The House: Pouring In the Money

If money is the mother's milk of politics, two well-suckled races are under way in Oklahoma and New York. Tulsa Democrat James Jones, chairman of the House Budget Committee, is being targeted by a heavily financed Republican effort. Manhattan's Bill Green has met a match as rich as he: Andrew Stein.

Down-Home Budget Brawl

Oklahoma Democrat James Jones commands a lot of respect in Congress. He is patient and intelligent, moderate and courageous. Yet the Republicans very badly want to defeat him, indeed to skin him, and not just because he comes from a conservative, Republican district. As chairman of the Budget Committee, Jones has led the floor fight against the President's proposed budgets, all of which projected deficits so large that no Republican dared sponsor them. He has also committed the even greater sin of offering budget plans of his own with lower deficits. To cap it off, Jones has countered Reagan's call for a balanced-budget amendment with a bill that would require the President to begin the process by submitting a balanced budget in the first place, which no President has done since Richard Nixon in 1970.

Consequently, the National Republican Party and a variety of conservative political action committees (PACs) are expected to contribute heavily to the campaign of Jones' articulate and combative opponent, Frank Keating. Jones, who by virtue of his position can command a wealth of PAC contributions (from January to June, he received $216,599), plans to spend $1 million defending his seat.

Keating calls Jones "a Tip O'Neill liberal, a Walter Mondale liberal." Jones, who has often bucked House Speaker O'Neill by supporting budget cuts and has carefully distanced himself from Mondale, counters, "I am an independent voice for Oklahoma."

Keating, 40, a former FBI agent and U.S. Attorney, expresses sweeping support of Reaganomics and maintains that his opponent is out of touch with the voters. Says Keating: "Jones has been a leader in the liberal Democratic House representing a conservative area. He has walked a tightrope too long."

Keating's aggressiveness has brought out a heretofore hidden feistiness in his opponent. Jones, 45, was particularly infuriated by an incorrect Keating charge that Jones had failed to report properly some of his wife's earnings on disclosure forms. Says his campaign manager Cole Finegan: "I've never seen Jim Jones this intense and enthusiastic." Jones' ads refute a Keating claim that Keating never lost a case as a prosecutor and end with the kicker, "In Oklahoma, we believe a man is only as good as his word."

Keating's best hope is to ride the coattails of the immensely popular President, who is expected to carry the district by an overwhelming margin. Yet ever since Jones was elected in 1972, a year that Richard Nixon carried the district over George McGovern with 79% of the vote, Jones has been able to persuade his constituents to split their tickets. In 1976 Gerald Ford carried the district with 62%, and in 1980 Reagan beat Jimmy Carter 2 to 1. "The nice thing about my district," Jones says, "is that it has always been fiercely independent."

Battle of the Bucks

It is the quintessential silk-stocking district, encompassing Bloomingdale's and Tiffany, Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue. Some would even say that the congressional seat on the East Side of Manhattan is the best that money can buy. It is fitting, then, that the Republican incumbent, Bill Green, and his Democratic challenger, Andrew Stein, can both dip into vast family fortunes as they wage what will be one of the most expensive House races in American history (projected expenditures: as much as $2 million).

Green, 54, a graduate of Harvard College and Law School, is a quiet, slightly rumpled intellectual about as exciting as a bagel without cream cheese. His quiet labors on the powerful Appropriations Committee have funneled pork-barrel benefits into his city, including money for mass transit and public housing. "He is the only Congressman I know who reads the Federal Register cover to cover," says longtime Aide Jeffrey Busch. The district's voters, 62% of them Democrats, tend to be liberals, either of the limousine or Volvo or ethnic variety, and Republican Green appeals to them with unabashedly liberal stands on such issues as abortion and ERA, while still taking a generally conservative posture on fiscal matters.

Except for a stint as water boy for the Baltimore Colts, politics is just about the only job that Stein, 39, has ever had.

Jerry Finkelstein, an oil-industry magnate and publisher of the New York Law Journal, bankrolled his son's successful bid for a state assembly seat when Stein was only 23. Another large infusion of family cash helped Stein win the job of Manhattan borough president in 1977. Stein has incurred the wrath of most New York politicians because of his greenback approach to public office, his flamboyant personality and his uninhibited ambition. However, he has managed to win grudging respect for his efforts to crack down on drug dealers on the Lower East Side, for investigating nursing-home fraud and for attracting federal funds to the city.

The checkbook battle is now being fought on the air waves. Stein's commercials, prepared by Media Wizard David Garth, lambaste his opponent for supporting production of the neutron bomb and voting to cut funds for a variety of social programs. Last week Green dropped a TV commercial that cruelly caricatured Stein, deciding to concentrate on an intensive door-to-door campaign. His slogan: "More than talk, Green delivers."

Says Stein: "It will be hand-to-hand combat in every neighborhood."