CAMPAIGN 2000

By Karen Tumulty/Washington

You'd think that some obscure Democrat running for Governor of Texas and 50 percentage points behind in the polls wouldn't be able to corral a lot of high-class national Democratic talent to help in his campaign. But land commissioner GARRY MAURO, who announces his candidacy for the Lone Star State governorship this week, attracted some pretty impressive folks to his book-signing soiree in Washington not too long ago. We're talking fellow authors Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as best-selling scribe Al Gore. In addition, the First Lady has played host at a fund-raising dinner for Mauro in Washington and plans to follow it with another this month in California. The President's pollster, Mark Penn, has signed on to the race. And all this for a candidate with considerable baggage, including several brushes with ethics scandals, whose prospects were summed up as a "kamikaze mission" by the state's senior Democratic pol, Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock. So what gives? Friendship, for one thing: Mauro and the Clintons go back to their work together on the '72 McGovern race in Texas. But friendship will take you only so far in politics. With handicappers rating the popular G.O.P. Governor George W. Bush as the man Gore may face in 2000, the White House camp figures it couldn't hurt to prick him in his 1998 gubernatorial re-election race or to road-test campaign tactics that Gore might want to use two years later.

--By Karen Tumulty/Washington