Wisconsin Race Mirrors Struggle for House Control

If the race to gain control of the House of Representatives comes down to no more than a dozen or so congressional districts--and increasingly that appears to be the case--it is time to consider the political picture in this tired industrial city set between the steel-gray waters of Lake Michigan and autumn-bare stretches of farmland reaching halfway to Iowa.

For more than two decades, Les Aspin, a Democrat, held sway here and in the rest of Wisconsin’s 1st District, becoming an archetype of the state’s own blend of independent, often-maverick, almost non-politician. He gave up his congressional seat in 1993 to begin an unhappy tenure as President Clinton’s first secretary of defense, and a fellow Democrat won the seat in a special election. But in the Republican storm that swept the nation in 1994, the seat was taken for the first time since 1968 by a Republican, Mark W. Neumann.

In sum, the story of the first congressional district of Wisconsin is the story of the House, writ small: It was the province of a popular Democrat if not of the party itself. It was handed over to a Republican two years ago. Now its political future, like that of the House itself, is very much in play.

The race also is a closely watched barometer because the candidates are archetypes: a freshman foot soldier in the GOP revolution, opposed by a Democrat who only became the nominee because better-known candidates passed up the race when the party’s prospects looked grim.

Now, draw a line that begins in southern Maine and reaches to Santa Barbara, by way of northern New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma and Nevada. The route will pass through constituencies that--like Neumann’s district, a Midwest microcosm of farm and factory--find first-term Republicans battling to hold their seats, most of which were occupied for many previous years by Democrats.

It is from these widespread and varied communities, no longer considered sure shots for either party, that the majority in the House will emerge.

Which brings us to Memorial Hall, a civic auditorium halfway between Main Street and the churning lake to the east. It is a suddenly frigid evening when none would doubt the forecast that temperatures will drop into the 20s.

Here is the 42-year-old member of Congress, fresh from an out-of-district fund-raising dinner 30 miles to the north in Milwaukee, standing on the steps outside the old stone building.

Perhaps 500 people step quickly into the chill evening after attending a meeting of the Racine Interfaith Council held to rally community members to fight crime and play a role in boosting public education. Their sense of activism has been stirred by a string of animated local preachers. Only a few pause to exchange greetings with the representative.

It seems an incongruous stop on the election trail of a freshman foot soldier of the Republican revolution. So does a tour of a homeless shelter the next day 70 miles to the west, at the far end of the district in Janesville, where General Motors turns out the Chevy Suburban.

But each demonstrates the importance of volunteer, not government, action, Neumann says later. And in a campaign season in which Democrats are doing everything possible to morph their opponents into the unpopular image of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, there is no such thing as one too many visits to places like Memorial Hall.

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Nevermind that it is 630 miles from Racine to the nearest point in Georgia where Gingrich is on the ballot. Lydia Spottswood, Neumann’s Democratic rival, is more than willing to talk about the speaker, and the 1995-96 battle of the budget fought by the first-termers loyal to Gingrich, as though the Georgian is running for Congress in the middle of Racine.

Linking her opponent to what has been the central element of Gingrich’s speakership so far, Spottswood, 45, says of Neumann: “I don’t think he views the budget as a series of building blocks and each of these blocks has something to do with our lives.”

She is on her way to a get-acquainted meeting with the Southern Wisconsin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. There, seated at a folding table in a back room at an urban mini-mall, she tells the nine businessmen and women of her concerns about the nation’s health insurance problems. She developed her interest in the subject, she says, as a nurse, as the wife of an anesthesiologist and as president of the Kenosha, Wis., City Council dealing with public safety and welfare issues.

In the industrial and largely Democratic parts of the district--Kenosha and Racine, where unemployment is roughly twice the state’s 3.4% rate, and better-off Janesville and Beloit to the west--one out three households is affiliated with a labor union. Organized labor is putting more muscle into this race than in any here in the last 10 years, said Tim Cullen, a Democrat and former state Senate majority leader.

But between the cities lie suburbs and a rural Republican land of corn, cows and enough cabbage that the town of Franksville still holds its annual sauerkraut festival 10 years after the community’s sauerkraut factory burned down. This is Neumann territory.

Despite Aspin’s success in the district, “it is not an overwhelmingly Democratic seat,” said Thomas Mann, a scholar of congressional politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s a genuinely marginal seat.”

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For his part, Neumann offers few if any direct hints in his campaign literature and radio and TV advertising that he’s a Republican, let alone one of the now politically famous freshman Republicans.

“It has nothing to do with politics,” he said in an interview. Rather, he said, his reluctance to call attention to his party affiliation reflects the priorities of his “responsibilities”--first, to his country, then to his district, “and only third or fourth down the line goes my responsibility to my party.”

Still, he talks the talk of the most adamant of his GOP team: “If we need to shut the government down to balance the budget and keep us from spending our children’s money, then shut it down. And if we have to do it again after that, do it again.”

Although neither candidate is particularly well known in the district, Neumann made a splash by cutting his office budget by $102,000 and by splitting with the House Republican leadership early in his term over his vote to pare defense spending, a vote that doesn’t hurt his attempt to distance himself from Gingrich, whose leadership team favored greater military funding.

And, said Liz Wilner, a specialist on House races for the Cook Political Report, a newsletter covering the breadth of the American political scene, “it’s a big leap from the Kenosha City Council to Congress.”

“If Lydia Spottswood wins, she’s typical of a return to Democratic control. If she wins, the Democrats are probably going to take back the House. People don’t really know who she is, so it’s more of a generic thing,” Wilner said.

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Outside Memorial Hall, Dan Gobis, a 43-year-old real estate agent, is considering the incumbent Republican, with whom he has just spoken.

“I’ll vote for Neumann,” says Gobis, acknowledging almost apologetically that he was “raised a Democrat, a Kennedy Democrat.”

Why Neumann?

“He’s no-nonsense. I believe he’s honest.” And, he says, “he’s good for my business.”

Now Neumann is chatting up Mike Frontier, a 53-year-old mini-marathoner and elementary school principal.

Frontier politely talks about jogging, and the two seem to agree on the need to protect the quality of the air and water along the shores of Lake Michigan, where Frontier trains. The conversation leaves the impression that he is supporting the incumbent.

But later, reflecting the political division within the district and the uncertainty of the race here, Frontier’s comments suggest otherwise.

Gingrich, he says, “put a lot of people on the defensive with the macho-ness of the Republican Party,” and Neumann, he adds, is part of the Gingrich crowd.

“We’ve got a high crime rate in this town, but he’s going to balance the budget at all costs,” he says after the community meeting on, among other things, anti-crime programs. “In his mind, it is courageous to not fund these things.”

As for the pleasant tenor of his conversation with the representative, Frontier says dismissively: “I was just being nice to him.”