Candidates' stances vary with audience

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, April 22, 1999

WASHINGTON -- When Patrick J. Buchanan opened his White House campaign in New Hampshire, he promptly promised to "oppose and veto any and all tax increases" if elected president.

But a week later, Buchanan showed up in Texas vowing to impose a new tax on oil imports. The proposal appeared to violate his no-new-taxes pledge and could be unpopular with voters who depend on home heating oil in the Northeast, including the first-primary state of New Hampshire.

Buchanan's action provides a window into the way candidates change or shade their views to court constituencies in different states. In the case of the oil-import tax, Buchanan insisted he was not really breaking his pledge because the new tax revenue would pay for a rebate to cover the increased price of heating oil.

In an interview, Buchanan said he is proposing "no net new taxes," but he is hardly alone in spinning policies to suit an audience.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, wrote a widely noticed op-ed piece in The New York Times in November 1996 titled "Nature is not a liberal plot." McCain said polls showed that Americans' top concern about the Republican-controlled Congress was the GOP view on the environment. The next Congress, he wrote, must assure the public that "the Republican environmental agenda will consist of more than coining new epithets for environmental extremists or offering banal symbolic gestures."

But in the following two years, McCain voted with the environmental lobby only 13 percent of the time, including a zero percent record in 1998, according to a scorecard compiled by the League of Conservation Voters. In response, McCain's spokesman, Howard Opinsky, said the senator had taken a number of steps in those two years that went unnoticed by the league, including backing a national park trust fund, an environmental technology award, the establishment of the Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, and a noise pollution proposal for the Grand Canyon, as well as being named honorary board member of the Coalition of Republican Environmental activists.

McCain does earn kudos from some campaign analysts for refusing to change his stand on an issue that could hurt his presidential bid -- opposing government subsidies for ethanol, a corn-based additive to gasoline that is popular among farmers in Iowa, the first-caucus state.

Other presidential candidates support the ethanol tax break. For example, Texas Governor George W. Bush, a former oil man who has risen to power with support from his state's oil industry, might be expected to oppose the ethanol subsidy. The tax break is unpopular in Texas because it provides extra competition to the oil industry, and legions of Texas politicians have spent years trying to kill the subsidy. But with Bush in little danger of losing his home-state vote, the Texas governor recently told all four Republican House members from Iowa that he would support the ethanol subsidy. The four congressmen subsequently endorsed Bush for president.

Representative Greg Ganske, one of the four Iowa lawmakers who endorsed Bush, said he pressed the governor on ethanol.

"There's no question that was important," Ganske said. "It is one of many different issues that are important."

Special interests in early primary and caucus states have long counted on their influence to sway presidential candidates on key issues.

Vice President Al Gore is a champion of catering to Iowa's interests. In recent months, Gore announced a series of grants to help the nation's pork producers, 18,000 of whom live in Iowa. The administration provided $50 million in direct payments to the nation's hog farmers and spent another $80 million to compensate farmers with herds infected with the pseudorabies virus.

Some candidates play down positions that are popular in one state but unpopular in another. This year, every GOP presidential candidate opposes abortion, some make little or no mention of the issue.

For example, when Dan Quayle spoke to the Christian Coalition in September, he used the word "abortion" 13 times, according to his prepared text. But in some of his speeches announcing his presidential candidacy this year, he rarely used the word. Instead, he made a passing reference to the issue by saying he is fighting for "faith, family, freedom, and life."

Similarly, Elizabeth Dole in the past has spoken about her antiabortion view in Iowa, which has many influential religious conservatives. But earlier this month, she urged tolerance on the issue, saying she didn't want to be "drawn into dead-end debates."

Buchanan, meanwhile, is trying to explain why his proposed tax on oil imports does not violate his no-new-taxes pledge. Buchanan made the proposal earlier this month in Texas, partly to tweak Bush for overseeing a state economy where oil producers are suffering from low prices.

Buchanan, in the interview, said he would impose a tax on imported oil if the price dropped to a certain level, such as $14 per barrel. The price has hovered around $16 or $17 per barrel. Buchanan suggested that a tax of $1 per barrel could bring in $3.6 billion a year. But oil import taxes have long been opposed in the Northeast because they would raise the price of home heating oil.

"We already 'enjoy' some of the highest energy costs in the country," said New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Steven Duprey, who said Buchanan's proposal has received no notice in the Granite State until now. "I think people in New Hampshire historically have reacted very negatively to surcharges and fees on energy."

Buchanan, in a footnote that he did not explain in his Texas speeches, said his oil-import tax would be offset by using some of the revenues as a "rebate to those in the Northeast for gasoline and fuel" increases from the tax. "So you would net out to zero. This is no net new taxes."

But if anyone knows the risks of deviating from a no-tax pledge, it is Buchanan. In the 1992 presidential campaign, Buchanan ran an effective television commercial titled "Broken Promises" that focused on how George Bush broke his pledge of "Read My Lips, No New Taxes" when he agreed to a budget deal. The commercial shows a crowd of Buchanan supporters saying "Read Our Lips," followed by an announcer who says: "Send Bush a message. Vote Pat Buchanan for president."

"Pat Buchanan is an experienced enough fellow that he will be able to ably defend his position," said Duprey, the New Hampshire GOP chairman. "And I'm sure other candidates will raise it."