<p> Foley brings home the bacon, but voters wonder which Washington
he really represents
</p>
<p>By Karen Tumulty/Walla Walla
</p>
<p> You don't have to look very far into the wheat-stubbled landscape
of eastern Washington State to see what it means for this district's
dusty towns and rural counties to be served by the most powerful
Congressman in America. A few years ago, the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers considered moving its regional operations from
Walla Walla to Portland or Seattle; instead, the corps' asbestos-ridden,
World War II-era barracks is being replaced with a shining $10
million building downtown. Attempts by federal budget cutters
to close Walla Walla's underused Veterans Affairs Medical Center
met a similar end. And an hour north of town, $94 million in
federal money is flowing into the widening of a dangerous stretch
of highway.
</p>
<p> Just about everyone in Walla Walla can name a favor or two that
House Speaker Tom Foley has done, with taxpayer dollars, for
someone or some business that they know. But what once was praised
as "constituent service" these days also goes by the name of
"pork." An unusual number of voters in eastern Washington State--and in the districts of other powerful Democrats across America--claim that they are looking beyond the local benefits of
federal largess and pondering what it's costing the country
to have 435 Congressmen and 100 Senators each forcing the government
to keep open another unnecessary hospital or sleepy agency office
or subsidy program for well-to-do ranchers. Like other voters
around the country, Foley's constituents are questioning whether
their Congressman's three-decade struggle to win and wield influence
in the nation's capital has torn him out of touch with the folks
back home, folks who say they care as much about the debt they're
leaving to their children as about how many federal dollars
are spent in their state.
</p>
<p> But it is hard to judge how serious this talk really is. While
they like to think of themselves as flinty and self-reliant,
Westerners are in fact heavily dependent on the Federal Government
for agricultural subsidies, military bases, hydroelectric power
and water projects. As Foley's constituents talk dismissively
about pork in one breath, they complain about Clinton Administration
efforts to increase grazing fees in the next.
</p>
<p> Every Monday morning, five salesmen for an agricultural chemicals
firm meet for breakfast at a bustling diner called Clarette's.
A few weeks ago, as they were were finishing up their last cups
of coffee, talk shifted to politics. Four of the five said they
had voted for Foley in the past. This year none of them plan
to. Ironically, the Speaker's effectiveness was one of the reasons
why. "It's basically pork. Even though we live here, it just
isn't right," said Bob Johnston, 37. They also think of Capitol
Hill as a place where no favor is done for free. Foley knows
who to lean on and which string to pull, they agreed. "But what
did he give away to do that?" demanded Gerard Schille, 42.
</p>
<p> People everywhere say they're disgusted with Congress, but in
eastern Washington, voters enjoy the unique ability to fire
the guy who runs the place. No House Speaker has lost an election
since the eve of the Civil War, and the parade of national-news
reporters trooping around from Walla Walla to Spokane has helped
awaken voters to the scent of history in the offing. Having
suffered the second-worst showing of his 16 congressional campaigns
during the September primary voting, Foley finds himself in
the toughest race of his career. Yet only recently has he begun
to campaign in earnest, mounting an uncharacteristically aggressive
attack that has reduced his opponent's double-digit lead.
</p>
<p> The Republican nominee is Foley's strongest adversary in recent
memory: not for his political credentials, but for his lack
of them. George Nethercutt, an affable, politically moderate
49-year-old adoption and estate lawyer from Spokane, comes across
like Ward Cleaver and punctuates his campaign speeches with
such cardigan-elbowed jibes as, "I don't want to be the Speaker.
I want to be the listener." And while he respectfully and boyishly
refers to the Speaker as "Mr. Foley," his hard-edged campaign
ads paint the incumbent as the symbol of everything that is
wrong with Washington. As Nethercutt spokesman Terry Holt puts
it, "Foley is running against a political environment."
</p>
<p> The Speaker is also running against his own record on national
issues. His past two years of shepherding through Congress the
programs of an unpopular Democratic President have taken their
toll on Foley's standing in a district where most people generally
vote Republican. Foley's efforts to pass an assault-weapons
ban have provoked the National Rifle Association, which had
once awarded him its Defender of Freedom award, to run TV ads
against him. Also weighing in is Illinois-based Americans for
Limited Terms, which is outraged over Foley's lawsuit to overturn
his own state's term-limit initiative. All told, outside groups
are spending an estimated $350,000 to defeat the Speaker.
</p>
<p> Foley has had to match that spending, in part to counter an
impression that he has grown aloof from the lives of people
who raise cattle and run hardware stores in towns like Dusty,
Dishman and Spangle. It is hard for many in the district to
identify with a Congressman whose fine dark suits come from
Brooks Brothers and whose tastes in entertainment run to modern
art and ballet. Foley's straight-arrow image also has suffered
since the furor last year over $100,000 in gains that he pocketed
during four years of buying initial public offerings of stock.
These highly profitable deals were legal but not available to
the average investor; Foley subsequently closed his account.
</p>
<p> Even with his job at great risk this year, Foley initially seemed
reluctant to face the rigors of the campaign. While other lawmakers
were rushing for the first flight home after the close of the
congressional session, the Speaker lingered around Washington
for five precious days. A prominent Democrat was startled to
encounter Foley enjoying a leisurely workout at the exclusive,
oak-paneled University Club in downtown Washington.
</p>
<p> Voters had sent Foley a message in the primary. But in interviews
he insisted that there was nothing unusual about this political
year, that voter anger was exaggerated in news reports. Party
officials were so dismayed that Tony Coelho, the de facto head
of the Democratic National Committee, publicly chastised Foley
by calling for him to begin running an "aggressive professional
campaign." Translation: go negative against your opponent, and
play up the pork.
</p>
<p> Meanwhile, as it began to appear that Foley had given up, the
whispered criticisms among fickle Capitol Hill insiders grew
louder. They have always regarded his speakership as something
of an accident. But only five years ago, his gentle dignity
and judicious temperament were hailed as just what the House
needed after his predecessor, Jim Wright, resigned amid scandal.
Now those qualities of Foley's are more often seen as weakness--something his party cannot afford in the face of the strongest
and most confrontational Republican force in decades. Sniped
a Democratic House aide: "Many of us are hoping that his constituents
will do what we're afraid to."
</p>
<p> Foley had something to prove to both Washingtons. In mid-October,
like a great bear ending his hibernation, Foley awoke. With
a fivefold fund-raising advantage over Nethercutt, the Speaker
has blitzed his district with ads that are running everywhere,
from prime-time TV to the most humble country weeklies. One
spot declares that Nethercutt, whose previous political experience
consisted of a few years as a Senate staffer and a stint as
Spokane's G.O.P. chairman, is "a politician pretending he's
an outsider." Other ads tackle what little record Nethercutt
has on the issues, suggesting--unfairly, he insists--that
he would vote to cut spending on such programs as childhood
immunization.
</p>
<p> By the brutal standards of Campaign '94 this is tame stuff,
but it marks a distinct change for Foley. In past years, he
ran his races quietly and mildly, with ads that showed him standing
in a wheatfield and talking about his homesteader roots, or
walking the Capitol corridors with his beloved Belgian shepherd
Alice, who used to go to work with him. He is, after all, a
man who began his congressional career three decades ago by
holding a reception for the man he defeated. Nethercutt, who
had been blasting Foley for months, seemed genuinely surprised
by the Democrat's new tone. "This is a different Mr. Foley,"
he lamented.
</p>
<p> Foley is also betting that self-interest will win out in the
end. "The majority of people in my district think the job of
a member of Congress is to constructively support local education,
local transportation and law enforcement," he told TIME. The
Speaker announced a blizzard of new federal projects for Spokane,
including doubling the size of the survival-training school
at Fairchild Air Force Base--a facility, Foley added, that
he had helped save from closure. He also noted that Spokane,
a city where violent crime already runs well below the national
average, will get more new cops than San Francisco from the
recently enacted crime bill.
</p>
<p> In his first of half a dozen scheduled debates with Nethercutt,
Foley even managed to muster something that resembled a sneer
as he suggested that his opponent would help "move the speakership
of the House from eastern Washington to Georgia," an allusion
to would-be Speaker Newt Gingrich's district, in exchange for
"the lowest position on the House Agriculture Committee," Nethercutt's
presumed assignment. His face deeply flushed, Foley shouted,
"I fight every day with greater influence on issue after issue
for the people of this district!"
</p>
<p> Meanwhile, an increasingly defensive Nethercutt keeps trying
to steer the debate back to the waste and corruption of the
system at large. "Everything that comes from Washington comes
with a price," Nethercutt says. But there was almost a plaintiveness
in his voice as he reassured a local group that they need not
suffer a pork-free diet: "Don't be fearful that the world will
come to an end if Tom Foley is defeated."
</p>
<p> For all Foley's newfound energy, it is far from clear that he
will win back enough voters by Election Day. Loyal Democrats
in the district are demoralized. If the election were held today,
even Foley's advisers admit that he stands a good chance of
being washed away in the national anti-insider tide. Says Seattle
pollster Stuart Elway: "People in the Fifth District have the
loudest voice in America if they want to see some changes in
Congress, or to send a message to Congress." True enough, admits
a Foley campaign strategist, but he warns: "It would be the
