In Key Races, Voter Anger Acts as Toughest Opponent : Politics: Nationwide, incumbents are finding it hard to overcome a pervasive anti-Washington mood.

The three women enjoying lunch at H.R.H. Dumplin’s Cafe and Bake Shop across from the Dyer County Courthouse agree on one thing: They can’t find much to complain about. All three offer the same upbeat assessment of life in this quiet town about 90 minutes north of Memphis: good schools, little crime, a booming economy.

But their opinions diverge when it comes to politics, especially the surprisingly tight Senate race between three-term Democratic Sen. Jim Sasser and Republican Bill Frist, a 42-year-old surgeon who has never sought public office before and had not even registered to vote until six years ago.

Tonya Arnold, a homemaker, isn’t wild about the “career politician aspect” of Sasser, but she’s going to vote for him because his seniority could mean tangible benefits for the state. Kathy Robertson, who runs a preschool, is undecided: The bitter campaign has left her dubious about both men.

The strongest and most confident voice belongs to homemaker Paige Robinson. “I’m the clean-sweep person,” she says firmly. “I’m not happy with that arrogance in Washington. I’m not sure Frist is the right choice, but I want to vote against Sasser. Maybe it would be a wake-up call for the rest of those bozos.”

Seated around a table in a place about as close as you can get to America’s ideological center, these three friends are giving voice to the fundamental sentiments that could settle the fate not only of Sasser but also dozens of other endangered incumbents across the country.

With determined personal campaigning, veteran legislators such as Sasser and Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy are beginning to have some success at defusing voter anger by stressing their accomplishments and influence while raising doubts about their opponents.

But as conversations in Dyersburg and other northwestern Tennessee towns late last week make clear, anger toward government, politicians and Washington remains a pervasive force in this year’s elections.

It is a force sustained by a thick web of grievances on biting social issues from gays to guns, nourished by widespread perceptions of waste and self-enrichment in Congress and inflamed by the incessant electronic bellowing of talk radio and anti-incumbent political commercials.

“All these politicians, they act like they are kings, and us poor folks are just struggling to make a living,” said the improbably named Jackbenny Wood, a former Sasser supporter who runs a local public-access television station in Dyersburg.

Though voters like Wood generally include both parties in their indictment of Washington, disappointment in President Clinton and a sudden disenchantment with government activism are focusing much of their resentment on Democrats.

Against this torrent, Democrats in this part of Tennessee face an almost apocalyptic prospect Tuesday: a loss not only for Sasser but also for Rep. Jim Cooper, a six-term legislator vying with Republican Fred Thompson, a folksy lawyer and part-time actor, for the Senate seat vacated by Vice President Al Gore.

In Tennessee, the mystery of bad feelings in good times is as deep as anywhere in the country. As Sasser repeatedly pointed out in a dogged campaign sweep through this area last week, unemployment in the state is as low as it has ever been, and the growth in personal income has been as strong as anywhere in the country. But glowing economic news, usually a trump card in American politics, might not be enough to save him--or his party in similarly close races across the nation.

No single factor explains the discontent in Tennessee; the Democrats’ difficulties here appear to reflect an accumulation of interlocking grievances, small streams that have combined into a powerful current carrying many GOP candidates toward victory.

For many, the issue is guns: Over the bitter opposition of the National Rifle Assn., Congress recently approved restrictions on handgun purchases and a ban on certain assault weapons. The NRA now says it is spending more money on television advertising against Sasser and Cooper than in any other state. The ads are clearly finding an audience: “What Bill Clinton wants to do,” complains Don Gray, an accountant in Troy, a speck of a place north of Dyersburg, “is arrest the guns and let the criminals go free.”

For others in these heavily religious communities, where churches still post public signs warning of the evils of drink, the issue is Clinton’s effort to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the military. Opposition to federal taxes is another bedrock political belief up and down Highway 51, along with distaste for welfare programs that seem to subsidize those who won’t work.

These pro-gun, anti-spending, socially conservative sentiments are wound into the political culture here like the roots of a hickory tree. Historically, Democrats have tended to prosper despite them, but two new factors appear to be tilting the balance toward the GOP.

One is the polarizing figure of Bill Clinton, and--just as important--his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. To be sure, the President has his supporters here. But the dominant feeling seems to be summed up by the razor-edged country ditty in a Frist radio ad that lampoons Sasser and “Little Slick Will.”

For Dick Dunlap, a Democratic attorney in the town of Paris, the problem is as much cultural as ideological. Clinton, who presented himself during the campaign as a child of the small-town South, seems intent as President on upholding the cultural values of the Eastern elite with whom he has largely staffed his Administration, Dunlap complains.

“We aren’t enthused about having a lot of gays running around,” he says, as a country-music band juices the crowd at a rally for Sasser. “And I think his wife hurts him, because our version of a political wife is Barbara Bush, not some yuppie lawyer who’s all over everything. If it’s gnawing at my guts, it’s got to be gnawing at a lot of people’s.”

The cultural resistance to Clinton appears to be hurting all Democrats. But Clinton, in turn, could be the lightning rod for a much broader alienation from the political system. Even when much around them seems to be working well, people here consider Washington to be broken, a city willfully ignorant of the strains on average families.

Strikingly, the widespread antagonism is focused more at the process of lawmaking than at individual laws themselves. Even welfare for the poor doesn’t draw as much hostility as pensions and pay raises for politicians.

Both Frist and Thompson, the two first-time Republican candidates, have tuned their campaigns precisely to that pitch. Barnstorming in open-necked shirts (Frist in a campaign bus, Thompson in a signature red Chevrolet pickup truck), both emphasize reforming Congress more than promoting any particular policy agenda. Both back term limits, and Thompson has endorsed former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander’s plan to convert Congress into a part-time citizen legislature.

In their ads, Thompson and Frist refer to their opponents as “career politicians”--in tones that might be appropriate for describing a repeat child molester.

In essence, Thompson and Frist, two men of wealth, are trying to draw a new-wave, post-Perot populist line in the political firmament--identifying themselves with average people because they are not professional politicians. In response, Sasser (and to a lesser extent Cooper) are attempting to make a more traditional, populist contrast: painting their opponents as rich Republicans representing powerful interests at the expense of ordinary working people.

Though Cooper has tried to dent Thompson’s down-home persona by highlighting his work as a Washington lobbyist for savings and loans and big business clients, Cooper’s own privileged background (he’s the son of a former governor) and stiff, sometimes prickly manner has largely undermined the effort. Even Democratic insiders virtually concede the race to Thompson, an engaging, oversized personality who “just feels like a next-door neighbor,” in the words of Russ Roland, a private investigator in Jackson.

In his struggle for survival, Sasser has more assets than Cooper. For one thing, he’s more comfortable with populist themes. In his campaign appearances, he mocks Frist’s degrees from Princeton and Harvard (“Tennessee schools weren’t good enough for him,” sniffs Sasser, a University of Tennessee graduate) and condemns his support for the GOP tax cut plan.

“He comes from an elite environment; he’s a multimillionaire,” Sasser says. “He has nothing in common with everyday working people in Tennessee.”

Sasser has two other formidable chits. If he’s reelected and the Democrats retain control of the Senate, he’s a front-runner for selection as majority leader, a position from which, he points out at every stop, he would be in a position “to get things done for our state.” And in Frist, Sasser has an opponent who lacks Thompson’s wit and gruff charisma and who has displayed a penchant for self-inflicted wounds. For instance, Frist recently told a tobacco audience that children should be allowed to smoke if their parents approve, then reversed his position after national health organizations pointed out it seemed a somewhat eccentric view for a heart surgeon.

Yet as the three women in Dyersburg continue their conversation at the cafe, the ceiling fans whirring softly overhead, the tall glasses of fruit-flavored iced tea now nearly drained, it’s unclear if all of that will be enough to save Sasser.

Around the table--as essentially across the state--there is one solid vote for Frist, one solid vote for Sasser, and, in Robertson, one ambivalent voter unsure which way to turn.

Like many here, Robertson would like to throw a symbolic rock through the Capitol’s window: Scandals, pay raises and disarray in Washington, she says, “almost makes you think the whole system needs to be revamped.”

For all her hesitation about Frist, those are the kind of sentiments that could spell trouble on Tuesday for Sasser and Democrats all across America.