The Outsiders

By Richard Lacayo

MAYBE IT WAS THE FEELING that a dirty Congress needed a lot of new brooms to sweep it clean. Or it could have been the congressional redistricting that followed the 1990 census, creating dozens of new House districts, many with new racial and ethnic majorities -- nuggets of opportunity for candidates who aren't white men in business suits. Maybe it was the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, a spectacle that caused millions of female Americans to look angrily toward Washington -- and dozens of them to head there as part of the powerful movement known as the Year of the Women. Whatever the reason, this is the year of outsider candidates who think they can take Capitol Hill by storm. Many of them may succeed.

Bitterness toward the entrenched Washington elite and anxiety over the economy have produced a bumper crop of unconventional challengers. Major-party candidates for Congress run the gamut from a gay Republican activist in Los Angeles to a former Black Panther in Chicago to a Wyoming ophthalmologist who promises to return to private life as soon as Congress passes health-care legislation. And many incumbents, who normally trot confidently to re- election, are running scared in the face of this unexpected assault. At least 150 newcomers are expected on Capitol Hill next year. That number includes 85 seats in the House and nine in the Senate that are guaranteed to have new occupants because the incumbents have retired or have been defeated in the primary campaigns.

Among the fresh faces:

WASHINGTON / Patty Murray

Even in a year of unlikely candidates, Patty Murray, who is running for the Senate in the State of Washington, stands out as an original. The 41-year-old state legislator and community-college teacher likes to call herself "a mom in tennis shoes." Going toe-to-toe on the footwear symbolism, her Republican opponent, five-time Congressman Rod Chandler, has taken to wearing cowboy boots. But no amount of heavy stomping on the campaign trail has yet put him ahead of a woman whose campaign slogan could be "Mother knows best." "I tell people I am a mom caring for two kids and two aging parents with health problems," she says. "I go to work every day, and I know what everyone is dealing with."

Going after her proenvironment and health-care stands, Chandler has labeled Murray a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat. He also chides her for lacking the legislative experience and expertise to serve effectively in the Senate, but in a year marked by resentment against Washington insiders, inexperience can be a plus in the eyes of many voters. Maybe not enough of them, though -- while Murray once led in the polls by as much as 24 points, her lackluster debate performances and Chandler's attacks on her lack of political savvy have turned the race into a virtual dead heat.

In a year of complicated gender politics, Murray has been careful not to cast herself narrowly as a woman's candidate, while also letting it be known that it was the spectacle of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings that propelled her into the race. "When I saw what the Senate looked like, I was astounded," she recalls. "I didn't see anyone there like me. I turned to my family and said, 'I know where I can make a difference.' "

TEXAS / Donna Peterson

When it became public knowledge this year that "Good Time Charlie" Wilson, a 10-term Democrat, had written 81 bad checks totaling $143,857 on the House bank, he had a quip ready: "It's not like molesting young girls or young boys." Opponent Donna Peterson was not amused. The 32-year-old West Point grad, a former helicopter test pilot and business consultant, says she is going to oust Wilson from the East Texas seat he has held for 20 years.

Peterson, a conservative Republican in the heavily Democratic Second Congressional District, ran unsuccessfully against Wilson two years ago, when he outspent her 6 to 1. This year she's well funded by the Republican National Committee and conservative groups, who like the fact that she's antiabortion, probusiness, pro-death penalty and pro-gun.

The real issue, however, has become Wilson himself. At 59, he's an old-style politician who, as his ads say, "takes care of the home folks." He pushes through more Social Security and Veterans Administration cases for his constituents than perhaps any other Congressman. Though he also champions women's rights and supports the right to abortion, he has a reputation as an aging Lothario. (On one taxpayer-supported foray to Pakistan, he took along a voluptuous former beauty queen.) This year hot checks have been his weak point. Peterson calls Congress a "check-bouncing, debt-ridden retirement village." Though polls show the race as a toss-up, Peterson is confident of victory. As she told Texas Republicans this summer: "Hang on, Mr. President, and hang on, America. Help is on the way."

NORTH CAROLINA / Melvin Watt

George White, North Carolina's last black Congressman, left Washington in 1901. But first he offered a prediction to his colleagues on the floor of the House. "This is perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress," he said. "Phoenix-like he will rise up someday and come again." It took just over 90 years for the state to send another black to Washington, but here he comes: attorney Mel Watt is one of two African-American candidates considered all-but-certain winners in new North Carolina congressional districts that have black majorities.

On the campaign trail Watt traverses his odd-shaped district -- it looks like a road-kill salamander -- in a shiny Dodge minivan, stopping to shake hands, wolf down fried fish and cheese puffs at dinnertime rallies, and spread his message: "We can't continue to widen the disparity between the haves at the top and the have-nots at the bottom." Watt well knows the have-not side of that great divide. He grew up near Charlotte in a tin-roofed home with no electricity or running water. But he went on to law school at Yale and a career as a civil rights lawyer. He also got a bitter taste of politics when he managed former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt's ill-fated 1990 Senate race against Jesse Helms.

Now Watt, 47, compares the work he plans to do on behalf of his constituents to a class-action lawsuit. On his agenda: cut the defense budget in half over five years and shift much of that money to domestic priorities; fully fund Head Start; implement universal health care. "Let's send America a message that it's time for a change," Watt tells supporters, "and part of that change is to give 'em Mel."

NEW YORK / Nydia Velazquez

Though redistricting has given New York City's 12th Congressional District a Hispanic majority, the smart money still expected the well-financed Democratic incumbent, Stephen Solarz, to prevail over a divided field of five Latino opponents. But the smart money didn't count on Nydia Velazquez. As a native Puerto Rican, she was in touch with the communities she wanted to represent. As a former city council member, she also knew her way through the tangles of local politics. Backed by labor unions, community leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and New York City Mayor David Dinkins, Velazquez emerged as the candidate most likely to beat the nine-term Congressman in the Sept. 15 primary -- and she did. Running now in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, one of the poorest in the country, she is virtually assured of becoming the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress.

During the primary campaign Velazquez was accused of being too attached to the island where she was born 39 years ago. A longtime supporter of Puerto Rican independence, she has served as a U.S. representative of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico since 1986, spearheading Latino voter-registration drives and battling anti-Hispanic discrimination. Opponents charged that she was more beholden to the interests of her homeland than to her would-be constituents. "My heart and soul are with the people who elected me," she insists. "My priorities are to fight for economic development, to help get people out of welfare, create jobs and invest in education."

After her primary victory, Velazquez was surprised by media reports that last year, distraught over her mother's illness and brother's drug addiction, she had attempted suicide by swallowing 21 sleeping pills, washed down by vodka. "It was a painful time," she says. "But I've learned I can't be a robot trying to solve everybody's problems without paying attention to my own needs."

She says that months of psychotherapy have got her back on track and that her successful campaign against Solarz is evidence of her replenished strength. A week after her primary win, she traveled to Washington to let House Speaker Thomas Foley know that she wants a spot on the powerful House Appropriations Committee -- an assignment virtually unheard of for a newcomer. "If I don't get something I want today," she says, "I'll come back tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until they get tired of seeing me."

CALIFORNIA / Jay Kim

The Republican mayor of Diamond Bar, Kim says he nearly cried last January when he had to lay off more than 20 employees at Jaykim Engineers, Inc., the design firm he started in 1976. When he thought about the 40% pay raise Congress had voted itself, he felt like crying again. "Talk about being out of touch," he says. That was when the Korean-born immigrant, who came to the U.S. 31 years ago, decided to run for Congress in California's newly formed 41st District. Campaigning on a conservative platform that favors tax reduction and fewer regulations for business, Kim, 53, scored a surprise victory in a six-way primary race last June. He is now heavily favored to defeat Democrat Bob Baker in his racially mixed, solidly Republican district, which spans San Bernardino, Orange and Los Angeles counties. "We have to live within our means," he argues. "Business does that."

In a brief but rousing speech to the Republican National Convention last June, Kim played up both his business experience and his up-the-ladder immigrant story. Though he is likely to become the nation's first Korean- American Congressman, he has no specific agenda for the Korean community. But he hopes to be a role model for all Asian Americans. "They can look at me and say, 'He made it as an immigrant with a strong accent. Why can't I?' "

FLORIDA / Carrie Meek

The daughter of a black sharecropper, Carrie Meek grew up in the shadow of the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee. In the '50s, she went back there to demonstrate for civil rights -- and got teargassed. But Meek got her revenge. In 1979 she bested a field of 12 to win a seat in the Florida legislature from Miami. Three years later, she became the first black woman ever elected to the state senate. In an open primary in September, she beat two black male opponents, taking 83% of the vote and winning every precinct in a mostly black district that runs through Miami and the hurricane-ravaged south Dade County. She faces no Republican opposition in November, guaranteeing her the honor of becoming the first African American to represent Florida in Congress since Reconstruction.

It was a remarkable victory for a woman born 66 years ago in the Tallahassee ghetto called Black Bottom, where her father grew vegetables and her mother took in laundry. After earning a master's degree in physical education and public health from the University of Michigan, she began teaching at Miami- Dade Community College in 1961 -- at a time when the campus was still segregated. "I have experienced extreme, rigid and very painful segregation and racism from childhood," she recalls. "I don't see myself as a victim -- Carrie Meek is a fighter."

As a legislator, Meek led efforts to establish an affordable-housing program in Dade County and helped establish a program that assisted businesses owned by women and minorities in getting state contracts. "I'm not afraid of going to Washington," she says. "I've always been strong on women's and minority rights, so I've been bumped around pretty hard on those issues in the Florida senate." Her victory assured, Meek has started fighting early by traveling to Washington two weeks after the primary to lobby for committee assignments.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Miami, Wendy Cole/New York and Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles and other bureaus