In Washington, They Ask: What Other Race?

Paul and Nancy Roesch waited for the pancake-breakfast crowd to thin a bit before they made their move, angling through a cluster of fellow Democrats to shake U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s hand at a local longshoremen’s union hall.

The Roesches -- he’s a lawyer, she’s a retired fifth-grade teacher -- had no burning problems to press their senator about. So they thanked her for 12 years of service, promised to support her November reelection bid and then ambled out into the rain-soaked parking lot near lumber mills and docks on the northern bank of the Columbia River.

The couple are solid Murray supporters, but for this outing each of them wore a single “Kerry for president” button -- a subtle but telling detail about the nature of politics this fall both here in the Northwest and in California.

“The issue we’re most interested in,” Paul Roesch said, “is the presidential race.”

Like California, where the Senate race has been overshadowed by the presidential contest, voters here are treating their Senate race like a September baseball game between two teams with no chance of making the playoffs. Diehard fans are showing up, but their hearts aren’t in it.

The oddity is that Murray -- like Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in California -- long has been a target for conservative Republicans. Yet in a potentially pivotal election in which control of both the White House and the Senate are up for grabs, neither Murray nor Boxer is in much danger of losing her seat, due to the dominance of the presidential race, challengers who haven’t gained traction and general satisfaction among voters with the incumbents.

So far, neither Republican challenger has found a theme to lead voters away from the incumbent, despite issuing position papers on many issues, including port security here in Washington, Boxer’s aversion to war and many big-ticket military programs in California.

“I don’t think there are any burning statewide issues,” said Lance LeLoup, a political analyst at Washington State University in Pullman, in the rural eastern part of the state. “It’s really, in a sense, a parallel of the national campaign -- do you want a Democrat in the Senate, or somebody that’s supporting President Bush?”

The similarities between the California and Washington races are striking. Both Murray and Boxer are liberal Democrats who entered politics as outraged mothers and first won Senate elections in 1992’s “Year of the Woman,” when five women won Senate elections -- the most ever until then.

Both face conservative Republican challengers from the rural parts of their states -- candidates hobbled by low name-recognition in the politically powerful and more liberal coastal regions.

Polls give Republican challengers in both races long odds of success.

A recent Los Angeles Times poll found Boxer with an 18-point lead over former California Secretary of State Bill Jones. In Washington, Republican polls give Murray a 7% lead over challenger Rep. George R. Nethercutt; Democratic polls put the lead at 13 points.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry enjoys a large lead over Bush in California, and has been solidifying his support here in Washington. Neither of the presidential candidates is advertising in California and both have pulled back a bit in Washington as Kerry’s lead here has solidified.

“That’s what’s really driving the race,” said Ed Rollins, an advisor to the Republican challengers both here in Washington and in California. “They’re not spending any money. Boxer’s not spending any money. Kerry’s not spending any money.”

Neither of the Republican challengers is a fiery speaker likely to shift the playing field by sheer force of words and presence. Jones can be personable one on one but awkward in front of a crowd. He has based his campaign on twin themes: Boxer is too liberal for California and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger needs a Republican in the Senate -- though Schwarzenegger has done little to help him make his case.

Nethercutt speaks with the soothing tones of a concerned counselor -- his points are clear but his passion rarely infectious. His policies closely parallel those of Bush, whose fading support here has moved the state from tossup status to a likely win for Kerry.

“Nethercutt is an articulate guy, and I think he will be certainly a respectable candidate,” said LeLoup, the Washington State University analyst. “But I think Patty Murray is going to be pretty tough to beat. People are comfortable with her. She’s probably fairly well reflective of where the state is politically right now -- moderate to left-leaning Democrat.”

Yet there are key differences between the two elections that offer more hope to Nethercutt than to Jones.

The first is money. Jones struggled to raise cash in the campaign’s early months. He pulled in $3.7 million but had less than $1 million left by the end of the June 30 federal reporting period, though he has held scores of fundraisers since and promised to sink $2 million of his own money into the race.

But in California, with its vast geography and expensive media markets, an effective television ad campaign can cost well over $1 million a week and it’s unclear whether Jones has that much.

Boxer, meanwhile, raised $14 million, dwarfing Jones’ efforts, and still had $7 million in the bank at the end of June. She also has been busy raising money since then.

Here in Washington, where campaigns are cheaper and the electorate is one-fifth of California’s, Nethercutt raised $5.9 million and had more than $2.5 million in the bank in mid-August, trailing Murray’s $10.6 million raised with $4 million in cash on hand.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has agreed to spend $665,000 in coordinated campaign expenditures to help Nethercutt, while it has offered only $260,000 for Jones’ campaign.

Nethercutt’s cash flow also has been helped by White House support -- both the president and First Lady Laura Bush have hosted fundraisers for Nethercutt, which they have not done for Jones.

But some said Nethercutt’s alliance with Bush could pose a problem.

“Nethercutt is pretty closely aligned philosophically with Bush,” said Seattle pollster Stuart Elway.

“In polling I did earlier in the year, two-thirds of the people in the state think that Bush has different priorities than they do. Bush is more popular than his policies. So if you’re running on Bush’s policies and you’re not Bush, you’ve got the worst of both worlds.”

While Jones has yet to begin his television ad campaign, Nethercutt has been on the air sporadically since springtime, an air battle that picked up in recent days with Nethercutt accusing Murray of being in the pocket of trial lawyers whom he blamed for escalating the costs of healthcare. Murray said she had opposed efforts to limit damages awarded for malpractice because they would help insurance companies at the expense of patients.

Murray, as combative a campaigner as Boxer, launched her own attack ad, questioning Nethercutt’s character for saying Spokane was his legal residence. Nethercutt owns a house in Spokane but rents it out and has leased an apartment in Bellevue, near Seattle, for the campaign. Nethercutt and his wife own a home in Falls Church, Va., where both the tax bill for his Spokane house is sent and where the Washington State Bar Assn. lists his address.

Murray has sought to link the issue to an earlier Nethercutt controversy. A former adoption lawyer, Nethercutt won political fame by ousting House Speaker Thomas S. Foley in 1994, the first time a sitting speaker had lost his home district in more than a century. But Nethercutt campaigned largely on the premise that entrenched politicians were bad for politics and vowed to serve only three terms -- a promise he broke in 2000.

“It’s a character issue,” Murray said after the Longview pancake breakfast. “I see it as a guy who just will say what he needs to say to get elected.”

Nethercutt dismissed the residency issue as “silly” and said he thought voters had forgiven him for the broken term-limits promise.

“That was four years ago and I got reelected overwhelmingly” twice since then, Nethercutt said, sitting at a table in the social room of his apartment complex in Bellevue. “The people of the state, I don’t think, give a hoot. They look at what’s Patty’s views on taxes, the economy, jobs, and what’s mine, and who’s going to represent us in the Senate.”

Yet there is little indication that many people are looking at the issues that closely, particularly in the shadow of the Bush-Kerry showdown. Even at candidate functions, the idle chit-chat among supporters for both Senate candidates gravitates to the presidential election -- whether Bush’s purported National Guard records were forgeries, political conspiracy theories and individual health-insurance horror stories.

As Sandi Edwards, 56, awaited Murray’s arrival at a speech in Everett, a financially battered industrial city an hour north of Seattle, she said the issues that mattered here on both sides of the Cascade Mountains were the same as those across the nation -- the economy, healthcare and the war in Iraq.

“We’re a microcosm of the bigger thing,” said Edwards, an auditor for a local HMO. “We’ve had people lose their jobs, lose their healthcare, lose their lives in Iraq. The least we can do is send Sen. Murray back. The most we can do is change it from top to bottom.”