Senate race puts focus on economy

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This year’s federal elections could end up being called “It’s the economy, stupid – Part 2,” according to political observers.

For much of the past two years, many have predicted that 2008 would resemble 2006, when Democrats rode a wave of opposition to the Iraq war to regain control of both houses of Congress.

But according to recent polls about what issues matter to Americans the most, many voters have indicated that the economy, not the violence in Iraq, is their primary concern. In that regard, this year’s presidential campaign could end up more closely resembling 1992, when Bill Clinton used “It’s the economy, stupid” as a slogan to help him defeat the elder George Bush in his successful bid for the White House.

“The public’s attention has largely shifted,” Mark Brewer, assistant professor of political science at the University of Maine, said recently. “Iraq, if not improving, is at least stabilizing.”

“It’s almost miraculously faded,” Chris Potholm, professor of government at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, said of the war. “A lot of the sting seems to have gone out of that [issue].”

Current candidates for federal office have noticed the public’s growing concern with the economy and have focused their campaign messages accordingly. In Maine, where the race for Susan Collins’ seat is being seen as key to which party might control the Senate, her main opponent recently has emphasized economic concerns in his public remarks as he tries to win over potential voters.

Economic views

Tom Allen, a six-term congressman from southern Maine, made much of his votes in the U.S. House against the war, and of Collins’ votes for it, when he announced last year that he would challenge the pro-choice Republican. But on a recent two-day tour of Washington County with Mike Michaud, Maine’s other Democratic congressman, he made more references to the middle class, broadband Internet access, health care, pharmaceutical companies, and to oil companies than he did either to the war or to Collins.

“Internet access is going to be absolutely critical to economic development here,” he told lunch-goers at the University of Maine at Machias. At a stop in Columbia, he said making health care available to everyone “is the single, biggest domestic issue.”

He criticized the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the health care system, saying their lobbyists exert too much control over Medicare. He decried tax breaks for the oil industry at the same time that they are having record profits and many Mainers are having trouble paying their heating bills. When he mentioned the Iraq war, he partly cast it in an economic light by leveling criticism at the Bush administration for wasting “billions” of dollars on the conflict and running up the national debt.

At Bayside Market in Milbridge, when asked to compare himself directly with Collins, he brought up their votes on Iraq.

“She supported that policy from the beginning. I opposed it from the beginning,” he said.

And in campaign literature Allen says that, unlike Collins, he has opposed Bush on Supreme Court nominations and on tax cuts for the wealthy.

During a recent telephone interview, however, Collins expressed support for many of the same economic ideas espoused by Allen.

The senator said she has proposed a bill to eliminate tax breaks for the oil industry and would like to use that money to promote cleaner, alternative energy development and improved fuel efficiency for motor vehicles. She also has asked President Bush to stop adding to the nation’s strategic oil reserve, because such stockpiling helps drive up demand and price.

“It’s a bad deal for taxpayers to be buying oil when prices are so high,” Collins said.

She also supports federal support of rural broadband Internet development and agrees that health care reform is the most pressing domestic issue facing the country. Small businesses and the self-employed should get tax credits to help them afford health care, she said, and there should be greater emphasis on research and end-of-life treatment. Collins said she has not taken a firm position against single-payer coverage.

“I am skeptical it is the answer,” she said. “Universal coverage should be our goal.”

Reforming the tax code to make it more fair and cutting wasteful spending, such as in Iraq and in farm subsidies to large corporations, also are among her goals.

Economy as an issue

But whatever Collins’ and Allen’s economic views may be, and despite its effectiveness for Bill Clinton in 1992, it’s not clear that either Senate candidate can rely on an economic-message strategy to win this fall, according to trained academic political observers.

Bowdoin’s Potholm said there are too many factors in the relative health of the economy for any candidate to claim the issue as his or her own. There are so many major aspects to the economy and so many positions to take on them that the issue often ends up being a wash in the mind of voters, he said.

“Neither one of them can own it,” Potholm said. “You put 10 economists in a room and they can’t agree.”

And even when divisive issues are being debated, he said, Mainers often rely on a candidate’s likeability when they cast their votes.

“Very few Maine elections are won on policy initiatives,” Potholm said. “So much of Maine politics is determined by personality and appearance. It’s very hard for any challenger, no matter how qualified, to break through that persona.”

The fact that Bush is leaving office and that a new president will be chosen at the same time Mainers decide the Senate race also helps lessen the chance that voters will make Collins pay for their disenchantment with the president, he said, as Rhode Island voters did by booting moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee out of office in 2006.

According to Sandy Maisel, government professor and director of the Goldfarb Center at Colby College in Waterville, voters tend to place blame upon a poor economy more on the sitting president than they do Congress. This would seem to help prevent Collins from being at a disadvantage, he said, but the state of violence in Iraq could change again and force its way back to the front of voters concerns.

“We don’t know what the status of the war is going to be [in early November],” Maisel said. “I would hate to have to defend it.”

UMaine’s Brewer agreed that neither Allen nor Collins seems to have an advantage over the other when it comes to economic issues.

He said Collins’ voting record on the war made her more vulnerable six months ago, when violence in Iraq was worse, but he added that Allen has not waged “the most vigorous” campaign. Now that the economy has become a greater concern, he said, and Collins can demonstrate that she differs with Bush on economic issues, she is less likely to suffer from Bush’s high disapproval ratings.

“I think that helps [her],” Brewer said.

Jon Reisman, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Maine at Machias and a former candidate for Congress, said recently he has philosophical differences with both Allen and Collins. While he spoke, Allen and Michaud stood a few feet away in the UM Machias dining commons, talking to people over the dining room’s public address system as students ate lunch behind them.

Reisman, a Republican, said he naturally is supporting Collins in the race, but he was not overtly critical of Allen’s record in Congress. He seemed to echo Potholm’s position that likability plays a large part in Maine politics.

“It think he represents southern Maine pretty well, [but] I think he has a tough row to hoe in [northern Maine],” Reisman said. “She’s pretty popular here.”

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

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