In what she characterized as ”a rehearsal dinner, not the main event,”
U.S. Rep. Lynn Martin (R., Ill.) said Thursday that she intends to challenge Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) in the 1990 senatorial election.
Promising an official announcement in her Rockford district early next month, Martin, 49, looked past a possible Republican primary challenge from Chicago businessman Gary MacDougal and toward a long campaign against the incumbent.
”I had to decide if this was a winnable race,” Martin said. ”To be a sacrificial lamb may be noble, but it`s never particularly been my style.”
Martin, a member of George Bush`s national campaign committee last year, met with the President last week. She did not say Bush would campaign for her, but insisted that she ”would not have made this race without strong support from leading Republicans.”
Pressed about the tone of her pending campaign, Martin acknowledged that media consultant Roger Ailes, who designed some of Bush`s more aggressive ads during last year`s campaign, would be interviewed for a consultant`s post.
Ailes has become something of a symbol of the modern negative political campaign, but Martin reiterated an earlier call for a high-toned contest. She said that in more than a dozen elections she has never ”done anything to have people lose faith in me as a campaigner.”
But even as Martin was making her announcement, a memo outlining a series of ”talking points” about Simon`s voting record was being passed around Capitol Hill.
The memo, the source of which is not known, sketched out Simon`s liberal positions on abortion, welfare reform, gay rights and tuition tax credits. It also referred to a rating of his senatorial voting record by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Simon and Martin share a similar position on abortion, and Martin`s ACLU rating in 1988 was marginally higher than Simon`s, though he collected a 100 percent rating in three of the last four years.
David Fox, a spokesman for Martin, denied that the memo had come out of her campaign or from the GOP National Committee. The committee considers Simon vulnerable, and with its chairman, Lee Atwater, has targeted him, according to Republican sources.
The memo is thought to have first appeared in Chicago on May 22, during a statewide campaign swing by Martin. A spokesman for the Cook County Republican Committee denied any knowledge of the document.
Simon, who has not yet announced his intention to run for re-election and is unlikely to before this fall, declined to discuss Martin`s candidacy.
