a “buddy” system in which leaders of the effort have been assigned to keep in touch with members to make sure they don’t waver.

“The weekend is crucial--it is going to be a turning point,” predicted Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), a leader of the Republicans’ pro-NAFTA effort.

As a focus of the pro-NAFTA effort, Dreier said he expects pressure on him to be heavy--and perhaps ugly--in the final days before the vote.

His office has been picketed by NAFTA opponents every day for the past six months, he said. One anti-NAFTA activist drives around the Los Angeles area in a car with a sign that reads: “David Dreier wants to send your job to Mexico.”

“I’m just cringing at the thought,” he said.

Researchers Edith Stanley in Gainesville, Ga., and D’Jamila Salem in Los Angeles contributed to this story.