Lansing, Michigan
DEBBIE STABENOW IS THIS YEAR’S cookie-cutter Democratic congressional candidate. For 16 years in the Michigan legislature, she carved out a reliably liberal record. She was slightly to the left of her district but made up for it with tireless constituent service and never had any trouble getting reelected. Now, though, she wants to knock off Republican freshman Dick Chrysler and represent the eighth district of Michigan in Congress, so she’s forsaking her liberal past and emphasizing her moderate views, on issues from taxes to welfare. Ask her staff whether there’s any issue on which she and President Clinton disagree, and they’re stumped to come up with one.
Stabenow is just one out of scores of Clintonized Democrats seeking House and Senate seats. They’re running on moderate platforms that mimic the president’s breathtakingly modest agenda: no new taxes, no major increases in spending, protection of education and the environment. Many are also Clintonesque in demagoguing issues such as Medicare and Medicaid. And just as this strategy is working for Clinton, it seems to be working for those who have embraced his agenda. Candidates supported by the New Democrat Network, a new political action committee that contributes to moderates, are in unexpectedly competitive races.
So it’s unsurprising to hear liberal House minority leader Richard Gephardt, never one to pass up a political opportunity, say, “We’re all New Democrats now.” And why is that? “We have to be,” Gephardt told the Washington Post. “Times change.” Gephardt and other Democrats have concluded they need to scrap their liberalism if they are to win back a congressional majority. Thus, no more massive new spending programs to fund anti-poverty efforts; instead, reinvent government through “public-private partnerships.”
Whether Democrats like Gephardt actually believe in a moderate agenda, and whether they would have the discipline to implement it, is questionable. But if they win back the House or the Senate, they will have a slew of rhetorically moderate New Democrat candidates to thank. Some of these candidates could be mistaken for moderate Republicans, but none could be mistaken for liberal Democrats.
Many have spent more time in private business — usually a recruiting ground for the Republican party — than the public sector. Jill Docking of Kansas is a wealthy stockbroker who advocates simplifying the tax code, supports the welfare bill, and opposes federal funding of abortion. She’s also one of the few Democrats to sign the Taxpayers’ Protection Pledge, which conservative activist Grover Norquist distributes to candidates, asking them to promise not to vote to raise taxes while in office. “I am not the Left. I am not the Right. I’m the middle,” says Docking.
Both Tom Bruggere, in Oregon, and Mark Warner, in Virginia, made millions as entrepreneurs. They also advocate conservative remedies to crime. Bruggere supports mandatory prison sentences without parole for career criminals, while Warner supports the death penalty, three-strikes-and-you’re-out, and trying juveniles as adults. Judy Hancock was an internationaltrade lawyer in Kansas City before declaring her House candidacy. She supports free trade, a balanced budget amendment, and welfare reform. Two who have spent time in government — Ben Nelson and Randy Rathbun — weren’t exactly liberals. As governor of Nebraska, Nelson was a leader in the fight against unfunded mandates from Washington, saying he was “not the branch manager of the federal government.” He’s also pro-life and anti-gun control, and he reduced the growth of state spending by two-thirds. Rathbun, meanwhile, served as U.S. attorney for Kansas from August 1993 until January 1996, overseeing prosecutions for violent crime.
The moderate posture of so many Democratic candidates complicates the Republican effort to keep control of Congress. So does the fact that many of the Democratic “moderates” are running against conservative Republicans. ” It’s harder if you’re way out on the right to accuse someone of being way out on the left,” reasons Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. Thus Republicans such as House speaker Newt Gingrich have begun highlighting the threat posed by liberals such as Ron Dellums, Charlie Rangel, and John Conyers, who are likely to chair committees if the Democrats take control of the House.
Yet if this triumvirate is to seize power, people like Debbie Stabenow will have to get elected and vote for them as chairmen. Stabenow has told Gephardt she wants to see a shakeup in committee assignments. But for all her talk of reform, she is a career politician who understands the perils of trying to revamp an established system. She was president of her junior class in high school and was elected county commissioner at the age of 24. She also spent 12 years in the state House and four in the state Senate, before seeking the Democratic party’s gubernatorial nomination in 1994. Her campaign emphasized that she was a mother of two, but when this soft touch wasn’t working she aired a series of vicious and misleading ads against one of her opponents, then-representative Howard Wolpe. He narrowly defeated her, but not before asking a question of Stabenow many have asked of Clinton: “Is there nothing she would not do to gain election?”
Her cutthroat approach didn’t go over well in Michigan, but it won her admirers in Washington. Before long, the calls started coming from Gephardt and the White House urging her to run against freshman representative Dick Chrysler, a conservative who eked out a narrow victory in 1994 and whose personality makes Al Gore seem like a live wire. Her decision to run came as little surprise to local political observers. Like Clinton, she possesses an all-consuming passion for politics — both for the sausage-making of legislation and for the coffee klatches, parades, and speeches at union rallies. She was “on message” from day one, telling the Lansing State- Journal she was running because of the congressional Republicans’ proposed Medicare reforms. “I really questioned whether they would go through with it. To me, it is just so extreme.”
She’s continued the Medicare attacks but downplays, and often ignores, her liberal principles. When asked at a September 16 debate with Chrysler what responsibility government had for welfare recipients whose benefits were set to expire, she talked about economic growth, college loans, child care, and transportation, but not about expanding the safety net. More broadly, her campaign stresses Clintonesque themes like “hard work, integrity, and a responsibility to give back” to the community, and highlights issues such as property-tax cuts, college loans for middleclass families, regulatory reform, tax cuts for small businesses, and more restrictive drunk-driving laws. This is not a liberal agenda.
Stabenow’s transformation shows in the groups she looks to for guidance. Running for governor two years ago, she received support from liberal outfits like the National Organization for Women, Emily’s List, and the National Women’s Political Caucus. Today, she boasts of her membership in the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. (The DLC was founded after the 1984 presidential election defeat to rid the party of its liberal baggage and move it toward more moderate — that is, more popular — positions. Bill Clinton was a charter member.) And she says she supports much of the DLC’s agenda: free trade, spending restraint, welfare reform, limited environmental regulation, middle-class tax relief, and reinventing government. William Ballenger, editor of the Lansingbased nonpartisan newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, says there’s nothing new in this apparent contradiction.
Stabenow “has always been able to package very liberal views in a velvet cocoon of centrism.”
Indeed, there’s little evidence Stabenow has experienced an ideological transformation. She’s just doing, and saying, whatever will bolster her chances of getting elected. While she claims DLC membership, there’s little in her lengthy political career indicating she ever wanted the Democratic party to become more centrist. Inside Michigan Politics gave her a 100 percent liberal rating for key votes in 1987 and a 97.5 percent rating for 1988. In 1993, her liberal rating dropped to 76.2 percent, but that still put her to the left of the average Democratic state senator. Among those who have campaigned for her this year are Rep. Joe Kennedy, former Texas governor Ann Richards, Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala, and aging folk stars Peter, Paul, and Mary — not exactly a moderate bunch.
In the end, the most remarkable thing about Stabenow’s matchup with Chrysler is that for all of her attempts at moderation, she’s ahead by just three points in the polls. That’s the same margin as in June 1995, before she announced she was running and before the tide turned against the Republican Congress. It held steady even after Chrysler was the target of $ 2.7 million worth of advertising by labor unions and liberal interest groups charging that he voted “to cut Medicare, education and college loans, all to give a huge tax break to big corporations and the rich.” Chrysler has begun to highlight Stabenow’s liberal history, and in a district estimated to be 53 percent Republican, that’ll keep the race close.
For Stabenow and others, running as a moderate makes perfect sense. Their spiritual guide, Bill Clinton, got elected on a relatively moderate platform in 1992, only to see his Democratic Congress go down in flames after he spent two years pursuing a liberal agenda. He then moved rightward for two years and saw the polls improve. That’s good news for Clinton’s reelection prospects and for his political proteges. But the dilemma for Stabenow and others who have posed as moderates is that in a Democratic Congress they would find themselves at the mercy of left-wing committee chairmen, much as Clinton did in 1993-94. His experience is a reminder that it’s infinitely easier to campaign as a moderate Democrat than to govern as one.
