Tom Foley: The Price of Pork

Foley brings home the bacon, but voters wonder which Washington he really represents

By Karen Tumulty / Walla Walla Monday, Nov. 07, 1994

    • (3 of 4)

    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.

    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."

    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.

    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.

    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.

    3. 1
    4. 2
    5. 3
    6. 4