NEWS ANALYSIS : Focus on Foes’ Inexperience Aids Democrats

Only a few weeks ago, Republican George W. Bush appeared poised to take command of the Texas governor’s race with a blistering attack against incumbent Ann Richards’ record on crime, welfare, education and state spending.

But now, it is Bush, a 48-year-old businessman who has never held public office, who finds himself dodging flak. In biting TV ads and a grueling schedule of appearances, Richards appears to have regained the initiative with a lacerating counterattack that portrays the former President’s son as unqualified, unethical and a failure in business who has floated through life on his father’s name.

“What you have here is a Johnny-come-lately who has spent his whole life eating off a silver platter, and we are not going to let him lead our state,” said Richards, an extravagantly silver-haired 61, at an enthusiastic rally here Saturday morning.

In the closely watched Massachusetts Senate race, there’s been a similar reversal of roles. After months on the defensive, Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has used a volley of harsh negative advertisements to reopen a gaping lead over Mitt Romney, another first-time candidate whose youth and slim good looks seem to almost mock Kennedy’s mottled and bloated visage.

Likewise in Florida, 64-year-old Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles--who two weeks ago looked like a retirement waiting to happen--has fought back to at least a dead heat with an uncharacteristically personal counterattack against Jeb Bush, more than two decades Chiles’ junior and another son of the former President.

This pivot between hunter and prey is apparent in more than half a dozen Senate and gubernatorial races where a Democratic incumbent faces a serious challenge.

Struggling against opponents who are either much younger, or are new to politics, veteran Democrats from Richards, Chiles and Kennedy to Govs. Mario M. Cuomo of New York and Zell Miller of Georgia and Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Jim Sasser of Tennessee have fought their way off the mat with remarkably similar strategies.

Partly they are emphasizing their experience and accomplishments; but mostly they are ferociously attempting to redefine their opponents as unknown and untested quantities with slippery ethics and hidden agendas.

In effect, these Democrats are trying to convert the principal asset of their opponents--their freshness--into a source of suspicion. “We’re taking this outsider argument and turning it around,” said George Shipley, a consultant to Richards.

That assessment remains premature and probably overly optimistic: Despite President Clinton’s recent gains in the polls, the anti-Democratic currents coursing through parts of the nation may still sweep away several Democrats employing these tactics.

But in the past two weeks, Kennedy has regained a substantial lead, and Feinstein, Cuomo and Miller have achieved more narrow advantages. Richards, Chiles, Sasser and Sen. Charles S. Robb of Virginia, who’s in a similar position, however, are running no better than even; one public poll released Sunday shows Sen. Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania now trailing his much younger opponent, Rep. Rick Santorum, although Democrats insist that Wofford is still leading.

Even so, virtually across the board, the Democratic counterattacks appear to at least have slowed the momentum of their GOP challengers and changed the dynamic of these races from a referendum on the incumbent into a choice between two inevitably flawed politicians.

“We are moving from ‘I hate this incumbent’ to ‘Who is this other guy?’ ” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

Of the six Republican challengers to Democratic governors still privately rated as the strongest prospects by GOP strategists, all but former Alabama Gov. Fob James Jr. are fresh faces.

Four come directly from the business world: Jeb Bush, a Florida real estate developer; George W. Bush, the managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team; Guy Millner, a temporary-services company owner who is challenging Zell Miller in Georgia, and Gary E. Johnson, a construction contractor and triathlete who is leading veteran Democratic Gov. Bruce King in New Mexico. A fifth, George Pataki, was a virtually unknown New York state legislator when the campaign began.

All except Millner are in their 40s and at least 13 years younger than their opponents; none except Pataki has ever held public office.

The same pattern holds true in the Senate. Of the six Democratic senators in the toughest races this year, all but New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman are battling candidates who contrast sharply in age and/or political experience.

Neither Romney, the venture capitalist challenging Kennedy; Bill Frist, the surgeon running strongly against three-term incumbent Sasser in Tennessee; or Oliver L. North, the Iran-Contra figure pressing Robb in Virginia, has ever previously sought public office. The two other best-positioned challengers--two-term Pennsylvania Rep. Santorum and one-term Rep. Mike Huffington (R-Santa Barbara)--have been in Congress only long enough for a cup of coffee.

All except North are in their 40s or younger (Santorum is just 36) and at least 14 years younger than their Democratic opponents.

Each of these races runs to its own distinct rhythms, but to a striking degree they share common lines of battle. The struggle between Richards and George W. Bush--considered too close to call by analysts here--typifies the contrasting closing arguments.

Like Wofford (who portrays Santorum as a threat to Social Security) and Sasser (who warns that his opponent will cut Medicare), Richards is hammering at traditional liberal themes to motivate the party’s base voters in these final days.

As she tours the state, Richards aggressively touts her achievements--declining crime rates, rising educational test scores and employment. But the heart of her speeches are devoted to diminishing Bush’s character and record with the same folksy disdain she leveled against his father in her famous “poor George” speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

Talking about the younger Bush, Richards sounds like David Letterman channeled through Minnie Pearl. With hollow-point one-liners that sometimes skirt the edge of propriety, she ridicules her opponent as an inexperienced ne’er-do-well who joined the race only out of a dynastic sense of entitlement and lacks the qualifications to lead the state.

Like other Democrats facing candidates from the corporate world, she is putting the most effort into tarnishing the central rationale of her opponent’s candidacy: his claim of success in business. She maintains that the five companies with which Bush has held decision-making positions--including the two oil businesses he founded--lost $371 million during his tenure.

And like Feinstein (who accuses Huffington of dodging taxes) and Miller (who portrays Millner as benefiting from a savings and loan failure), Richards is attacking her opponent’s business ethics.

For weeks, she has suggested impropriety in Bush’s 1990 sale of more than $800,000 worth of stock in Harken Energy Co., a company of which he sat on the board of directors and the audit committee, two months before the firm announced a $23-million loss; the stock price then dropped precipitously, though it later recovered.

Bush has denounced Richards’ broad characterization of his business career and her specific allegation of impropriety at Harken Energy. He says he was unaware of the impending bad financial news when he sold his stock, and he notes the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to pursue any action against him.

Echoing other Republican newcomers facing comparable attacks, Bush is battling to restore the comparisons he wants to stress: outsider versus career politician, and conservative against liberal.

When Bush debated Richards 10 days ago, he unfurled his outsider’s banner right at the start: “I am not a fine-tuner, and the fact that I haven’t held political office . . . gives me the freedom to think differently than someone who has spent her entire career in public office.”

Along the other track, he is redoubling his efforts to ideologically polarize the race by accusing the governor of being soft on crime and allowing the state welfare rolls to swell; as if unveiling a smoking gun, his latest television ads show Richards delivering a speech for Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

From here on, Bush’s “argument is that she’s a liberal, she’s a friend of Bill Clinton,” said Chuck McDonald, Richards’ spokesman. “For us, it is pretty clear the race is about that he is not who he says he is--he’s not qualified.”

In rough terms, that summarizes the competing messages in the other campaigns involving these threatened Democratic incumbents.

Unexpected events--such as Huffington’s admission that he employed an illegal immigrant and Republican New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s endorsement of Democrat Cuomo--could decide some of these races. But in most of them, this struggle to control the lens through which voters view their choice may prove decisive.

“You are in a battle between a national message and a local message,” said Democratic media consultant Mandy Grunwald. “Are voters casting a generic vote on a ‘something’s got to change’ feeling, or are they going to cast a vote on the specific choice in front of them. Are they going to focus on who this (challenger) really is? That is the battle.”

Times researcher D’Jamila Salem contributed to this story.