Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/110292/11029927.000

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                                                                                THE U.S. CAMPAIGN, Page 44

The Outsiders


In an election year marked by distrust of incumbents, a hunger
for change and a surge of support for women, dozens of
unconventional candidates are headed for Capitol Hill

By RICHARD LACAYO  -- With reporting by Cathy Booth/Miami,
Wendy Cole/New York and Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles and other
bureaus


    Maybe it was the feeling that a dirty Congress needed a
lot of new brooms to sweep it clean. Or it could have been the
congressional redistricting that followed the 1990 census,
creating dozens of new House districts, many with new racial and
ethnic majorities -- nuggets of opportunity for candidates who
aren't white men in business suits. Maybe it was the Clarence
Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, a spectacle that caused millions of
female Americans to look angrily toward Washington -- and dozens
of them to head there as part of the powerful movement known as
the Year of the Women. Whatever the reason, this is the year of
outsider candidates who think they can take Capitol Hill by
storm. Many of them may succeed.

    Bitterness toward the entrenched Washington elite and
anxiety over the economy have produced a bumper crop of
unconventional challengers. Major-party candidates for Congress
run the gamut from a gay Republican activist in Los Angeles to
a former Black Panther in Chicago to a Wyoming ophthalmologist
who promises to return to private life as soon as Congress
passes health-care legislation. And many incumbents, who
normally trot confidently to re-election, are running scared in
the face of this unexpected assault. At least 150 newcomers are
expected on Capitol Hill next year. That number includes 85
seats in the House and nine in the Senate that are guaranteed
to have new occupants because the incumbents have retired or
have been defeated in the primary campaigns.

    Among the fresh faces:

    WASHINGTON / Patty Murray

    Even in a year of unlikely candidates, Patty Murray, who
is running for the Senate in the State of Washington, stands
out as an original. The 41-year-old state legislator and
community-college teacher likes to call herself "a mom in tennis
shoes." Going toe-to-toe on the footwear symbolism, her
Republican opponent, five-time Congressman Rod Chandler, has
taken to wearing cowboy boots. But no amount of heavy stomping
on the campaign trail has yet put him ahead of a woman whose
campaign slogan could be "Mother knows best." "I tell people I
am a mom caring for two kids and two aging parents with health
problems," she says. "I go to work every day, and I know what
everyone is dealing with."

    Going after her pro-environment and health-care stands,
Chandler has labeled Murray a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat.
He also chides her for lacking the legislative experience and
expertise to serve effectively in the Senate, but in a year
marked by resentment against Washington insiders, inexperience
can be a plus in the eyes of many voters. Maybe not enough of
them, though -- while Murray once led in the polls by as much
as 24 points, her lackluster debate performances and Chandler's
attacks on her lack of political savvy have turned the race into
a virtual dead heat.

    In a year of complicated gender politics, Murray has been
careful not to cast herself narrowly as a woman's candidate,
while also letting it be known that it was the spectacle of the
Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings that propelled her into
the race. "When I saw what the Senate looked like, I was
astounded," she recalls. "I didn't see anyone there like me. I
turned to my family and said, `I know where I can make a
difference.' "

    TEXAS / Donna Peterson

    When it became public knowledge this year that "Good Time
Charlie" Wilson, a 10-term Democrat, had written 81 bad checks
totaling $143,857 on the House bank, he had a quip ready: "It's
not like molesting young girls or young boys." Opponent Donna
Peterson was not amused. The 32-year-old West Point grad, a
former helicopter test pilot and business consultant, says she
is going to oust Wilson from the East Texas seat he has held for
20 years.

    Peterson, a conservative Republican in the heavily
Democratic Second Congressional District, ran unsuccessfully
against Wilson two years ago, when he outspent her 6 to 1. This
year she's well funded by the Republican National Committee and
conservative groups, who like the fact that she's antiabortion,
probusiness, pro-death penalty and pro-gun.

    The real issue, however, has become Wilson himself. At 59,
he's an old-style politician who, as his ads say, "takes care
of the home folks." He pushes through more Social Security and
Veterans Administration cases for his constituents than perhaps
any other Congressman. Though he also champions women's rights
and supports the right to abortion, he has a reputation as an
aging Lothario. (On one taxpayer-supported foray to Pakistan, he
took along a voluptuous former beauty queen.) This year hot
checks have been his weak point. Peterson calls Congress a
"check-bouncing, debt-ridden retirement village." Though polls
show the race as a toss-up, Peterson is confident of victory.
As she told Texas Republicans this summer: "Hang on, Mr.
President, and hang on, America. Help is on the way."

    NORTH CAROLINA / Melvin Watt

    George White, North Carolina's last black Congressman,
left Washington in 1901. But first he offered a prediction to
his colleagues on the floor of the House. "This is perhaps the
Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress," he said.
"Phoenix-like he will rise up someday and come again." It took
just over 90 years for the state to send another black to
Washington, but here he comes: attorney Mel Watt is one of two
African-American candidates considered all-but-certain winners
in new North Carolina congressional districts that have black
majorities.

    On the campaign trail Watt traverses his odd-shaped
district -- it looks like a road-kill salamander -- in a shiny
Dodge minivan, stopping to shake hands, wolf down fried fish and
cheese puffs at dinnertime rallies, and spread his message: "We
can't continue to widen the disparity between the haves at the
top and the have-nots at the bottom." Watt well knows the
have-not side of that great divide. He grew up near Charlotte
in a tin-roofed home with no electricity or running water. But
he went on to law school at Yale and a career as a civil rights
lawyer. He also got a bitter taste of politics when he managed
former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt's ill-fated 1990 Senate race
against Jesse Helms.

    Now Watt, 47, compares the work he plans to do on behalf
of his constituents to a class-action lawsuit. On his agenda:
cut the defense budget in half over five years and shift much
of that money to domestic priorities; fully fund Head Start;
implement universal health care. "Let's send America a message
that it's time for a change," Watt tells supporters, "and part
of that change is to give 'em Mel."

    NEW YORK / Nydia Velazquez

    Though redistricting has given New York City's 12th
Congressional District a Hispanic majority, the smart money
still expected the well-financed Democratic incumbent, Stephen
Solarz, to prevail over a divided field of five Latino
opponents. But the smart money didn't count on Nydia Velazquez.
As a native Puerto Rican, she was in touch with the communities
she wanted to represent. As a former city council member, she
also knew her way through the tangles of local politics. Backed
by labor unions, community leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and
New York City Mayor David Dinkins, Velazquez emerged as the
candidate most likely to beat the nine-term Congressman in the
Sept. 15 primary -- and she did. Running now in an
overwhelmingly Democratic district, one of the poorest in the
country, she is virtually assured of becoming the first Puerto
Rican woman elected to Congress.

    During the primary campaign Velazquez was accused of being
too attached to the island where she was born 39 years ago. A
longtime supporter of Puerto Rican independence, she has served
as a U.S. representative of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
since 1986, spearheading Latino voter-registration drives and
battling anti-Hispanic discrimination. Opponents charged that
she was more beholden to the interests of her homeland than to
her would-be constituents. "My heart and soul are with the
people who elected me," she insists. "My priorities are to fight
for economic development, to help get people out of welfare,
create jobs and invest in education."

    After her primary victory, Velazquez was surprised by
media reports that last year, distraught over her mother's
illness and brother's drug addiction, she had attempted suicide
by swallowing 21 sleeping pills, washed down by vodka. "It was
a painful time," she says. "But I've learned I can't be a robot
trying to solve everybody's problems without paying attention
to my own needs."

    She says that months of psychotherapy have got her back on
track and that her successful campaign against Solarz is
evidence of her replenished strength. A week after her primary
win, she traveled to Washington to let House Speaker Thomas
Foley know that she wants a spot on the powerful House
Appropriations Committee -- an assignment virtually unheard of
for a newcomer. "If I don't get something I want today," she
says, "I'll come back tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until
they get tired of seeing me."

    CALIFORNIA / Jay Kim

    The Republican mayor of Diamond Bar, Kim says he nearly
cried last January when he had to lay off more than 20 employees
at Jaykim Engineers, Inc., the design firm he started in 1976.
When he thought about the 40% pay raise Congress had voted
itself, he felt like crying again. "Talk about being out of
touch," he says. That was when the Korean-born immigrant, who
came to the U.S. 31 years ago, decided to run for Congress in
California's newly formed 41st District. Campaigning on a
conservative platform that favors tax reduction and fewer
regulations for business, Kim, 53, scored a surprise victory in
a six-way primary race last June. He is now heavily favored to
defeat Democrat Bob Baker in his racially mixed, solidly
Republican district, which spans San Bernardino, Orange and Los
Angeles counties. "We have to live within our means," he argues.
"Business does that."

    In a brief but rousing speech to the Republican National
Convention last June, Kim played up both his business experience
and his up-the-ladder immigrant story. Though he is likely to
become the nation's first Korean-American Congressman, he has
no specific agenda for the Korean community. But he hopes to be
a role model for all Asian Americans. "They can look at me and
say, `He made it as an immigrant with a strong accent. Why can't
I?' "

    FLORIDA / Carrie Meek

    The daughter of a black sharecropper, Carrie Meek grew up
in the shadow of the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee.
In the '50s, she went back there to demonstrate for civil
rights -- and got teargassed. But Meek got her revenge. In 1979
she bested a field of 12 to win a seat in the Florida
legislature from Miami. Three years later, she became the first
black woman ever elected to the state senate. In an open primary
in September, she beat two black male opponents, taking 83% of
the vote and winning every precinct in a mostly black district
that runs through Miami and the hurricane-ravaged south Dade
County. She faces no Republican opposition in November,
guaranteeing her the honor of becoming the first African
American to represent Florida in Congress since Reconstruction.

    It was a remarkable victory for a woman born 66 years ago
in the Tallahassee ghetto called Black Bottom, where her father
grew vegetables and her mother took in laundry. After earning a
master's degree in physical education and public health from the
University of Michigan, she began teaching at Miami-Dade
Community College in 1961 -- at a time when the campus was
still segregated. "I have experienced extreme, rigid and very
painful segregation and racism from childhood," she recalls. "I
don't see myself as a victim -- Carrie Meek is a fighter."

    As a legislator, Meek led efforts to establish an
affordable-housing program in Dade County and helped establish
a program that assisted businesses owned by women and minorities
in getting state contracts. "I'm not afraid of going to
Washington," she says. "I've always been strong on women's and
minority rights, so I've been bumped around pretty hard on those
issues in the Florida senate." Her victory assured, Meek has
started fighting early by traveling to Washington two weeks
after the primary to lobby for committee assignments.