Moderate Democrats Facing Heat

As chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council once headed by Bill Clinton, Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma has long clamored for a “New Democrat” agenda distinct from traditional liberalism.

As a candidate for a Senate seat this fall, McCurdy still emphasizes some signature New Democrat ideas, such as personal responsibility, skill-training and welfare reform. But in his closely fought contest against conservative Republican Rep. James M. Inhofe, McCurdy almost never describes himself as a New Democrat anymore.

“I think Clinton has undermined the standing of that label,” McCurdy said between campaign stops here on Friday. “It is just too Clinton.”

For Democrats everywhere, association with President Clinton is proving hazardous this fall. But it is proving most hazardous for the Democrats who invested the most in his election--the moderates from conservative regions who saw Clinton’s centrist 1992 campaign message of fiscal discipline, middle-class priorities and personal responsibility as deliverance from a left-leaning national party agenda that is anathema in their states.

“The conservative Democrats, who were such a powerful force in nominating Clinton, are going to get punished more than the liberal Democrats because it is the conservatives’ constituents who are most disenchanted with him,” said Tom Cole, a Republican pollster in Oklahoma City. “Those Democrats have the worst of all possible worlds: They have to say either ‘I was dumb and got taken by this guy’ or ‘I agree with what he has done.’ ”

Indeed, in a bitter irony, the President’s unpopularity has created an electoral climate that could deplete the centrist party reform movement that once looked to him as its leader. With the election a little more than three weeks away, Democratic strategists are facing the prospect that November’s voting could leave the party not only severely weakened in Congress but also considerably more liberal at a time when voters are resisting traditional liberal ideas.

Though some prominent liberals are threatened this fall, such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the heaviest losses appear likely among Democratic moderates in Southern, Midwestern and Western states where Clinton is now widely perceived as a “big government” liberal who disguised his true colors in the campaign.

That possibility is especially acute in the House of Representatives, where moderates in swing districts are more endangered than liberal members, who are largely ensconced in overwhelmingly Democratic districts. But dissatisfaction with Clinton is also fueling conservative Republican challenges to prototypal “New Democrats” in gubernatorial and Senate races in such states as Oklahoma, Wyoming, Virginia and Georgia.

In Georgia, Democratic Gov. Zell Miller, whose staunch support was critical to Clinton’s 1992 victory, is still leading, but facing an unexpectedly vigorous challenge from Republican Guy Millner--whose television ads show Miller’s speech nominating Clinton at the 1992 Democratic Convention.

In Virginia, Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb, a Clinton predecessor as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, is locked in a dead heat with Republican Oliver L. North--whose ads describe Robb as “a liberal who votes with Bill Clinton 95% of the time.” In the Wyoming Senate race, Republican Rep. Craig Thomas is holding a steady lead over conservative Democratic Gov. Mike Sullivan--whose friendship with and early endorsement of Clinton has been perhaps the campaign’s central issue.

Throughout the South, Republicans are threatening to pick up congressional seats from moderate and conservative Democrats in districts where Clinton’s approval ratings have collapsed.

“In every congressional race where we are competitive, he is in the tank from a reelection standpoint,” said Florida GOP Chairman Tom Slade, who predicts the party could gain as many as five House seats in the state next month.

In Oklahoma, Clinton looms over the contest between McCurdy, an ambitious and telegenic 44-year-old, and Inhofe, a resolutely conservative 59-year-old former Tulsa mayor more diligent than dynamic. The two men are vying to replace Democratic Sen. David L. Boren, who spent much of the past two years as a thorn in Clinton’s side before unexpectedly resigning to become president of the University of Oklahoma.

The most recent private polls in both parties have shown McCurdy with a narrow yet steady lead over Inhofe. “McCurdy raised a bunch of dollars, got on the air early, solidified his lead, and we have to chip away at it,” said Ed Goeas, Inhofe’s pollster.

Even so, the state has turned so thoroughly against Clinton that the race remains very much in doubt. “In a normal year, it wouldn’t be a race,” McCurdy insisted. “It just isn’t a normal year; what you fear is a wave.”

Indeed, the depth of antagonism here toward Clinton’s agenda and character is breathtaking. Clinton attracted only 34% of the vote here in 1992 in losing the state to George Bush--and he’s given ground even from that modest beachhead. In Cole’s last survey, just 30% approved of Clinton’s job performance, while 62% disapproved--47% of them strongly.

On a recent day spent campaigning with Inhofe around Oklahoma City, it was almost impossible to find a good word for Clinton. “Being Oklahomans, we’re kind of just folks, hunters and all that, and he hasn’t done anything that we like,” said Paul Tyler, an Oklahoma City banker visiting a home building show.

Though many issues are swirling through the campaign, Clinton’s unpopularity frames the central dynamic here. McCurdy is trying to present himself as an independent conservative “in the David Boren tradition” as his ads put it; Inhofe is trying to paint his opponent as a Washington liberal who has lost touch with the state.

In that effort, Inhofe’s most compelling piece of evidence is McCurdy’s ties to Clinton. Outside a National Guard air base in Oklahoma City on Friday afternoon, Inhofe lashed McCurdy for supporting the defense budget cuts in Clinton’s 1993 budget. Later, in a visit to two newspapers and a radio station in the town of Shawnee, Inhofe told reporters that McCurdy voted with Clinton 90% of the time in 1993--and singled out for criticism his support of the crime bill, the assault-weapons ban, the 1993 budget and Clinton’s efforts to allow gays in the military. At one point, he referred to his opponent as “McClinton.”

If anything, Inhofe draws the noose even tighter in his television commercials. A new ad that began running last Tuesday features convicts dancing in tutus to ridicule McCurdy’s vote for “Clinton’s (crime) bill.” Another new ad features Oklahomans questioning McCurdy’s ties to the President: “He basically is a rubber stamp for Bill Clinton,” one says.

In fact, McCurdy’s relationship with the 48-year-old President has always been more complex--almost like a brotherly rivalry. In 1991, McCurdy briefly considered his own presidential bid--partly because he considered Clinton a flawed vessel for the New Democrat message.

Later, though, he campaigned for Clinton and delivered a seconding speech for him at the Democratic Convention--which has turned up in ads the National Rifle Assn. is now running against McCurdy in the state.

Since the election, the relationship has been equally tumultuous. Though McCurdy has supported Clinton on most votes, he has also registered pointed dissents on health care, foreign policy and the balanced-budget amendment; he points out that even his support for the 1993 budget resolution was conditioned on Clinton’s agreement to remove in the Senate the BTU energy tax that is bitterly opposed here. On gays in the military, he says, he supported the “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise backed by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and ultimately by Inhofe himself.

In a series of campaign events around Tulsa on Friday, McCurdy defended some centrist Administration initiatives: the family leave law, youth apprenticeship and national service programs and the provisions of the crime bill that provided funds for programs aimed at reducing violence against women and hiring more police.

But more often he expressed disappointment with Clinton and tried to shift the lens away from Washington. His strategy for survival--echoing the approaches of Democrats from Kennedy to Dianne Feinstein in California--has two prongs: stressing his service to the state and raising ethical doubts about his opponent.

McCurdy portrays himself as best positioned to defend state interests like the giant Tinker Air Force Base, which could be threatened by further Pentagon base closings. And in his television ads, he rakes Inhofe concerning a federal election law violation and for declaring for years that he was graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1959, when in fact he did not complete all the requirements until 1973.

Inhofe protests that McCurdy’s ads don’t make clear the election law violation occurred eight years ago, during his first campaign for Congress. And he says he reported he was graduated from college because he was permitted to go through the graduation ceremonies even though he still had to complete one paper.

Analysts on both sides generally consider McCurdy a more supple and engaging politician than Inhofe. Somewhat stiff in manner, Inhofe has won election to Congress four times, as well as earlier races for the Statehouse and City Hall in Tulsa, but he has also suffered three electoral defeats, including a crushing loss to Boren in the 1974 gubernatorial race.

Yet, Inhofe last week campaigned with the confidence of a man with the wind at his back. Like Republicans such as North and Millner, Inhofe is running an unabashedly ideological campaign: At every stop, for instance, he highlights his support from conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition (“I’ve always been 100%” with them, he told one reporter in Shawnee). “(McCurdy) calls me a conservative and I call him a liberal,” Inhofe said. “But I admit it and he doesn’t.”

Like many other Democrats in conservative-leaning states this year, McCurdy is stressing the time-honored formula of moderation and bipartisanship: His latest campaign handout touts his support for Ronald Reagan “in his drive to rebuild our military forces, and (for) George Bush in Desert Storm.” And he accuses Inhofe of being excessively partisan, voting with the GOP leadership more frequently than McCurdy voted with Clinton.

In ordinary times, that appeal to the center has allowed talented moderate Democrats like Boren and McCurdy to survive in states increasingly Republican in their fundamental outlook. But as McCurdy observed, these are not ordinary times.

For McCurdy--like the other embattled centrists who once enlisted behind Clinton’s New Democrat banner--there remains the nightmare possibility that the voters will push past their promises of bipartisanship to send their own explicitly partisan message of disappointment over the President’s course.