Interests accentuate the negative
If it were up to Republican Cathy McMorris and Democrat Don Barbieri, the congressional race would be a clean fight about the best way to fix the 5th District’s economic and health care problems, they say.
Apparently it’s not entirely up to them.
The national Republican and Democratic congressional campaign committees are weighing in on the race and other interest groups could join in, too.
“We have run a very positive campaign up to this time, and it’s my goal to stay positive,” McMorris said. “But there certainly will be folks that want to make sure this seat stays Republican.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee was the first to come out with a negative ad, attacking Barbieri on his record of job creation the week before the Sept. 14 primary election. Barbieri and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were quick to respond with ads of their own.
Over the weekend, DCCC released a television spot criticizing McMorris for voting against three separate bills in the Legislature to increase access to health care, and an NRCC ad accused Barbieri of bailing out of a 1989 deal to build the Downtown Transit Center, leaving the Spokane Transit Authority “holding an expensive piece of downtown real estate.”
There’s more to come.
A glance at the public records of Spokane’s major television stations shows the Republican and Democratic committees have booked advertising on Spokane stations through Election Day, Nov. 2, in a historic battle for control of the 5th District House seat. The departure of Republican Rep. George Nethercutt, who is challenging Sen. Patty Murray, leaves the position without an incumbent in the election for the first time in 62 years.
Not since Nethercutt turned House Speaker Tom Foley out of office in 1994 have the Democrats perceived such a good chance of regaining the seat as with Barbieri, a centrist Democrat running against a conservative Republican.
“It’s a high-profile race, and we sure expect the media isn’t going to be quiet over the next five weeks,” Barbieri said. “This race is about issues, and we want to stay on the issues … but when a negative ad comes our way, we’ll set the record straight.”
That was certainly the case when the NRCC ad criticized Barbieri’s role in the 1997 merger of the Broadview and Dairygold dairies in which many workers lost their jobs.
“The record needed to be set straight on his record of putting profits before jobs,” said Bob Harmon, an NRCC spokesman in Washington, D.C.
“It’s interesting that the Republicans felt the need to go negative right out of the gate,” said DCCC spokesman Greg Speed. “It obviously underscored their concerns about Don Barbieri being a very strong candidate.”
The Barbieri campaign and the DCCC were ready with response ads that said both dairies were running at 50 percent capacity at the time and that merging the two actually saved jobs and maintained a market for dairy products in Eastern Washington.
“Both dairies would have been out of business or in very severe depressed states,” said Bud Flaa, plant manager of the resulting Inland Northwest Dairies, which he said is now a successful employee-owned operation.
While the Republican ad came as no surprise to the Barbieri campaign, it apparently caught the McMorris campaign off-guard.
“We actually saw the Barbieri (response) ad before the NRCC ad and wondered what that was all about,” said McMorris campaign manager John Snowling, who pointed out that campaigns are prohibited by law from coordinating advertising with national parties. “It was distracting. We were dealing with strong primary opponents at the time.”
In the health care ad, the DCCC cited McMorris’ votes in the state Legislature against expanding health care to 10,000 uninsured children in the state, blocking thousands from the state’s basic health care plan and against additional federal health care funds for Washington.
“It sounds like they know Cathy has a lot of credibility on health care with her background in Legislature,” said McMorris press secretary Dan Brady. “I think they are very worried.”
The latest NRCC ad accuses Barbieri of dumping the transit center project, leaving the Spokane Transit Authority holding the expensive downtown property. The Republican ad said Barbieri made a profit of $900,000 on the land when he pulled out of an agreement to build the center. The Barbieri campaign denies this, citing the cost of demolishing the block and environmental testing, among other issues.
Both Snowling and Stephen Barbieri, the Democratic candidate’s son and press secretary, maintain that their campaigns will stay focused on the issues of health care, job creation and national security. But they also expect continued support from their parties’ congressional campaign committees.
Or, as Harmon said of the NRCC’s support for McMorris, “We will do whatever she needs to win.”
The Barbieri campaign is looking forward to an Oct. 1-4 visit to the district by former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, who lost his 1994 re-election bid to Nethercutt after representing the district for 30 years. Barbieri was a volunteer worker on Foley’s 1964 campaign.
“Tom and Don know each other very well,” Stephen Barbieri said. “He’s helping this year because of his high regard for Don.”
McMorris has been endorsed by former Republican U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, whom she expects to campaign for her at the end of October.
Both campaigns appear to dread the influence of independent political organizations on the Eastern Washington race.
“I have no control over what independents do, and I have no idea what they’ll do,” Barbieri said.
Snowling said he sees no logic in going negative when two recent polls showed McMorris leading. A coordinated poll by the McMorris campaign and the NRCC showed the Republican leading by 12 points in the 5th District. A KHQ television poll found McMorris up by 14 points.
“We want to continue campaigning on a message that’s working,” Snowling said. “I’m not sure if these groups come in, they would be helping anyway.”
One such group is Americans for Tax Reform, which this week sent out a media release blasting Barbieri for failing “to distance himself” from the John Kerry presidential campaign on tax issues.
McMorris also has been endorsed by the conservative Club for Growth, which is planning to throw its weight behind Republican congressional candidates seen as strong on cutting taxes. The Club’s director, David Keating, said no decision has been made yet on whether his group will participate further in the 5th District race.
On the other side, the League of Conservation Voters has been focused on the presidential race and is just now turning its attention to congressional candidates it sees as strong on environmental issues, said Betsy Loyless, the organization’s political director in Seattle.
“Certainly, the Washington 8 race and Washington 5 race are very competitive,” Loyless said. “We wouldn’t rule out involvement.”
One group that needs no convincing is NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, which views McMorris as a threat to the reproductive rights of women.
“We intend to weigh in on that campaign,” the group’s state director, Karen Cooper, said from Seattle. “We have just under 15,000 identified pro-choice voters over there (in the 5th District).” She said those voters, both Republican and Democrat, will be contacted several times by mail and phone to vote for Barbieri.
Dan Kennedy, CEO of Human Life PAC, based in Bellevue, said the anti-abortion group has endorsed McMorris but is not planning additional support for any candidate other than answering questions from voters and posting endorsements on its Web site.
The Washington Labor Council has been conducting intensive field campaigns, going door-to-door and phoning union members about the different candidates, said communications director Karen Keiser. Barbieri has been endorsed by several labor groups. Keiser said union members can be counted on to turn out at the polls in high numbers.
“In Spokane, the congressional campaign is a top priority,” she said. “We talk about issues; we don’t do negative campaigns.”