Copyright 2000 The Buffalo News
The Buffalo News
June 25, 2000, Sunday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1804 words
HEADLINE:
EARLY VOTES ARE LAZIO'S TO DEFEND
BYLINE: DOUGLAS
TURNER; News Washington Bureau Chief
DATELINE:
WASHINGTON
BODY:
Republican Senate
candidate Rick A. Lazio began his congressional career as a strongly
conservative partisan warrior. But he gradually moderated his voting record as
his party became entrenched as the majority in the House.
Political
observers and supporters of the Long Island congressman say the shift from the
extreme right to more moderate positions is a natural political transition. But
critics in the camp of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, want to
use Lazio's record against him.
"So far, the campaign has been all about
Hillary Rodham Clinton," pollster Lee Miringoff said. "From now on, this will be
a race between him and the first lady to define who Rick Lazio is." A key
battleground is likely to be Lazio's right-wing votes in the early 1990s when he
was a backbencher in a Republican minority whose spiritual leader was then-GOP
Whip Newt Gingrich. However, a Buffalo News analysis shows he has cast some
strongly conservative votes in recent years as well, decisions that also could
come into play.
One of these was his 1997 opposition to funding a study
of repairs needed at the Susan B. Anthony House in Seneca Falls -- where the
19th century women's rights movement started.
Days later, Lazio backed a
bill providing funding for a herd of 110 wild horses at Cape Lookout, N.C.
To shed light on the congressman's political leanings, The News analyzed
Lazio's record -- reviewing more than 2,000 roll-call votes -- since he moved
from the Suffolk County Legislature to Congress eight years ago.
As a
minority freshman, Lazio wound up with an AFL-CIO rating slightly more
conservative than that of then-Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato, also a Long Island
Republican. D'Amato scored 38 out of 100 points on labor's scale in 1994. Lazio
had a 33.
Lazio declined several requests for an interview, and no
member of his campaign or congressional staff was available to discuss his
voting record despite repeated requests last week.
However, late Friday,
his campaign office faxed explanations for a number of Lazio's earlier
cogressional votes. The material was made available by Patrick McCarthy, an aide
in Lazio's campaign office.
Cornell University historian Joel Silbey
said the issue isn't whether Clinton is too liberal or Lazio too conservative
for New York, but "how the character issues play out" in the Senate race, just
as they will be important in the presidential race.
Canisius College
analyst Kevin Hardwick sees virtue in a legislator's ability to moderate.
"Hillary Clinton was once a 'Goldwater Girl,' " Hardwick said. "We saw
this in Robert Kennedy, who started out as part of Senator Joe McCarthy's witch
hunt and ended as a great senator from New York."
Rep. Tom Reynolds,
R-Clarence, Lazio's interim campaign manager, said Lazio's cost-cutting votes
have to be seen "against the backdrop of the largest tax increase in the
nation's history."
In 1993, President Clinton and a Democratic Congress
enacted tax increases of more than $ 500 billion over 10 years to balance the
budget.
Still, in his first term Lazio voted to slash funding for the
National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He
also voted to kill the Appalachian Regional Commission, an organization that has
funneled nearly $ 320 million for highway and other projects to 13 New York
State counties, including Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany.
McCarthy
said the votes to cut appropriations for the NEA and the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting were for "reasonable reductions . . . and would have helped make
government programs more accountable."
Of the Appalachian vote, McCarthy
said: "(The commission) was established at a time when this region was most in
need of economic assistance. Since its inception in 1965, over $ 7 billon has
been invested in the region served by the (Appalachian Regional Commission).
However, the region remains economically depressed. Clearly this government
program is not the answer to promoting the economic development of the region."
Lazio also supported GOP legislation that would have gutted the
anti-trust division of the Justice Department and impaired the ability of the
Federal Election Commission to curb corruption.
He opposed bills to
strengthen oversight of lobbyists and signed on to a highly partisan bill to cut
funding for standard White House operations.
Lazio's support of death
penalty legislation was unwavering. In his first term, he backed a Republican
bill to block consideration of racial discrimination in death penalty cases.
McCarthy said the congressman's votes to limit death penalty appeals
were to help "speed up the process of carrying out the death penalty in this
country."
Lazio also opposed a bill that would have expanded the
government's ability to curb racial bias in home mortgages.
In his
second term, Lazio opposed legislation to assure death row inmates competent
counsel and opposed allowing juries to opt for life without parole in death
penalty cases.
McCarthy said Lazio voted to cut Clinton-administration
Elementary and Secondary Education Act grants to special programs because "they
would have reduced funding to New York public schools."
Lazio preferred
the Republican version of the ESEA reauthorization to the
president's, Lazio's office said, because the congressman supports the
Republican plan for using some of the ESEA funds for private
school vouchers.
"As a parent of two young children attending public
schools," his office said, "Lazio believes parents should have the option to
choose their child's education program instead of being trapped in a public
school where they may not be learning."
That sort of view sets up the
campaign's paradox, as Miringoff noted.
"The way the campaign may play
out," Miringoff said, "is that she will be closer to the voters on the issues
and he will be closer on values."
When the GOP moved into the majority
in 1995, Lazio was able to moderate some of his record, voting for campaign
finance reform legislation and against attempts to weaken the National Labor
Relations Board. He opposed later attempts to cut Appalachian Regional
Commission funding.
Nevertheless, his conservative, anti-regulatory
leanings showed in votes against increasing funding for Superfund, the toxic
waste cleanup program, and against proposals to strengthen laws against
securities fraud.
Lazio backed a constitutional amendment permitting
prayer in public schools and supported using federal aid for private-school
tuition vouchers.
Some of his later votes seem to cut against the
state's interests, however.
Lazio sided with the House leadership to
oppose a bill sponsored by a fellow Republican, House Transportation Chairman
Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, to increase funding for mass transit and highways.
Like most members of Congress, he sided with Clinton's 1997 plan to cut
$ 115 billion worth of Medicare funding, a measure that caused statewide
upheaval in hospitals and the health-care delivery system.
"You have to
understand that we were mired deep in deficit spending," Reynolds said. "The
general climate in Congress and at home was against more government and against
bigger spending.
"All of us can say on certain votes, with the benefit
of hindsight, we might do things differently today."
Lazio's ability to
moderate his positions is reflected by his later support for the Susan B.
Anthony House appropriation when it was bundled into a larger spending bill. And
he helped fend off attempts by ultra-right Republicans to strip down the Small
Business Administration, which Lazio once voted to kill.
Three years
after he voted to eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission, Lazio opposed
GOP leadership attempts to cut its funding.
In 1998, he broke with House
Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and sided with Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn.,
voting for comprehensive campaign reform, including a ban on contributions of
unlimited soft money.
Despite the vehement opposition of House Majority
Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, to an increase in the minimum wage, Lazio joined
Republican moderates to pass the bill.
And as GOP rightists -- and even
Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York -- inveighed against getting
the country more involved in European affairs, Lazio supported expansion of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization into Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Lazio opposed attempts by DeLay and Armey to kill Clinton's AmeriCorps
youth service program.
Though Lazio backed most of the GOP's family
values agenda, including the federal ban of recognition of same-sex marriages,
he voted against using the federal purse to impose anti-gay standards on San
Francisco or the District of Columbia.
Hardwick, the Canisius professor,
prefers to see Lazio's record as mainstream Republican. Commenting on the Senate
candidate's support of school vouchers, Hardwick said:
"Providing poor
children access to quality education is nothing that Lazio needs to apologize
for."
Even so, Congressional Quarterly ranked Lazio's voting record far
to the right of D'Amato's in that senator's final year, in terms of the number
of times they voted with the president.
D'Amato was the most
conservative New York senator to serve under a Democratic president since the
Depression. Lazio supported White House legislation 37 percent of the time,
D'Amato 60 percent.
Campaign rhetoric and advertising is never based on
what an opponent did right; instead, it focuses on how that opponent misfired or
did something confusing.
Even among Republicans, Lazio's record on
abortion is difficult to track. He is a strong opponent of a form of late-term
abortion its opponents call "partial birth."
Hardwick said Lazio's
opposition to partial-birth abortion, mixed with Lazio's support of other
abortion rights, is more evidence that the Republican is in New York State's
mainstream.
However, close examination of Lazio's record shows he has
voted both ways on providing access to abortion clinics and both ways on the use
of federal funds to pay for abortions.
And Hillary Clinton's forces are
sure to focus on these hard-to-define abortion votes Lazio has cast over the
years in their quest for the strong women's vote she needs to win the statewide
election.
For the first lady, the question is how far she can go in
attacking Lazio without losing her White House panache.
"The classic
strategy of running against someone who is not well-known is to fill in the
blanks," said Darrell West, a Brown University political scientist.
"But
for her, she does best when she is seen to be above politics. So the question
is, how do you run for the Senate and be nonpolitical?" Bureau Assistant Emily
Dalton Smith contributed to this report.
GRAPHIC:
Associated Press; Rep. Rick A. Lazio's votes have moderated since 1992.;
Graphic-Lazios' voting record
LOAD-DATE: June 27, 2000
