At almost every third door Elaine Baxter knocks at on the bluffs of this Mississippi River town, she gets a verbal thumbs-up.
”I`m for you” and ”You`ve got it,” they say as the candidate nimbly negotiates hilly lawns and choppy sidewalks.
With a 12-point lead over conservative Republican Congressman James Ross Lightfoot, Democrat Baxter, 59, just may have it.
Lightfoot, 53, has to campaign across a broad, wildly reshaped House district that now includes Iowa`s two main state university towns and Baxter`s home turf, southeastern Iowa. And he is fighting the taint of having overdrawn 105 checks from the now-closed House bank.
Baxter, Iowa`s secretary of state, takes little for granted in this year of high voter volatility-her lead has dropped 4 points since mid-September. But of the three women who are challenging incumbents in Iowa and nearby Kansas, she appears alone in the possibility of victory.
Anti-incumbent fever, the ”year of the woman” and Bill Clinton`s coattails are not likely to help Democratic state Sen. Jean Lloyd-Jones overcome the huge odds favoring U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa`s two-term Republican. Nor are they likely to do much for Kansas Democrat Gloria O`Dell in her sacrificial run against Sen. Bob Dole. Both women are taking on firmly entrenched senators with deep pockets and few vulnerabilities.
Meanwhile, in other House races in the two states, it is Democratic incumbents who have been most affected by the House bank scandal and redistricting.
In northeast Iowa, it`s Rep. David Nagle, 49, a three-term Democrat, and Rep. Jim Nussle, 32, a freshman Republican, going head-to-head to represent a newly combined district. And in south-central Kansas, it`s Rep. Dan Glickman, a Democrat, and Republican challenger Eric Yost, also fighting for a newly defined district. Glickman also is fighting dozens of daily television
”editorials” against him by a Wichita cable operator angry at his ”yes”
vote on the recent cable re-regulation bill.
In Iowa, Grassley, 59, is seeking his third term. He has abundant funds and a popular image of independence. He was one of only two Senate Republicans to oppose the Bush administration on the Persian Gulf war. This week he has a 37-point lead over Lloyd-Jones, according to a Des Moines Register poll.
Lloyd-Jones, 62, is president pro tem of the state Senate and founder of the Iowa Peace Institute. But as head of the Iowa Senate`s ethics committee, she may have been critically hurt by having called off an investigation of a colleague connected to an investment fraud that cost some 88 Iowa towns and counties about $75 million.
The Register poll shows that even women tend to favor Grassley over Lloyd-Jones, who has been unable to get the senator to debate her.
In Iowa`s tight, head-to-head congressional race between incumbents, Nussle has managed to move from 14 points behind Nagle on Sept. 19 to 4 points ahead earlier this week.
In the interim, Nussle ran commercials attacking Nagle on the House bank overdraft issue. When the scandal broke last October, Nussle appeared in the House chamber wearing a paper bag over his head.
Nagle, a three-term veteran, was but a minor offender in the affair: four checks in all. But this week`s poll results indicate the ads have been effective.
The issues separating the two are clear: Nagle, who has brought home some respectable pork, stresses jobs, the economy, infrastructure investment and the need to get growth moving again. Nussle stresses congressional reform, says he wants to roll back salary increases and has signed the ”lead or leave” pledge, vowing to either cut the deficit in half by 1996 or not seek re-election. He`s expected to draw the Perot vote in Iowa.
The campaign is likely to be tight all the way to Nov. 3.
”Our view is that this is a race that will be decided at 3 a.m. (Nov. 4) by from 5 to 1,500 votes,” said Barry Piatt, Nagle`s press secretary.
In Kansas, Gloria O`Dell, 47, a former teacher, journalist and legislative liaison for the state treasurer`s office, depicts her campaign as ”Gloria vs. Goliath.”
But she lacks the political counterparts to David`s sling: name recognition and money. Dole, 70, the Senate Republican leader and a 32-year veteran of Congress, has been virtually unchallenged since his first Senate re-election bid in 1974.
With less than $200,000 to spend, O`Dell has taken to doing $500 camcorder commercials in her campaign car.
”I`m the election year`s K mart blue light special,” O`Dell said. She lambastes Dole for being the ultimate Washington insider-career politician, his party`s hatchet man and orchestrator of the Senate`s midnight pay raise.
Dole has dipped into the middle and low 50s in the polls from his usual perch up in the 60s. But he easily retains a commanding lead of 25 to 31 points.
Virtually no one doubts that he will be returned to the Senate. Dole, who survived a bout with prostate cancer earlier this year, is one of the last of the nation`s World War II wounded hero-politicians. As an active, nationally recognized Republican he ranks second only to George Bush in stature.
A tighter race in Kansas is that between Democrat Glickman and Yost, a conservative state senator.
Glickman, 47, is going for his ninth two-year term. He is one of only two Democrats in Kansas` congressional delegation. So far he has been leading by margins of between nineand 15 points. But it is one of the closest races he`s had since he was first elected in 1976.
Yost, 37, who has signed the ”lead or leave” pledge, has been making capital of Glickman`s involvement in the House bank affair (105 bad checks). He distributes bumper stickers that say ”Bounce Glickman. Vote Yost.”
He also has made an issue of Glickman`s vote for the luxury tax, which critics say cost jobs in Wichita`s already troubled corporate airplane industry. Glickman`s staff likes to point out how many times some of Yost`s leading supporters have been arrested.
There are two additional worrying factors for Glickman. Redistricting has brought in seven new counties and dropped one. The district is now slightly more Republican. And Wichita`s cable company, Multimedia Cablevision, has been running ”editorials” endorsing Yost and denouncing Glickman for supporting the recently passed cable TV bill, which authorizes re-regulation of cable rates.
Glickman is demanding equal time.
