By David S. Broder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 21, 1998; Page A14

SEATTLE—When a member of the supportive audience at the University Unitarian Church here asked Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) Sunday if it were true that "only one woman senator voted against the welfare [reform] bill in 1996," Murray replied that she was sure at least two others – Sens. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) – had joined her in opposition.

Her ready identification with two other 1992 "Year of the Woman" winners who bucked the bipartisan majority and President Clinton on that measure was more than an ideological identification card for Murray. It was also a sign that she was not feeling as endangered by the liberal label as her two sister senators who are struggling in uphill battles for reelection.

Murray holds a clear – but narrow – lead over Rep. Linda A. Smith (R-Wash.), a conservative populist who has often outperformed the polls, in the only 1998 Senate race with opposing female candidates.

In their first – and probably only – televised debate, the rivals took opposite stands on everything from the impeachment of the president to abortion, affirmative action, hate crime legislation, trade with China, taxes, political action committees (PACs) and – especially – the federal role in education.

As Smith said in her concluding statement, "There are strong differences between Patty and I." Murray, a former schoolteacher and school board member, winced at the grammatical error but did not correct either the conclusion or the way it was expressed.

She has run a classic, cautious incumbent's campaign, asserting in the tag line of her first television ad that she has developed into "more than a mom in tennis shoes," as her celebrated 1992 slogan described her, and has become "a senator working for us." A Democratic strategist here said, "For quite a while, Patty seemed out of her league. She jumped straight from the state Senate to the Senate. Her office wasn't very well-organized and no one could tell you what she had accomplished."

Murray has taken that head-on, saying in her ads and in the debate that "I have worked very hard" in the Budget Committee to eliminate deficits while protecting Medicare, and on Appropriations to boost education spending and secure salmon-protection money for the state. With help from the White House, she was able to claim a personal victory when the money for hiring and training 100,000 new teachers – a Clinton bill she had sponsored – was included in the new budget agreement.

She also is riding a Democratic tide that appears to be much stronger here than in Moseley-Braun's or Boxer's states. With popular Gov. Gary Locke (D) in mid-term, Democrats are favored to take control of the state Senate and pick up the House seat Smith has held for four years. They are threatening in at least one more House race.

And Murray, 48, has other advantages in a state that has elected only one Republican – incumbent Slade Gorton – to a full Senate term since 1946. She is from the Seattle suburbs, while Smith is from a small town in the southwestern corner of the state, outside the Puget Sound population center that has been home to every senator since 1934.

Smith's personality and policy positions have made it easy for Murray to seize a commanding financial edge, with almost twice as much cash on hand as her opponent, as of the Oct. 15 Federal Election Commission report. Smith, an outspoken campaign finance reform advocate and opponent of tobacco subsidies, refuses PAC money. Her stance alienated Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, whose name Smith included in a fund-raising appeal for help in overcoming the opposition of "Washington insiders."

McConnell resisted pressure from Gorton and others to release some of the $510,000 in campaign funds the national party could spend on Smith, telling them she was not competitive enough to merit the investment. But on Monday, after state GOP Chairman Dale Foreman made public a letter of complaint and enlisted help from Robert J. Dole, who campaigned Saturday for Smith, McConnell signed off on a $100,000 contribution from the Republican National Committee.

Smith also lost the backing of major exporters such as Boeing, Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser because she has opposed normal trade relations with China until it improves its human rights record and has criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement. Murray has taken the opposite position on trade.

Given these handicaps, it is remarkable that Smith has made it a race. But the outspoken, 48-year-old grandmother has made a career of upsets, defeating three incumbents. As a legislator in Olympia, she built "Linda's Army" of grass-roots activists from a successful initiative campaign to limit state spending, and she is a heroine to antiabortion groups.

Smith won her House seat after a write-in primary campaign in 1994 and this year, when polls showed her in a tight primary race with Chris Bayley, a wealthy Seattle lawyer backed by the business establishment, she defeated him 2 to 1. Delighting in being a contrarian on many issues, Smith is advertising her opposition not only to Murray's teachers bill, which she claims will help bureaucrats more than students, but to the 1997 and 1998 budget agreements, which she argues were made possible only by "diverting $500 billion of the Social Security surplus" – a statement Murray dismisses as "a confession she does not understand the budget process."

In an interview, Smith said publicity about McConnell's recalcitrance has spurred her fund-raising – "$300,000 in four days last week" – and added: "If I can stay on the air now, I'll win. . . . My base is sure to vote and she has nothing to match my grass roots." A new ad plays on the ineffectiveness theme, asking, "What has Patty Murray accomplished?" and answering, "Not much."

Other Republicans, while saying the race is closer than the 12-point margin in public polls, caution that Smith still is making up ground she lost when she was off TV for three weeks after the September primary, when Murray had the airwaves to herself.

The impeachment issue has come into the contest. Smith, who called for Clinton's impeachment even before the Monica S. Lewinsky story became public, said in the debate that she would "look again" at his possible conviction and removal if she were in the Senate. Murray contended her opponent "is already committed," adding, "I have said what he did was wrong . . . but I may be a juror and I want to remain impartial."

Neither candidate has advertised on the issue, but in the close House contest in the suburban Seattle 1st District, ex-representative Jay Inslee became the first Democrat in the country to attack his opponent, Rep. Rick A. White (R), for voting for the impeachment inquiry. Inslee's campaign released a poll Monday showing what his manager called a "phenomenal" response.

But White's campaign insists his numbers improved during the week the Inslee ad aired. "We didn't think it was necessary to answer it," said White manager Connie Correll, "and they've switched to other things," notably an ad attacking White's environmental record. White has countered that ad with a spot quoting Inslee's former constituents from an "eastern Washington district" as saying they voted him out of office in 1994 "because he never met a tax he didn't like."