Clinton To Help Fellow Candidates President’s Travel Overlaps Districts Important To Congress

Putting the strength of his coattails to the test, President Clinton plans a final-week push for a Democratic Congress just as more Republicans urge voters to keep the GOP in power as a check on a second Clinton term.

Clinton’s efforts to help Democrats down the ballot will be evident more in action than words. Wary of reminding voters why they stripped Democrats of their congressional majorities just two years ago, the president rarely puts in a direct plug for a Democratic Congress.

But Clinton’s travel in the final week will overlap with many races critical if Democrats are to get the 19-seat House and four-seat Senate gains needed to regain majorities. Republicans entered the stretch suggesting things were breaking their way - in part because of Clinton’s big lead in the presidential race.

“If Bill Clinton’s vote were a vote of enthusiasm, then Republicans in the House and Senate would be in big trouble,” said GOP pollster Neil Newhouse. “But many voters don’t trust him. So it leaves them wide open to a pitch to balance their vote at the top with a vote for Republicans for Congress.”

Indeed, many Republicans in tight races are arguing that progress in reducing the deficit and reforming welfare would be at risk if Democrats regained control of Congress. These Republicans recall the tax increases and big-government health care plan advocated in the first two years of Clinton’s term.

“Don’t turn back the clock,” was the final-week slogan for Republican candidates suggested in a memo from GOP pollster Frank Luntz to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Although Clinton’s second-term promises have been fairly modest, enacting most would require a Democratic Congress. And Democratic committee chairman also would be less eager than their Republican counterparts to investigate Clinton administration ethical lapses.

Confident that his re-election is at hand, Clinton last week restructured his roughly $1.5 million weekly advertising budget with an eye on helping targeted congressional races. He is buying heavily in Washington and Oregon, for example, despite healthy leads. Oregon has a tight Senate race and a handful of congressional seats are up for grabs in Washington.

Other buys have been added or adjusted to help Democratic candidates like House hopeful Walter Capps in California and Illinois Senate contender Richard Durbin.

Beyond his own campaign funds, Clinton helped raise $10 million for Democratic House and Senate campaigns in the past few weeks, and has authorized additional party money to be redirected from his campaign to congressional races.

Such steps are not so much a test of Clinton’s personal coattails but a helpful luxury afforded by his double-digit lead over Dole. But, even as he looks for a giant margin of victory by revisiting Texas and Florida in the final week, Clinton will also put his personal prestige on the line for Democratic candidates.

In the week ahead, Clinton will visit competitive Senate races in Illinois, Minnesota and Colorado, and campaign in House contests in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California. Visits to Washington and Oregon are likely, as is a trip home to Arkansas, which has a close Senate race.

“The main thing is continuing to make sure we lock down our 270 electoral votes - that is the overriding concern,” said White House political director Doug Sosnik. “But we’re looking for the overlap with congressional races.”

In places like Illinois and Minnesota, where Clinton leads handily, Republicans don’t dispute that the president might help Democratic candidates with a late-campaign visit that boosts turnout.

But in a year in which he has consistently led the White House race, there is little evidence of long Clinton coattails.

“Swing voters are the target at this point of the campaign,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “Among them, every time Clinton stops being the guy who is on your side and starts being the head Democrat, he takes a drubbing.”

In any event, recent history suggests limits on the coattails of presidents seeking a second term.

Of the last three presidents to win a second term, Lyndon Johnson had broadest coattails: In 1964, he carried 44 states and helped Democrats gain 38 House and two Senate seats. But Republicans posted only modest House gains when Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan won 49-state re-election landslides, and in both years, 1972 and 1984, the GOP lost Senate seats.

And in these three re-election landslides, Reagan’s 59 percent was the lowest percentage of the popular vote. Assuming Clinton maintains his lead over Dole, many strategists expect him to barely crack 50 percent on Election Day; some believe Ross Perot will do well enough to again deny the winner a popular vote majority.

Not that some GOP candidates aren’t worried.

In northwest Pennsylvania, freshman GOP Rep. Phil English has worked feverishly to move from highly vulnerable to being favored for re-election in a Democratic district where Clinton leads Dole by a wide margin.

“But if Republicans go to sleep and my opponent can tie himself to Clinton, there is a real chance he can pull off an upset,” English said.

But English and others, like Iowa freshman GOP Rep. Greg Ganske, have used their fund-raising advantage and political skills to pull ahead in races where Clinton was once considered likely to be a big help.