Pivotal Campaign Reform Votes Near

In his seven years as an independent-minded House Democrat, Tim Roemer of Indiana has managed to antagonize the Clinton administration, big labor and many of his fellow party members, who once hissed and booed as he delivered a floor speech. “The story of my career,” Roemer said with a laugh.

That trial by fire should serve him well as the House today begins what promises to be a freewheeling, raucous debate on campaign-finance reform.

As one of a dozen or more Democrats undecided on the issue in a closely divided House, Roemer and his like-minded cohorts may well be in a position to cast the deciding votes to kill or approve a major overhaul of the much-aligned election financing laws.

Earlier this year, a bare majority of the Senate backed reform, but the bill could not garner the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles that kept it bottled up.

In the House, where the GOP has a 227-205 majority, only about a dozen Republicans are believed to favor significant reform. Thus, such legislation would pass only if virtually all Democrats voted for reform--a highly uncertain prospect. That explains the spotlight on the dozen or so moderate and conservative Democrats who remain uncommitted.

Many of them detest a system that increasingly requires them to spend every day “dialing for dollars,” as Roemer put it.

Yet voting to change that system would be an enormous act against one’s self-interest, since genuine reform would make it easier for challengers to raise money to run against incumbents.

For that same reason, most party leaders--at heart--are lukewarm about reform.

Powerful opposition also is being exerted by interest groups that feel threatened by reforms that would crimp their ability to give big bucks to candidates and political parties. Some of the groups are vowing retribution against those who back reform. The most vocal has been the National Right to Life Committee, which intends to include votes on campaign-finance reform in its “annual scorecard of key right-to-life” issues.

As a result, many antiabortion-rights Democrats are “worried about that black mark on their record,” said a lobbyist for Common Cause, a citizens group that has aggressively promoted reform.

Among them is Roemer, a strong abortion opponent who has enjoyed the Right to Life Committee’s backing in a district that historically has been quite competitive.

“It’s a tough call,” Roemer said. But being caught “in a vise” is something to which the 1979 graduate of UC San Diego has become accustomed since arriving in the House in 1991.

The native of South Bend quickly established his independent streak. He incurred the wrath of labor leaders by opposing changes they sought in the Occupational Safety and Health Act. He was among the first Democrats to back welfare reform. And during the political acrimony after the GOP took control of Congress, the fiscally conservative Roemer agreed with Republicans on the need for a balanced budget.

In the subsequent partial shutdown of federal offices, Roemer joined Republicans to pass a bill to temporarily reopen the government--much to the displeasure of the Clinton White House. When he spoke in favor of the measure, some Democrats heckled him.

But such experiences have inured him to attacks, sometimes simultaneously, from both the left and right. “I don’t care if I tick off one side or the other. Sometimes that’s an indication that you’ve got good legislation . . . ,” Roemer said.

The first campaign-finance bill to be debated was crafted by a bipartisan freshman task force. It would ban “soft money,” or unregulated and unlimited contributions to the national political parties. The bill also would provide for modest increases in contribution limits and index them to inflation.

But the proposal has been attacked for going too far and not far enough. Its critics include Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), co-authors of a competing proposal that would ban soft money altogether. The Shays-Meehan bill is one of 15 “substitutes” scheduled to be offered. Also pending are 585 possible amendments, many of which seem designed simply to score political points.

“What I’ll look at is the substance of this legislation. Will it really transform a potentially corrupting system? Will it give people a little more confidence in the House?” Roemer said.