Slinging Mud and Money

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

In big-buck campaigns, the price of victory could be scruples

Money and meanness. Those are the factors for which this year's election is likely to be remembered, long after calculations about shifts in party power and legislative policy are forgotten. Well, anyway, until 1984, when, it is altogether too possible, candidates' spending will spin still further into the stratosphere and their ads will become yet more venomous.

But even if that happens, 1982 is assured a place in the annals of American political campaigning. It was the year of two $10 million candidates, for Governor in New York and Texas. It was the year in which at least five House candidates broke or came close to the million-dollar mark, and even more incredibly, spending totaled more than $1 million in two state legislative races, both for seats in the California legislature that pay $28,000 annually. It was the year in which the Democratic and Republican parties backed up their local mudslingers with national negative advertising: the Democrats with a spot in which former Senator Edmund Muskie implied that Republican victories would cause older Americans to "live each day in fear for the future of their Social Security"; the Republicans with an ad in which Ronald Reagan charged that "big spenders" had "driven prayer out of the nation's classrooms."

The two trends interlock--the most expensive campaigns not infrequently are also the most scurrilous--and there is little in sight to stop either trend. Laments William Brodhead, a Michigan Democrat who decided to retire from the House rather than try to finance a re-election race: "It's sort of like the arms race. Every time one side ups the bid, the other side counterbids. It's out of control."

So it is. Common Cause, a public interest lobby, estimates that Senate and House candidates spent roughly $300 million this year, up more than 25% from 1980. When races for Governor and state legislative posts are added in, the grand total may hit half a billion dollars. The ten Republican Senators re-elected this year spent an average of almost $1.7 million to hold their seats, more than five times the amount they spent when they campaigned in 1976. The 18 Democrats re-elected to the Senate spent an average of $1.4 million each, roughly triple their 1976 outlays.

Optimists among political experts suggest that the spending may be reaching a natural limit, at which point it becomes useless or even backfires on the candidates. Unhappily, the evidence does not quite bear out their theory. It is true that several of the very biggest spenders lost. Among them: Republicans William Clements and Lewis Lehrman, who shelled out around $12.5 million each on the Texas and New York gubernatorial races; Democrat Mark Dayton, a department-store heir who laid out $6.9 million in an attempt to become a U.S. Senator from Minnesota, and Democrat Adam Levin, 33, a lawyer who poured as much as $1.5 million into his effort to win a House seat in New Jersey.

Incumbent Clements actually had trouble spending all his money effectively at the end of his campaign. He could buy no more than $280,000 a week of TV time because that is all Texas stations were willing to sell. Lehrman's spending in New York became an issue in itself, adding bite to the slogan of his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo: "Experience money can't buy."

These results, however, are more than a little misleading. For one thing, the conquerors of the megaspenders were forced into extraordinary outlays. Democrat Mark White spent $5 million to turn Clements out of the Texas Governor's chair, and Republican David Durenberger shelled out $3.5 million to beat back Dayton's Senate challenge in Minnesota. Moreover, lavish spending did buy some offices. Democratic Businessman Frank Lautenberg concedes he could never have upset Republican Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick for a New Jersey Senate seat if he had not spent $3.25 million to Fenwick's $1.4 million.

On the spending level just below the top, money counted very heavily. Of the 33 Senators elected last Tuesday, 27 outspent their opponents, frequently by wide margins in close races. Says Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause: "Anyone who argues that money was not a crucial factor in this election is not really looking at what happened." Several political analysts estimate that the ability of Republican incumbents to raise more cash than Democratic challengers held Democratic gains in the House to 26 seats, from perhaps 40 that might have switched if outlays had been more even, and prevented a loss of two or three Senate seats.

Even Republicans who applaud that result often concede that the escalating spending is undermining the political process. It tends to confine political office to candidates who are either independently wealthy or willing to sell their votes to the proliferating political action committees (PACs) of special-interest groups. These two types often are really one. It has become standard procedure for a rich candidate to lend huge sums to his campaign from his personal fortune, then stage fund-raising parties after the election at which he solicits funds from PACS to repay himself. Says Edward Roeder, compiler of a directory, PACs Americana: "Many Senate seats have been bought but not yet paid for. We will see whether they are put up for sale."

Ominously, PACs are also spreading their influence into state legislatures, fearfully bloating the once modest cost of campaigning for them. The standout example is California. Democrat Tom Hayden, who spent $1.3 million winning an assembly seat, had little need of PAC support; his wife Jane Fonda contributed or loaned two-thirds of the money for his race. But business PACS eager to keep the left-leaning Hayden from acquiring any political power pledged to raise $1 million for his opponent, Bill Hawkins, and they almost did. Hawkins spent more than $800,000. Party groups and business and labor PACs also provided much of the $1 million, split about evenly, that Republican Charles Imbrecht and Democrat Gary Hart (no relation to his namesake, the Colorado Senator) spent battling for a seat in the state senate. Hart narrowly won.

Can anything be done? Of course, but it probably will not be. Many suggestions have been made to limit political spending while still permitting citizens, businesses and special-interest groups to support the races of candidates they like. Among them: public funding of congressional campaigns, tighter limits on PAC contributions, a legislated lid on the TV time that stations can sell to candidates. But incumbents, many of whom benefit from their ability to raise and spend more than would-be challengers, are unlikely to vote for any such measures. Says Thomas Houston, chairman of California's fair political practices commission: "Oh, there will be talk of reform. People will write letters and editorials; legislators will complain about the time wasted fund raising. But the public will lose interest."

Like spending, negative campaigning this year reached heights not experienced in a long time. "It was the worst I've seen in 18 years in politics," says Tony Coelho, chairman of the Democratic congressional campaign committee. One reason is that candidates have more money to hire consultants and admen who will search out, or if necessary invent, flaws in an opponent's record and then craft ads that will magnify and distort them.

Some especially noxious examples: Tennessee Republican Robin Beard ran a TV commercial in which a Fidel Castro look-alike delightedly lit a cigar with a $100 bill and intoned: "Muchissimas gracias, Senor Sasser." The false implication was that Beard's opponent, Democratic Senator Jim Sasser, had voted for foreign aid appropriations that had somehow benefited Communist Cuba. In California, Republican Peter Cost, a candidate for the state assembly, showed a TV spot in which three actors dressed up to look like especially vicious convicts sat around in a jail cell and praised Cost's opponent, Democrat Sam Farr, for opposing the death penalty.

Happily, some of the worst advertising failed or even boomeranged. Beard and Cost were both defeated. In Massachusetts, Republican Margaret Heckler lost her House race to Democrat Barney Frank in part because of her ads charging that Frank, while a state legislator, had favored prostitution and pornography; Frank in fact had voted for a bill to set up adult-entertainment zones where police could more easily monitor those activities. Half the voters questioned in exit polls conducted by station WBZ-TV called Heckler's ads objectionable.

However, the line between negative advertising so blatant that it infuriates voters and slightly less ham-handed ads that impress them is elusive. In Texas, Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen won re-election with the aid of a TV ad that pictured a frail old woman walking to her mailbox, finding it empty and staring at the camera in despair, while a voice accused Bentsen's opponent James Collins of plotting to wreck Social Security. Though Collins once advocated making Social Security voluntary, he now insists that he is avid to preserve the system. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Peter Kostmayer ran ads showing a picture of Republican James Coyne on a cookie that was being crushed by a pair of giant hands, while the voice-over charged Coyne with selling out to "special interests." The ad concluded: "That's the way the Coyne cookie crumbles." Kostmayer recaptured the House seat he had lost to Coyne in 1980.

Some admen are talking of drawing up a voluntary code to define limits beyond which agencies should not go in creating political commercials. But politicians with money to spend will always be able to find agencies that will craft noxious ads, and they will be tempted to buy such ads as long as they think nastiness may succeed. Says California's Hart: "Depending on your view of human nature, you aim for a voter's baser instincts or his hopes and aspirations. These days, you find that fewer and fewer people respond to positive messages." Coelho voices hope that the failure of some of the most flagrant ads will cause negative campaigning to decline. Well, maybe, but as Coelho quickly adds, perhaps the message of the 1982 results is merely that voters demand "more sophisticated" defamation. --By George J. Church. Reported by Evan Thomas/Washington and John E. Yang/Boston

With reporting by Evan Thomas, John E. Yang

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