Somebody's after Feingold

Dead Heat, Dead Meat

By Rick Horowitz

MILWAUKEE -- Here in Wisconsin, whose fertile political soil once raised the likes of both "Fighting Bob" LaFollette and "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, whose hardworking citizens have always prided themselves on staying involved and making a difference, we're trying something new this year: We're letting Mitch decide.

Mitch doesn't live here. Nobody here even knows he exists. Doesn't matter.

This isn't Hurricane Mitch, mind you. This is Politician Mitch -- a Kentucky politician. Unknown or not, Politician Mitch is having a major impact in Wisconsin this election season. You could chalk it up to simple neighborly interest, except for two things: the facts, and several hundred miles of Illinois in between.

Politician Mitch isn't particularly interested in Wisconsin for Wisconsin's sake. Not at all -- Mitch has bigger things in mind.

Maybe you've heard: There's a white-hot race for the United States Senate going on in Wisconsin -- incumbent Russ Feingold against challenger Mark Neumann. Once upon a time, it looked like a cakewalk for Feingold, the Democrat. Then Mitch got involved.

Mitch is Mitch McConnell, you see, a United States senator from Kentucky and -- more to the point -- chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In that latter capacity, Mitch has money to burn, and he's been using lots of it to burn Russ Feingold. When the committee's attack ads started dirtying up Wisconsin's air this past summer, Feingold had a double-digit lead. A million outside dollars later (or even more -- nobody's telling) Feingold and Neumann are in a statistical dead heat. Who says going negative doesn't work?

If Feingold believed half of what they've been saying about him, he probably wouldn't vote for Feingold either. Fortunately for him, he knows better. Unfortunately for him, his isn't the only vote that counts, and Mitch's dollars are carrying plenty of weight elsewhere in the Badger State.

Feingold, of course, is among other things exactly one half of "McCain-Feingold," the year's leading, and ultimately doomed, effort to clean up the nonstop money-grubbing and creative loophole-leaping that passes for political campaigning these days.

In fact, Feingold is so convinced he's on the side of the angels on this one that, even though his bill didn't pass, he's trying to stick close to its provisions anyway. He's asked outside groups that support him not to buy ads on his behalf, and he's even told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to quit running soft-money ads attacking Neumann as "too extreme for Wisconsin."

The result of all this admirable self-restraint? About what you'd expect. Feingold has been massively outspent, thoroughly outgunned. No problem, he insists; he'll survive without that kind of outside help, or it's not worth surviving.

Highly principled? Or highly delusional? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, care to guess who's the single most ardent opponent of campaign-finance reform, the most unapologetic defender of the current system, in the entire United States Senate? Why, what a coincidence -- it's Politician Mitch!

Some suspicious types think that the scads of money Mitch has been sending into Wisconsin have absolutely nothing to do with what a swell fellow Mark Neumann is, and absolutely everything to do with making sure Feingold isn't around next year to carry on this pesky little quest of his.

A vendetta? Would Mitch McConnell play the game that way? Hey, the word from out West is that he's even been shortchanging one of his own, that he sat on crucial campaign money for Linda Smith, a fellow Republican and Senate candidate from Washington state, because Smith had been outspoken about cleaning up the campaign-finance system, too. Mitch was not amused.

He seems to be smiling about Feingold, though. There was his colorful little prediction recently, recounted to The New York Times by another Republican senator: "Don't worry about campaign reform. Feingold's going to be dead meat by Christmas."

Dead heat, dead meat. Politician Mitch could be absolutely right, you know -- unless, of course, we finally decide that we're perfectly capable of making our own decisions around here.

Two senators per state sounds about right. Any reason to hand Kentucky an extra one?

Posted 10/30/98. Fresh stuff right here twice weekly!