As base pulls right, Cornyn faces a test

Can he fight Kirk for swing voters without upsetting conservatives?

WASHINGTON—Conservative leader Cathie Adams has some advice for Senate hopeful John Cornyn and other Republicans who might contemplate a move to the middle in hopes of winning more votes this fall.

It’s only a good idea if you want to lose, says the president of the Texas Eagle Forum. Because in their hearts, she said, most Texans are conservatives.

“I don’t really think that running to the middle is going to play. He who moderates himself loses in a statewide campaign in Texas,” Mrs. Adams said. As the Senate contest intensifies, Mr. Cornyn will have to engage in a delicate balancing act, analysts say. While the attorney general must outmaneuver Democrat Ron Kirk in courting independent swing voters, he cannot alienate conservatives who make up the core of the Republican Party.

Mr. Kirk, a self-styled moderate whom some conservatives regard as a stealth tool of national liberal Democrats, has tried not to antagonize the sizable number of conservatives in Texas. The former Dallas mayor has defined the matchup as a choice between politicians rather than partisans and said Mr. Cornyn was being less than statesmanlike in the campaign.

“While Texas is a conservative state, it’s not that partisan a state,” Mr. Kirk recently told CNN, adding that, “at the end of the day, my message of bringing people together to solve problems is what is going to propel me to success in November.”

Mr. Cornyn, campaigning Tuesday in Dallas, said he was focusing on issues that cut across partisan lines, such as health care, job creation and education. “That’s how we will appeal to conservatives and independents talking about things they all care about.”

In searching for the magical conservative-moderate combination, Mr. Cornyn has a role model in George W. Bush, his mentor in so many political endeavors.

Both as a gubernatorial and a presidential candidate, Mr. Bush shored up his party’s base while reeling in moderate voters with a message of “compassionate conservatism” designed to appeal to both camps.

The Bush connection

That balanced appeal – not to mention Mr. Bush’s personal popularity in his home state – explains why Mr. Cornyn has tirelessly reminded voters that he, and not Mr. Kirk, would be on the president’s team in Washington, analysts said.

“Cornyn will consolidate the conservative support which he has to have, but he’s also got to appeal to these moderate independents,” said Earl Black, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “That’s basically the Bush style. Cornyn will basically say, ‘If you like Bush, I’m your guy’ – and hope that that will be enough of a signal to unite the partisans but also appeal to the independents.”

The Cornyn campaign has no specific liaison to conservative voters, said Dave Beckwith, the candidate’s spokesman. But the GOP-sponsored Texas Victory 2002, a group headed by Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio, represents a coordinated effort to get out the vote on behalf of all Republicans on the ticket, he said.

“We do not have a great record – and the Democrats do – of getting our voters out in recent years,” Mr. Beckwith said. “We’re doing our best to turn that around this year, and there’s reason for optimism.”

Mr. Cornyn has been getting some help lately.

Both Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have traveled to Texas to help raise money and rally support for their fellow Republican. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is scheduled to join former White House adviser Karen Hughes in San Antonio next month for another Cornyn event.

Praising his record

Several conservative leaders in recent interviews gave Mr. Cornyn high marks, although a few said he needed to do more to introduce himself and his message to voters.

They said they respected an attorney general who would go to Washington to argue in favor of school prayer before the Supreme Court.

They cheered his decision to try to shut down casino gambling in Texas and when he went after the large fees awarded to the trial lawyers who waged the state’s lawsuit against tobacco companies.

They agreed with his efforts to make deadbeat parents pay child support. And they like his opposition to abortion – even if his belief that it should be allowed in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the woman is threatened clashes with the state party platform’s call for an outright ban on the practice.

“He has endeared himself to conservatives with his record,” said Becky Farrar of Hico, a past president of the Texas chapter of Concerned Women for America, which claims 500,000 members nationwide. “They absolutely can get behind Cornyn.”

Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, said, “On the life issue, we’re very pleased with Cornyn, and we’re not at all pleased with his opponent.”

The anti-abortion group, which has a mailing list of 30,000 Texans, agrees with the exception to protect the life of the woman, Mr. Pojman said. And so few abortions occur because of rape or incest that it isn’t worth opposing Mr. Cornyn over them, especially since Mr. Pojman believes Mr. Kirk “advocates abortion on demand as public policy.”

“This issue is paramount to the people on my mailing list,” said Mr. Pojman. “They just want to know who the pro-life candidate is, Democrat or Republican. And we’ll be getting these out in large numbers.”

Justin Lonon, a Kirk spokesman, said Mr. Kirk supports abortion rights and believes the “deeply personal” decision to have an abortion should be left to a woman, her family and her spiritual adviser.

Voters “will have to look at the full context of where he stands on many different issues and make up their minds,” he said.

Not everything about Mr. Cornyn warms conservatives’ hearts.

Some remember that, as a Texas Supreme Court justice, Mr. Cornyn wrote the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision upholding what opponents call the “Robin Hood” school financing law, which requires wealthier school districts to share tax revenues with poorer ones.

“People weren’t happy with the justices who came down on the side of Robin Hood,” said state GOP chief Susan Weddington. “The idea of redistribution of wealth is something that conservatives don’t like.”

Still, the attorney general remains “immensely popular among conservatives,” Mrs. Weddington said. “People that hear him, they get excited, they get passionate.”

Mrs. Adams, who likes and respects Mr. Cornyn, said she wasn’t thrilled in June when he detailed for reporters his disagreements with the state party platform, including its calls for banning all abortions and ending bilingual education programs.

“He has done a very fine job in his campaign,” she said. “The only misstep he had, in my mind as a conservative, is to say, ‘Well, let’s go over the platform and start saying what I agree with and what I don’t.’ I didn’t think that was very wise, but that is the only thing that I have seen him do that would make conservatives unhappy.”

What would make conservatives really unhappy, several leaders said, is if the seat long held by Republican Sen. Phil Gramm were to fall into Democratic hands.

That could bolster Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate, boost the power of Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and produce obstacles for Mr. Bush’s legislative agenda and judicial appointments.

The view of Kirk

Despite Mr. Kirk’s moderate credentials – he drew wide support from Republicans in his races for mayor, has been a friend to developers and was once a lobbyist for big corporations – conservative leaders invariably describe him as a liberal working to benefit national Democratic causes.

“He comes down on the side of the liberal leadership of the Senate time and again,” Mrs. Farrar said.

Mrs. Adams said it rankles her when Mr. Kirk boasts of his record in Dallas, especially since the city is facing a budget shortfall and is scrambling to fund basic services.

“Ron Kirk is just a very slick politician,” she said. “And when it comes to any of these [national] issues Ron Kirk would be on the wrong side. So there’s no way that I’m going to give up on supporting John Cornyn.”

Mr. Lonon defended Mr. Kirk’s record as mayor and said he had demonstrated an ability to work across party lines and win support from voters of various political persuasions.

“We’re not pandering to one group over another,” he said. “We have a candidate who transcends a lot of those typical boundaries. So the candidate himself is what will draw votes from all different ideologies.”

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