Skip ads and navigation
Advertising
Our network sites seattlepi.comHelp

McCain and Bush clash over Revs. Robertson, Falwell

Tuesday, February 29, 2000

By JOEL CONNELLY Mail Author and ED OFFLEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

The Republican presidential contest erupted into factional warfare yesterday, as Sen. John McCain labeled several Christian conservative leaders as "agents of intolerance" and Gov. George W. Bush accused his rival of "needless name calling."

"Ronald Reagan didn't point fingers. He never played to religious fears as Senator McCain is doing," Bush said after a speech in Bellevue, in a mocking reference to McCain's self-description as a "proud Reagan Republican."

McCain flew to Tacoma last night for a rally with more than 2,000 supporters. It was part of a marathon campaign day that began with a speech in Virginia in which he criticized Bush's association with the Revs. Pat Roberson and Jerry Falwell. McCain later flew on to Redding, Calif.

"What happens tomorrow will send a signal that we can continue this incredible crusade," McCain said as a trademark campaign bus took him from the airport to the rally at Pacific Lutheran University.

"The establishment has taken us on," he said. "The establishment wants us to lose. The establishment is scared stiff we are going to break the iron triangle in Washington."

The "iron triangle," a frequent McCain expression, refers to Congress, the executive branch of government, and Washington, D.C., special interests that pay for campaigns.

Bush and McCain were campaigning for votes in today's Washington GOP primary. The primary determines only 12 delegates to this summer's Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, but the winner will get a major boost going into next week's Super Tuesday contests in California, New York and 14 other states.

"The delegate count isn't as important as the momentum coming out of the primary," said Rep. Jennifer Dunn, who is chairing the state Bush campaign.

The white-hot Republican contest, and the Democratic battle between Vice President Al Gore and former Sen. Bill Bradley, has caused unprecedented interest in Washington's primary.

Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro, McCain's state co-chair, predicted last night that 50 to 55 percent of the state's 3.15 million registered voters will cast ballots. Munro noted that a half-million mail-in ballots have not been returned to election officials. This could mean the outcome of a close race will take days to determine.

While debate over the religious right raged nationally, Bush managers believe they have found a regional issue on which they can halt McCain's campaign.

The Arizona senator has refused to rule out removal of four Snake River dams as a means to restore the river's decimated salmon and steelhead runs. Agribusiness interests, irrigators, ports, shippers and farm organizations in Eastern Washington do not want to see the dams removed.

"I don't believe you breach dams: I believe you can have both salmon and dams," Bush said yesterday in an interview. He also criticized McCain for listing $80 million in Northwest salmon recovery as one example of pork barrel spending that McCain has promised to remove from the federal budget.

Last night, McCain was taking a carving knife to another area of federal spending important to Washington.

In an interview on his campaign bus, McCain said that three of the Pentagon's tactical fighter procurement programs are, when put together, too expensive. The Boeing Co. is heavily involved in the three fighter programs.

"At least one of them has got to go," McCain said. "We cannot afford all three programs."

McCain, campaigning earlier yesterday in in Virginia Beach, Va., accused Falwell and Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, of distorting his pro-life position on abortion and sought to "smear the reputations of my supporters."

Robertson won Washington's Republican precinct caucuses in 1988, and his followers have emerged as a major force in GOP presidential politics.

In the harshest words yet spoken in the Republican campaign, McCain labeled Bush a "Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore." The TV evangelist, whose broadcast empire is headquartered in Virginia Beach, is a Bush supporter.

"The politics of division and slander are not our values," McCain said in Virginia. "They are corrupting influences on religion and politics and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country."

Bush yesterday described himself as a "uniter, not a divider" to more than 300 supporters at Bellevue Community College.

"I am a problem solver, he is a finger pointer," Bush said of McCain. ". . . He is a person who obviously wants to divide people into camps."

In Bellevue, Bush acknowledged that Robertson, Falwell and other fundamentalist religious leaders have lined up behind his presidential bid. "They're supporters of ours, but I have all kinds of supporters," Bush said.

Mike Murphy, a top McCain adviser, shot back in Tacoma last night: "He aligned himself with these characters to win in South Carolina and now he's trying to move away from them."

McCain has sought to derail Bush with an insurgent campaign, and upset the Texas governor in the New Hampshire and Michigan primaries earlier this month.

Bush noted yesterday that of McCain's 54 Republican colleagues in the Senate, 35 are backing the Texas governor. "This is a man," he said of McCain, "who has made a reputation of alleging that Republican senators are not on the up and up."

Last night, McCain was asked when a larger number of GOP officeholders will come over to his campaign. "Wait until the tide comes up to their noses," he replied.

McCain proclaims his conservatism at every stop, but the reformist themes of his campaign have worked to revive the long-dormant moderate wing of the Republican Party. In this state, McCain supporters include former three-term Gov. Dan Evans, ex-Rep. John Miller and Edith Williams, granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt.

McCain has courted independents and even Democrats, running ads urging them to pick Republican ballots in today's primary so their votes will be counted toward delegate selection.

Yesterday, a Democratic state legislator, Rep. Brian Sullivan of Tacoma, came out for the Arizona Republican, saying that McCain "stands above party politics."

Bush is backed by a broad array of Republican regulars, ranging from moderates like New York Gov. George Pataki to Robertson and Falwell.

The support was evident yesterday. Bush campaigned with GOP Sen. Slade Gorton. It was Gorton who urged the Texas governor to appear in the Tri-Cities yesterday and champion the Snake River dams.

"It is a powerful message over there," Gorton said. "It may well be the dynamic that determines the primary winner on our side of the fence."

McCain predicted last night that the dramatic Republican nomination battle will be decided when returns come in from California, New York and other states next week.

"I think it's going to be over Tuesday (March 7)," he said. "I don't know whether this is my own good sense speaking or my fervent hope."

The Bush camp remains serenely confident of victory, and that the race against McCain will leave no lasting wounds going into the general election.

"We'll forget John McCain by the time we get to November," Dunn said.

Bush, looking ahead to the general election, yesterday returned jabs that Gore delivered at his environmental record over the weekend. Under Bush's leadership, charged Gore, Texas leads the nation in pollution of its air, water and soil.

"That's the way the vice president does things, through scorched-earth political tactics," Bush said in an interview. "The fact is that plants that were grandfathered under the Clean Air Act are being required to meet emission standards. Toxic emissions in Texas have declined."

Bush noted that pollution from automobiles remains a major problem because population is increasing in Texas along with the number of automobiles on its highways.

OUR AFFILIATES
NWsource KOMO
Pacific Publishing

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
101 Elliott Ave. W.
Seattle, WA 98119
(206) 448-8000

Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820
seattlepi.com serves about 1.7 million unique visitors
and 30 million page views each month.

Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
Send investigative tips to iteam@seattlepi.com
©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Terms of Use/Privacy Policy

Hearst Newspapers