Huffington Ad Targets Feinstein’s Budget Vote

Rep. Michael Huffington, a wealthy but largely unknown Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, launches a series of statewide television commercials today that attack incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein for supporting President Clinton’s spending and deficit reduction plan last year.

The commercials, financed largely by Huffington, charge that tax increases contained in the budget vote have hurt small businesses, farmers and Social Security recipients.

“By a single vote, the Senate passed the biggest tax increase in American history--that single vote is Dianne Feinstein’s,” Huffington says in the commercial. “I’m Mike Huffington. I voted against that retroactive tax increase. In business you learn that higher taxes destroy jobs. In government, they never learn that lesson.”

Officials in Feinstein’s campaign responded that--except for a 4.3-cent hike in the gasoline tax--the increases were almost entirely targeted at the wealthiest Americans. They also noted that Huffington did not vote for any deficit reduction plan because he opposed Clinton’s budget and the Republican alternative, which he said did not cut the budget enough.

“The deficit is going down right now, not because of Michael Huffington, but because of Dianne Feinstein,” said Kam Kuwata, Feinstein’s campaign manager. “What this deficit reduction plan has done is encourage the economy.”

Huffington has promised to make the Aug. 6 budget vote a defining issue between him and Feinstein, casting himself as a fiscal conservative and the San Francisco Democrat as one of Washington’s biggest spenders. In speeches around the state, Huffington tells audiences that the budget vote was the single deciding factor that led him to abandon his House seat and launch a bid for the Senate just eight months after he was sworn into Congress.

But Huffington’s task of persuading voters about the damaging effects of last year’s Clinton budget might be tougher because of recent improvements in the economy.

The Labor Department last week announced the nation’s largest jobs increase since 1987 as well as a reduction in California’s unemployment rate, even though improvement continues to lag behind the national level. A Los Angeles Times poll also found last week that California residents are more optimistic about their personal finances than at any time since 1991.

Huffington adviser Ken Khachigian said Tuesday that many voters--especially Republicans--believe the economy could be even better if Clinton’s plan had not passed.

“Even though we’re seeing a trend that the economy is coming back, we think it would have come back much faster if they had not taken huge amounts of dollars out of the hands of private citizens and put it in the hands of the government,” he said.

Huffington’s campaign hopes the commercials will increase his name recognition among California voters. The recent Times poll found Huffington is still unknown to about three-quarters of the state’s voters and almost two-thirds of California Republicans.

Two other Republicans campaigning for the GOP nomination will also appear on the primary ballot--former Orange County Rep. William E. Dannemeyer and Riverside attorney Kate Squires.