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Money no object in Cantwell’s
quest to buy Slade’s Senate seat
Adele Ferguson
Political Columnist |
It’s time for U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton to take off the gloves.
Obviously, he can’t just go on touting his own accomplishments, although they are legion, because that didn’t work well enough to get him a whopping big majority Sept. 19 to put some fear into Maria Cantwell.
And how does he point out the shortcomings of a woman opponent without making women voters mad, and even some men? Or maybe you didn’t catch the irate telephone calls to radio talk shows from men and women over Rick Lazio’s brutal treatment of poor sensitive Hillary in their debate. If she had burst into tears, Lazio would probably still be swinging from a lamp post, in room temperature condition.
It’s amazing how quick the feminists are to demand equality on the one hand and velvet glove treatment on the other.
How IS Slade going to handle Maria to avoid antagonizing the women? I asked his press secretary, Cynthia Bergman, Slade being tied up in a conference committee at the time so I couldn’t get to him before my deadline.
“That’s not the problem,” she said, “That’s not the issue. The issue is how do you campaign against a woman worth $40 million?”
She hasn’t got $40 million, I said.
“That’s what I read,” said Bergman. “She spent $5 million already and has broken spending records in Washington state to win the primary. Yet her top issue is campaign finance reform, which is hypocrisy. When she ran (for Congress) more than half her money came from PACS (political action committees).”
Cantwell’s newfound wealth from software computer stock ownership has been handy in buying tons of television ads contradicting her old voting record in Congress as a liberal. She can say anything and get away with it because it takes so much money to answer.
“Slade’s never been outspent before,” said Bergman, “but we may not have enough to match her on TV. If it comes down to grass roots support, we have more than 21,000 individuals. She has one. That’s the challenge. How to campaign against a woman with $40 million who’s willing to spend whatever it takes and has already spent $5 million”
Well, you can keep on putting out the word on what Slade has done, I said. I have a stack of stuff right here that keeps pouring in over the fax machine. It sure as hell impresses me.
He the same as told the Clinton-Gore Administration it’ll be over his dead body that they’ll remove any dams on the Snake or Columbia River.
He got $186 million to build a new federal courthouse in Seattle
He called for the removal of the Portland district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to stop such incidents as the strip searching of a Chinese businesswoman.
He got $3.6 million for the Cascade Conservation Partnership for environmental protection, preservation and recreational projects in Washington State.
He voted to grant permanent normal trade relations in China.
He was defended by Congressman Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, a Democrat yet, for the Sierra Club’s calling him an anti-environmentalist. And that was just in this one week.
But he hasn’t got $40 million. And in this state, since the advent of the software zillionaires, money not only talks, it legislates, and we bow and scrape to it.. But if it wasn’t OK for the software zillionaires to buy a stadium and an initiative for charter schools, why should they be catered to when they want to buy a seat in the U.S. Senate?
(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.) |
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