Voters Unswayed by Candidates’ Tax Cut Push

While the leading Republican candidates have tried to make tax cuts the defining issue in the presidential race, the subject has ignited little interest among the voters who crowd high school gyms and fire stations to hear stump speeches.

The last two Republican debates have been dominated by tax-cut arguments. And on Tuesday, the increasingly heated arguments between Arizona Sen. John McCain and Texas Gov. George W. Bush on the cuts continued to escalate over Internet taxes.

A recent Times Poll showed the issue was number one among likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa--a key demographic group in the state that holds the first vote in Campaign 2000 next week. And Steve Forbes, champion of the flat tax, continues to field questions about his tax plan at most appearances.

But when regular folks get a chance to quiz the candidates--particularly Bush and McCain--the issue rarely comes up.

“It just doesn’t resonate,” said Jackie Cilley, 48, a professor who quizzed McCain over the environment when he visited Calef’s Country Store, a commercial outpost at a lonely crossroads in eastern New Hampshire. “I want to know more about their programs.”

Of 60 questions fired at McCain during stops in New Hampshire and Rhode Island the last few days, only three had anything to do with his proposed $237-billion tax cut. Only about a fifth of the supposedly tax-obsessed New Hampshire residents quizzing Bush on Tuesday asked about his $483-billion tax cut plan.

Instead, those in town hall meetings ask about other things that concern them most, issues that come up in focus groups, interviews and surveys, such as a poll released this week by Newsweek. Education and health were the top two issues. Crime, security and Medicare were other major concerns in the poll, and such topics also come up repeatedly in candidate forums.

Those who stand to confront the candidates tend to focus on emotional, rather than technical, issues. They speak in urgent, sometimes anguished tones about elderly mothers who take half doses of medication because they can’t afford more; about fruitless job searches in rural America; about crowded classrooms; polluted streams; or military personnel ashamed to wear the uniform because of declining morale.

These ordinary people put the candidates on the spot, over and over, in gritty factories and historic town halls, at Rotary meetings and at Chamber of Commerce breakfasts.

Typical is Marcy Kaplan, a stitcher at New England Motor Freight and Globe Manufacturing in Merrimac, N.H. Kaplan, a Democrat, asked Bush about gun control; she believes in keeping guns available but in registering them.

“To me, taxes aren’t the biggest issues,” she said, holding a disposable camera filled with pictures she had taken of Bush and Vice President Al Gore. “I have three kids. The schools are very over-crowded. We need more federal money for schools to be building on, and more smaller classes.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Bush was asked why he kept focusing on taxes when they rank so low in national polls. In the Newsweek poll, for example, taxes were 10th among 13 topics of concern to adults nationwide.

Bush said he speaks on a variety of issues, and his stump speech usually includes references to better schools and faith-based social programs. But taxes, he said, are a key issue.

“I believe it’s important and that’s why I’m talking about it,” Bush said. “I do not need a poll or a focus group to tell me what’s important. People don’t like the tax-cut plan, they can find another candidate, and I’m sure they will. I talk about what I believe. You expect me to go back in a bus and call up and say, ‘What’s the latest poll?’ or ‘What’s the latest focus group talking about?’ You got the wrong candidate.”

McCain said he leaves it to the audience to bring up the issues--and said they almost always do, on health care, Social Security and guns in schools. But he defended his focus on tax cuts, saying it is one of the biggest differences between himself and Bush.

“It’s not the issue perhaps that it was in the past, given the relative prosperity” now, he said. He added: “If there’s an issue greater than the others, it’s the issue of education.”

Margo Weeks, a 41-year-old nurse from Gilford, N.H., who told McCain that rural hospitals were suffering from a critical shortage of funds, said the tax cut plans mean little to her. “He really isn’t up to speed on the health care issue,” Weeks said. “It’s difficult because there are so many problems.”

McCain and Bush’s devotion to the tax cut issue surfaced with renewed vigor Tuesday. McCain began the morning in Nashua by challenging Bush to join him in signing a pledge to permanently ban taxes on Internet commerce: “No new Internet taxes ever, if I have my way,” McCain said.

Bush responded by saying that he supports the current moratorium on such taxes. When pressed why he would not commit to the no-tax pledge given his now-famous promise to never raise taxes “so help me God,” he responded: “I want to make sure I understand what the world looks like three to five years from now before I speak further.”

Of course, the tax cuts are important for some. In The Times Poll, among likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa, taxes ranked higher than education and abortion. Such voters could help determine who wins Iowa on Monday.

Some voters are indeed responding to the tax messages of Bush and McCain. McCain supporters cite his plan’s attempt to shore up the Social Security fund. And Bush supporters say they like the idea of extra federal money being returned to taxpayers.

Greg Williams, vice president of engineering for a local manufacturing company, said the tax issue is important. He resents the media and political pundits for telling him otherwise, he said.

“In the past six to eight years, I’ve been told [by national polls] what I believe. But I don’t listen to the polls. I think the ballot is going to be the true poll,” he said. He added that the tax cut debate had helped him to decide for Bush: “Under Sen. McCain’s plan, my family wouldn’t qualify for a tax cut,” he said.

Nobody has benefited more from the tax issue than Forbes, who campaigned solely on a flat tax rate in his failed campaign for the presidency in 1996. During that election cycle, Forbes finished in Iowa with only 10% of the vote.

This year, expanding his platform to include social issues such as abortion, Forbes has seen his popularity more than double. The Times Poll showed him in second place in Iowa to Bush, with 25% of the vote among likely Republican voters. Bush was in first with 43%.

So, unlike the Bush and McCain crowds, Forbes followers frequently ask about his 17% flat tax plan.

At Kuemper Catholic High School in the northwest Iowa town of Carroll, “Scrap the Tax Code” signs mingled with “Does Jesus Go to College” posters at a Forbes campaign stop Tuesday. About half the questions focused on his flat tax plan, while half concerned Forbes’ position on abortion, which he answered with anti-abortion activist Phyllis Schlafly at his side.

Forbes won cheers from the crowd of parents and students when he told them the “monstrosity of a tax code” is more than 7 million words long and “no one has a clue what’s in that thing.”

Referring to McCain and Bush, Forbes said “Sadly, my opponents would like to see the tax code remain as it is.”

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Times staff writer Anne-Marie O’Connor, reporting from Iowa, contributed to this story.