Candidates Latch On to Welfare Reform as Their Conservative Ticket to Congress : Elections: Republicans and Democrats alike use the issue to define themselves as foes of government. More divisive legislation could follow.

The image on the TV screen segues from grim stills of poor children to a lively scene inside a diner, where a man in a plaid shirt is telling customers about his plans to revolutionize a welfare system that has “literally paid our children to have children.”

The speaker is Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who is giving incumbent Democrat Edward M. Kennedy an unexpected run for his money in Massachusetts.

Americans, Romney declares, are tired of expensive government programs that fail to deliver the goods. They are even more fed up with career politicians in Washington who are unwilling to overhaul or abolish ailing agencies and programs, he says.

Romney portrays Kennedy, scion of the state’s best-known political family and a 32-year Capitol Hill veteran, as a principal engineer of a welfare state that has eroded the work ethic and traditional values and has contributed to rising rates of out-of-wedlock births, criminal activity and substance abuse.

The strident critique is not unique to Massachusetts. Across the country, conservative Democrats and Republicans are making welfare reform a central issue in House and Senate elections.

In the view of some analysts, the calls for radical reform could shift the center of debate when Congress takes up the issue next year. If elected, these analysts say, the welfare-bashers will arrive in Washington with an apparent mandate to enact a reform package that is broader, harsher and more divisive than President Clinton’s pending initiative, which would require about one in three recipients to go to work after two years on the welfare rolls.

The proposed remedies offered by congressional challengers range from abolishing welfare altogether--as suggested by Rep. Mike Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) as he seeks a Senate seat--to turning the whole mess over to the states.

The campaign-trail reformers say Clinton’s plan is not strict enough, noting that only the youngest one-third of recipients would be subject to the work requirement. Even those whose proposals appear to differ only slightly from the President’s employ rhetoric that suggests a much tougher stance toward welfare recipients and the federal bureaucracy.

Campaign consultants say these candidates have seized on welfare reform as a defining issue because they believe that it clearly demonstrates their opposition to “government as usual” and their commitment to traditional American values. They also say that attacking the welfare system enables candidates to tap into the anti-government anger rampant among voters even more effectively than talking tough about crime. That’s because welfare is seen as a federal problem, while crime is viewed more as a state and local issue.

Welfare “is perceived as the quintessential example of how the federal government can take a well-intentioned program and really screw it up,” said Barry Bennett, campaign director for GOP Senate candidate Mike Dewine in Ohio.

“Dewine,” Bennett said, “is talking about a welfare revolution. . . . There’s going to be a big shake-up in Washington. There will be more reform than the President has called for.”

“One of the reasons welfare reform resonates with the voters is that it is a ‘values’ issue,” said Greg Stevens, who has produced television ads for Romney, Dewine and other Republicans. “People are worried about the breakdown of the moral fabric of society. They don’t like what the welfare system is doing to the country. Only they don’t blame the people on welfare per se, they blame the politicians who say they’re going to change the system and then get to Washington and do nothing.”

The solution offered by Dewine, who currently serves as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, is to simply hand over federal welfare funds to the states so they can overhaul the system as they see fit. “Our current welfare system is an anti-family welfare system,” Dewine says in one campaign ad. “It keeps people poor, promotes illegitimacy and breaks up families. I intend to go to Washington and change that.”

Some senior Clinton Administration officials and liberal lawmakers have expressed concern that a more conservative Congress could wind up enacting a welfare reform measure much more Draconian than the President’s proposal. Their greatest fear is that a new law might simply cut off benefits after two years without ensuring that private- or public-sector jobs will be available to beneficiaries and that child care and other support services will be provided.

The political prospects of Clinton’s approach dimmed this fall when the Administration’s health care reform initiative died in Congress. Administration officials acknowledge that their welfare plan is predicated on passage of health care reform. Without it, the incentives they tried to build into the system to entice recipients into the work force are significantly weakened. For many people, leaving welfare would mean losing medical coverage in the absence of guaranteed health care.

Clinton’s health care plan would have provided subsidized medical benefits to poor Americans. Most welfare recipients already receive free or low-cost health care under the Medicaid program. If going to work causes them pay a larger share of their medical expenses, many could conclude they will be better off by remaining unemployed.

Although most of the candidates who are pushing welfare reform in the current campaign are Republicans, at least eight of the 34 Democratic Senate hopefuls are targeting the issue in their televised campaign ads.

Some, including Dewine’s opponent, Joel Hyatt, have selected welfare reform as a “top-tier” issue for TV ads, stump speeches and campaign literature.

By talking tough about welfare, Hyatt is trying to avoid being tagged as a “big-spending” Democrat and demonstrate that his business credentials make him just as sensitive to the need for fiscal responsibility as Republicans are. Hyatt founded Hyatt Legal Services, which provides attorney services to middle-class clients.

“We do think it has worked for us,” said Peter Harris, who is working on the Hyatt ad campaign. “It communicates the values of hard work. It’s the social contract: Nobody should be a freeloader.”

So far, Hyatt is running behind Dewine in the polls. But his prospects appear to be improving, largely because of what one ad calls his “hardheaded approach to replace welfare with jobs.”

“We’re gaining on him,” Harris said, “and if we win this, welfare reform will have been an important part of the victory.”

The goal for Hyatt and other Democrats, Harris says, is to increase their credibility to the same level as Republicans, because welfare reform is traditionally considered a GOP issue.

Dave McCurdy, a Democratic House member from Oklahoma who is running for a vacant Senate seat, is shooting even higher. By stressing his efforts to enact a more conservative welfare reform measure than Clinton’s proposal, McCurdy suggests that he would be an even more aggressive reformer than his Republican opponent. He presents himself as a different kind of Democrat, one who will deny government assistance checks to all non-citizens and those Americans who refuse to attend training programs or accept available jobs.

“When I was growing up here in Yukon,” McCurdy says in one TV spot as a U.S. flag flutters in the background, “my parents taught me to work hard, earn my own way and stand my ground and fight. That’s why I’m fighting to change welfare.”

McCurdy is trying to distance himself from Clinton in his Senate campaign. He says many voters believe that the President has abandoned welfare reform, so stressing the issue in his campaign does not link him with Clinton.

McCurdy’s assessment reflects a bitter irony facing the White House. Clinton ran for President on a promise to “end welfare as we know it” and he also tried to characterize himself as a new kind of politician who would come to Washington and bring about change. But McCurdy and others say the measure Clinton ultimately delivered to Congress falls far short of his campaign pledge.

Welfare reform took a back seat to health care reform, anti-crime legislation and other congressional issues during the first two years of the Administration. The President introduced a welfare plan earlier this year but did not insist that Congress move on it. Key lawmakers have said the issue will be taken up in earnest early next year, but the shape of the legislation will be determined in part by the composition of the new Congress.

Welfare is a big issue in this year’s gubernatorial races as well. The policies put in place by new state administrations could influence the federal debate. Governors represent a powerful lobbying bloc in Washington, and many states are already forging ahead with versions of welfare reform.

Despite its appeal to many congressional challengers, welfare reform has proved treacherous for at least one gubernatorial candidate. A television ad on behalf of Republican Gov. Jim Edgar of Illinois featured a former welfare recipient who went on to become a nurse under a welfare-to-work program advocated by Edgar. While the ad was airing, campaign staffers learned that the woman had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of her boyfriend.

The slain man’s grandmother, Ruby Deal, complained to the Chicago Sun-Times: “She stabbed him in the heart with an ice pick, and now she’s parading on TV like she’s somebody to look up to.”

Edgar’s campaign pulled the ad.