By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 15, 1998; Page A3

SEATTLE, Sept. 14 — Absentee voting has become fashionable in this far northwest corner of the country. In Tuesday's open primary, in which candidates of both major parties share the same ballot and voters can select any of them, as many as half the votes may be cast by mail.

But as of Friday, just four days before the election, only about 30 percent of the absentee ballots in the hands of voters had been returned, suggesting that predictions of an exceptionally low turnout are accurate. And given her core of hard-line supporters, that could be good news for Rep. Linda A. Smith (R-Wash.) in her race against lawyer Chris Bayley for the GOP Senate nomination and the right to challenge Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in November.

The contest is an almost classic reflection of divisions within the Republican Party here and elsewhere. Bayley, 60, whose only experience in elective office was as King County prosecutor here 20 years ago, is a wealthy party insider who has attracted support from the state's business community and is also a close friend of state GOP chairman Dale Foreman.

A natty dresser who speaks in measured, lawyerly tones, Bayley has spent more than $750,000 of his own money to become known to voters and turn what once looked like an easy win for Smith into a surprisingly close race. He calls himself a "common sense conservative" who would have a better chance than Smith to defeat Murray and would be more effective inside the clubby world of the Senate.

Smith, 48, who has often clashed with the House GOP leadership, is anything but measured. An outspoken social conservative who opposes abortion rights and gun control, she has a passionate cadre of supporters who are among the most likely voters Tuesday. Smith dismisses Bayley as "this white guy in a suit from downtown Seattle" and as "the big business candidate."

Much of the business and many of the jobs here are linked to foreign trade, and it is on this issue that Bayley has based much of his campaign, portraying Smith as an opponent of free trade who should not represent the most trade-dependent state in the country. According to a 1997 study commissioned by the state government, foreign exports account for about 25 percent of the Washington state economy and since 1963 have been growing at an average annual rate of 7 percent.

"There has never been a Republican primary for statewide office in which trade has been the defining issue," said a longtime GOP operative. "Generally, in a statewide primary it's who can get farthest to the right. It's guns and baby stuff. For the first time someone is using a brand-new issue and if it's going to work anywhere it's going to work in Washington. We're essentially salesmen. We sell airplanes, trees, software, apples and fish to the world."

"People are starting to understand the trade issue," Bayley said. "When you talk about it in terms of jobs, it makes a lot of sense."

Smith consistently has taken stands against free trade, he charged. Although Smith opposed granting most-favored-nation trade status to China – now renamed "normal trade relations" – she has rejected the anti-trade label.

"Human rights is part of it, but only as that relates to other problems," she said. "We don't have a grain of wheat going into China. We do not now have one apple going into China. If they want MFN status, they need to open up their markets."

Foreman, the state GOP chairman, said that if Bayley "pulls off the upset it will be because of free trade." And according to a poll published Friday in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Bayley's barrage of television ads attacking Smith on the trade issue and for opposing a measure to overhaul the Internal Revenue Service has had an impact. The poll showed Murray winning almost half the primary votes, assuring herself of the Democratic nomination, and Smith clinging to a 23 percent to 17 percent lead over Bayley.

Tim Hibbitts, a pollster in Portland, Ore., who follows Washington state politics closely, said Bayley's advertising has made the race "closer than I thought it was going to be. I still rate Smith as the favorite because of the likely turnout mix. I think she's got a deeper base than he does. But it's close enough that a Bayley win wouldn't be a complete surprise."

Bayley also takes comfort from the relative trickle of absentee ballots that have been returned "People are waiting and that's good because the longer they wait that means they're not eager voters for Patty Murray or Linda Smith," he said.

But it is one sign of Smith's apparent confidence that she remained in the nation's capital over the weekend to pore over independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's report on President Clinton rather than return here to campaign. She said in a telephone interview that she is counting on her grass-roots organization of more than 30,000 individual contributors, but she has also begun to answer Bayley's television commercials with her own. In them, she accuses Bayley of advocating higher taxes and of not being tough on crime when he was a prosecutor.

Smith is also attempting to explain why she was the only House Republican to oppose the IRS overhaul measure, asserting that she was the only one to notice a last-minute change in the bill that would have reduced health benefits for some veterans.

Smith, who refuses to accept contributions from political action committees, has accused the House Republican leadership of blocking campaign finance reform legislation, but she has not made that an issue in the primary. But to many state GOP leaders, Smith's hard line stance on campaign financing is an issue when they contemplate the November contest against Murray, the self-described "Mom in tennis shoes" who is seen as among the most vulnerable of Democratic incumbents.

"If Linda wins she will not get any money [in the general election], and without money it's going to be tough," said one party official.

Brett J. Bader, a political consultant who is working for Bayley, argued that Smith "is either frozen in place or falling back. It's just a question of are we coming up fast enough. If the turnout is any more than dismal, she's in peril."

Bader can also hope that the turnout in the open primary includes many voters like Debra Hermansen, 42, a Democrat and Murray supporter. As for the primary, Hermansen said she had been thinking about "how we can stack the deck for Patty" in November and had decided the best way to do that is to vote for Bayley Tuesday.