Rollins Calls Spokane Race Career Highlight Hired Gun For Politicians Recounts Nethercutt’s Campaign In New Book

After political guru Ed Rollins helped George Nethercutt knock off House Speaker Tom Foley, he figured he could quit as a winner. He’d never have another race like it.

Rollins helped win the hottest congressional race of 1994 and made history by beating a speaker for the first time in 134 years.

“I’ve just never seen activism like that,” he said in a recent interview. “It was almost a crusade.”

The campaign office always hummed with volunteers. Nethercutt and Foley debated more than any other candidates he could remember, and Eastern Washington was a consultant’s dream. It had one dominant city with television stations that reached throughout the district. Commercials were relatively cheap, and there was enough money to make them plentiful.

“Spokane’s a unique community,” said Rollins, who writes about the race in a new book. “It’s a place that had taken great interest in politics over the years.”

Big-time political consultants were rare in Spokane races before 1994, when Rollins agreed to help his longtime friend Nethercutt in a race he doubted they could win.

At the time, Rollins was the most controversial political hired gun in the nation, the Mephistopheles of modern campaigning.

He had told Republican congressmen to disavow President Bush’s tax increase in 1990, then deserted the GOP to run Ross Perot’s 1992 campaign. He got fired a day before Perot quit the campaign. The next year, he ran Christie Todd Whitman’s successful gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey, then bragged about suppressing the black vote by bribing ministers.

Although he tried to keep a low profile in the Eastern Washington campaign, his first trip to Spokane prompted a worried Nethercutt supporter to call the newspaper in an attempt to blow the whistle on him.

His job, Rollins said, was to “keep the wheels from falling off” the campaign in its last three weeks. The local staff was good, he said, but it was not an ordinary race.

“They weren’t ready for prime time,” he said.

Rollins contrasts the Foley-Nethercutt race with another campaign he worked on that year, the disastrous U.S. Senate bid of Michael Huffington in California.

He portrays the Huffingtons as rich, arrogant and venal. The Nethercutts are industrious, principled and virtuous.

Rollins uses a bit of artistic license to bring the two campaigns to a climax. He writes of attending Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral the Sunday before the election, then going to the final debate at a Spokane hotel that afternoon with the Nethercutts and meeting Foley in a snow-covered parking lot.

The debate went well, he writes, and he left Spokane even though “I wanted to end my career right here. I wanted to drive voters to the polls on Election Day and go door to door turning out Nethercutt voters.”

Instead, he writes, he returned to California because the Huffingtons threatened to withhold the last $25,000 they owed him.

It’s a great scene that neatly caps his theme of good candidate vs. evil candidate. But it didn’t happen. There was no debate the last Sunday before the election, and no snow in Spokane, either. Nethercutt spent the afternoon ringing doorbells in the Valley and Foley was in Colville and Newport.

Asked about the inaccuracies, Rollins was surprised. But there were so many debates, he said, “they all tended to blend together.” He said he regretted the errors.

That little factual glitch aside, the book offers an inside look at American politics by recounting his many campaigns.

He writes, too, of the Reagan White House, filled with people who spent at least as much time plotting one another’s demise as running the country.

“It is a pretty Machiavellian place,” Rollins said. “Everyone’s a type A personality with a big ego.”

Nancy Reagan, Don Regan, James Baker, Lee Atwater and George Bush all are targets of Rollins’ scorn. He is kind to the point of reverence to Ronald Reagan and indulgent of his perceived faults of Jack Kemp, whose campaign he ran in 1988.

Rollins won’t be around to help Kemp this year. He quit the campaign business after the Nethercutt race and his book makes it clear that Bob Dole isn’t likely to seek his help.

But the self-confessed political junkie was ready to assess the campaign during a lull in the book-signing tour: Dole’s performing better. Kemp’s providing energy and is just the person to sell the tax cut. True, Dole has to reconcile his past record on taxes with his plan, but he can do it if he stands firm.

“If for one moment he waffles, though, he’s done,” Rollins said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. SHINING IN SPOKANE In his new book, “Back Rooms and Bare Knuckles: My Life in American Politics,” Ed Rollins presents the Nethercutt-Foley race as a shining moment.

2. ROLLINS SOUNDS OFF In “Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms: My Life in American Politics,” Ed Rollins writes about several politicians he has worked with in his 30-year career, including: Ross Perot. “There’s no doubt in my mind that until he tossed it away, Perot had a legitimate shot at being elected.” But a victory for Perot in 1992 would have been a disaster for the nation, Rollins says. President Ross Perot would have been “a little dictator, ruling over a government in chaos.” George Bush. “Without a doubt, George Bush was the worst campaigner to actually get elected President in modern times. … Only Bob Dole’s mistakes in the primaries and Michael Dukakis’ greater ineptitude saved Bush.” Arianna Huffington. “(T)he most ruthless, unscrupulous and ambitious person I’d ever met in national politics … a domineering Greek Rasputin determined to ride her husband’s wealth to political glory at any cost.” Ronald Reagan. “He was the last American hero. He may have forgotten your name, but he never forgot who he was or what he believed in - and that was his magic.” - New York Daily News