09/27/2008

By BRAD CAIN  / Associated Press

Oregon's GOP Sen. Gordon Smith earlier this year declared he was "ready to rumble" when he was asked about his fall re-election campaign.

"Rumble" is a tame word for the bare-knuckles political brawl he's engaged in with Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley, with just a month to go before the November election.

Smith, the lone GOP senator on the West Coast, is fighting for his political life.

He could end up losing his seat to Merkley in a campaign that has been marked by an onslaught of negative TV ads from both sides that began after the Oregon primary election in May and has intensified since.

Portland pollster Tim Hibbitts says Smith and Merkley basically have been running neck-and-neck since the summer.

"I expect it to remain very, very close right up until the end — unless one of them makes a large mistake before then," Hibbitts said.

Smith is in trouble in large part because he's a Republican running in a state that is steadily trending more blue and where Barack Obama's presidential campaign has registered thousands of new Democratic voters.

As of the last count, 43 percent of Oregon's registered voters are Democrats, compared with 32 percent Republican. That translates to 216,000 more Democratic voters than Republicans.

More than $15 million already been spent on TV commercials — many of them attack ads — by the campaigns and interest groups on both sides of Oregon's Senate race. That amount could double by election day.

Smith has been under fire by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which recruited Merkley to run last year. The group had spent $3.7 million on the Oregon race as of Sept. 14 and continues to pour increasing amounts of money into TV ads backing Merkley's candidacy.

This past week, the Democratic group began airing new TV ads that accuse Smith of supporting President Bush's proposal to convert at least a portion of Social Security into private investment accounts. Smith says he never did that.

Meanwhile, a group backed by Republican funders called Freedom's Watch is running TV ads that try to paint Merkley as a serial tax-and-spender during his years in the Legislature, an assertion that Merkley says is false.

In the presidential race, polls indicate that Obama likely will carry Oregon handily, and some think Smith could be swept out of office with that tide.

"In Oregon, coattails will matter," said Reid Wilson, a Washington, D.C.-based analyst for Real Clear Politics, a national political Web site. "Look at the 75,000 people who turned out for Barack Obama's rally in Portland. Enthusiasm for the guy at the top of the ticket will generate a lot of straight-ticket voting among Democrats."

Smith no doubt is keenly aware of the increasingly Democratic tilt of his home state.

In December 2006 he gave a well-publicized Senate floor speech in which he questioned Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.

This election season he's run TV ads touting his ability to work with Obama on issues. Another Smith ad features the story of an Oregon family who kept their health coverage because Smith "stood up to Bush to stop reckless cuts to Medicaid."

Smith, in an interview, said he believes Oregon voters will again endorse his record of working cooperatively with Democrats in Washington, D.C.

"The example I have set with Sen. Ron Wyden for 12 years is the answer to America's political gridlock," the GOP senator said.

Smith and Merkley have used increasingly harsh rhetoric as the campaign heads into its final month.

On Friday, Smith called Merkley a coward and a partisan for "prejudging" the $700 billion federal bailout plan to stem the financial market crisis. Merkley's campaign said the Democratic contender has shown real leadership by saying exactly where he stands on the Bush proposal.

In his campaign against Merkley, Smith's toughest TV ad to date features a rape victim accusing Merkley, as a legislator, of failing to crack down on serious sex offenders. Merkley's camp says Smith "cherry-picked" one vote and that Merkley has supported an increase in the statute of limitations for prosecuting sex crimes.

Merkley also has been hit with TV ads by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has spent $1.6 million on the race so far, that use video taken by a Republican tracker showing Merkley continuing to eat a hot dog as he gives a fumbled response to a question about Russia's invasion of Georgia.

Merkley, for his part, believes he's made inroads with voters by campaigning on the need to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, protect a woman's right to choose on abortion, and provide family wage jobs and health care to more people.

The Democratic contender also has made it a point to tie Smith to Bush's unpopular presidency, saying that the GOP senator has sided with Bush most of the time.

"It's hard to take on an incumbent senator. But the fact is, our message is getting through, and I'm excited about it. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic," Merkley said in an interview.

Wilson, the analyst with Real Clear Politics, said he hasn't been all that impressed with Merkley's candidacy so far.

Still, he said, Merkley's campaign could be good enough to prevail in what's shaping up to be another banner year for Democrats from coast to coast.

"Jeff Merkley was not their strongest recruit," Wilson said of the national Democratic campaign group. "And yet, thanks to the national atmospherics and the increasingly liberal bent of Oregon, Jeff Merkley finds himself tied with an incumbent senator. In most years, that wouldn't be the case."

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Brad Cain has been writing about Oregon politics from his Statehouse office in Salem for 25 years.