Two lead pack in Senate race

The lists of candidates for U.S. Senate on the Sept. 19 primary ballots are long, but the outcomes are hardly in doubt.

Incumbent Maria Cantwell faces four other Democrats – public service attorney Hong Tran, Ephrata physician and frequent candidate Mohammad Said, advocate of orbital space colonies and frequent candidate Mike Goodspaceguy Nelson and moving company owner and frequent candidate Mike The Mover.

Republican front-runner Mike McGavick faces five Republicans who think they’d be a better challenger – Mercer Island management consultant and city planning commissioner B. Barry Massoudi, Benton County Deputy Sheriff Bradley Klippert, land manager and frequent candidate Gordon Pross, businessman and frequent candidate William Chovil and fisherman and frequent candidate Warren Hanson.

As each major party’s only candidate with significant campaign money and a statewide presence, Cantwell and McGavick largely have ignored the rest of the field and trained their guns on each other.

McGavick, the former chief operating officer of Safeco Insurance, is preaching civility and bipartisanship as a way to get Congress moving. While both the House and the Senate are controlled by his party, he faults Cantwell and other Democrats for some of Congress’ shortcomings, such as this month’s failure of a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage and extend a list of tax deductions, which couldn’t overcome a threatened filibuster by Democrats.

“It was one of those key moments,” McGavick said last week. “Partisanship won, and our state lost.”

Cantwell sees that proposal – and most other issues – differently. Republicans were risking a reduction in pay for some minimum-wage employees who rely on tips in exchange for temporary extensions of key tax deductions, she said.

“It’s irresponsible to keep holding up (the tax bill) by saying, ‘Only if you reduce minimum wage,’ ” Cantwell said. “That’s blackmail.”

McGavick, former chief of staff for Sen. Slade Gorton, whom Cantwell beat in 2000, is getting significant Republican support as the party tries to reclaim a Senate seat in a state that leans toward Democrats for statewide office. Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady Laura Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have campaigned for him, as has Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the powerful chairman of the Commerce Committee.

Democrats called Stevens’ visit payback for Cantwell’s disagreements with him on environmental issues, including her opposition to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, an idea McGavick supports as part of his overall energy strategy.

If gasoline hits $4 a gallon at the pump, “I would think it wouldn’t bode well for Sen. Cantwell,” he said recently.

She also has fought Stevens on a proposal that would have brought more oil tankers closer to Seattle. McGavick opposed that idea but said it would have been better to privately dissuade the Alaskan senator than publicly fight him.

Cantwell has called for higher gas mileage standards for automobiles and more research and development into alternative fuels. Part of her campaign swing through the state this month is being made in bio-diesel Jeeps, an apparent attempt to one-up McGavick, who crisscrossed the state last month in a recreational vehicle.

In emphasizing her environmental credentials, Cantwell is appealing to some of the more liberal elements of her party who have been critical of her stance on Iraq. She voted to give President Bush the authority to start the war against Saddam Hussein and has supported every appropriation to keep it going.

Hong Tran, the Seattle-based attorney trying to win over the anti-war faction of the Democrats, and some party activists at the state convention greeted Cantwell’s speech with “No more war!” But one other anti-war Democrat, Mark Wilson, dropped out of the race and signed on with the Cantwell campaign in a position that pays $8,000 a month.

McGavick says his position on the war and Cantwell’s are essentially the same – support to go into Iraq to remove Saddam and a commitment to stay until the job is done.

But Cantwell recently offered a different take on both points: She said if she had known in 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, she would not have voted for the war resolution, and she called for Bush to push the Iraqis toward “a political settlement” and faster training of that country’s security forces so U.S. troop reductions can begin this year.

The two differ on Social Security, with McGavick supporting voluntary personal investment accounts for young workers and Cantwell opposing any type of “privatization,” contending there would be “nothing secure about Social Security if you allow it to be invested in the stock market.”

They differ, too, on immigration reform, although Cantwell supported the proposal passed by the Senate this spring that would enhance border security and create a guest worker program, as well as amendments to reimburse border communities for some law enforcement expenses and make tunneling under the border illegal.

McGavick said the proposal is a good start but needs more emphasis on secure borders, and he criticized Cantwell for voting against amendments to build a fence along the southern U.S. border and limit Social Security payments for legal workers.

The two front-runners are running a high-stakes race. Cantwell had raised about $10.6 million and had $6.4 million on hand as of June 30, the last deadline for reporting to the Federal Elections Commission. McGavick had raised $4.4 million and had $1.1 million on hand as of that date, and he announced plans this month to loan his campaign $2 million.

While that may seem like a fortune to the average voter, McGavick got a severance package from Safeco with stock options Democrats estimated at $17 million, and if he wins, he can hold fundraisers to repay the loan.

Six years ago, Cantwell, a recently departed executive from RealNetworks, loaned her campaign $10 million for the run against Gorton by borrowing against her stock holdings.