OUISVILLE, Ky. - Women candidates may well hold the keys to control of the US House, and the ferocious race here in the Bluegrass State between Anne Northup, a Republican, and Eleanor Jordan, a Democrat, is showing that this isn't your mother's election.
The airwaves crackle day and night with slashing ads. Millions of dollars have poured in from business, labor, environmental, and women's groups around the country. Northup, a two-term congresswoman, accuses Jordan of ''deceitful'' tactics and of distorting her record. Jordan, an African-American state legislator, says Northup is using subtle racial slurs to malign her.
Louisvillians say they are weary of the negative campaign, and certainly many have been more focused on the weekend's real horse race, the Breeder's Cup at Churchill Downs. Competing for attention this week, Jordan arranged for President Clinton to appear at her rally, and Northup countered with an endorsement from Denny Crum, the University of Louisville basketball coach and a local hero.
But this closely watched contest has significance beyond Kentucky. Because the 3d Congressional District is a traditional Democratic stronghold with a GOP incumbent, it may be a bellwether for predicting if Republicans will keep or lose their slender majority in the House.
It is also a good example of a trend in this year's struggle for control of the House and Senate: Women are fierce and well-financed competitors in a large number of the country's hottest and nastiest races.
''Women are the candidates in the major, tough battleground races, and there is a very good chance that women will make the difference if the Democrats take back the House,'' said Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily's List, which raises money for Democratic women candidates and, for the first time, is running issue advertising on television here for Jordan.
''There is also a very good chance we could have three or even four new Democratic women senators,'' Malcolm said.
She said Federal Election Commission filings show that 12 Democrats challenging House incumbents have raised more than $1 million. Among them were eight women. Jordan has raised more than $1.6 million; Northup, a prodigious fund-raiser, has a campaign war chest of almost $3 million.
Gilda Morales, program coordinator at the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University, says women are ''players'' this time because leaders in both parties recognize they are qualified to compete where it's possible to win - for open seats and against vulnerable incumbents.
''For the first time in history, women are not being used as sacrificial lambs but have been backed for open seats because they are accomplished and have proven they can win races,'' Morales said. ''We predicted there would be this progression from city councils to state legislatures to Congress for women, and now it's happening.''
Three Democratic women in California are vying in close House races, including Jane Harman, who is trying to reclaim the seat she gave up in 1998. Democrats Dianne Byrum in Michigan, Linda Chapin in Florida, and Maryanne Connelly in New Jersey, and Republican Joan Johnson in New York are seeking seats of members running for the Senate. Republicans have strong female House candidates in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia; Democrats believe their women candidates can win in Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, and Montana.
Three of the Democrats' most competitive Senate candidates also are women: Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York; Debbie Stabenow in Michigan; and Maria Cantwell in Washington state. An added prospect is Jean Carnahan, who has agreed to serve two years in the Senate if her late husband, Mel, the Missouri governor killed in a plane crash last month, tops the ballot Tuesday.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who heads the party's Senate reelection committee, doubts the Democratic women will prevail and predicted legal challenges would block Mrs. Carhanan from taking the Missouri seat. But as he kicked off a rally Tuesday at the Louisville Slugger ballpark, McConnell said Northup will win because she is ''a superb politician ... relentless and unbelievably effective.
''The Democrats always look here and say, `How in the world can a fairly conservative Republican be elected in a place like this?''' McConnell said. ''It's the quality of our congresswoman. She is going to beat Eleanor Jordan like a drum.''
Northup, 52, represents the new breed of female politicians. A veteran state legislator, she ran for the House in 1996 and raised more money than the Democratic incumbent. She used saturation TV advertising to tout her name (she comes from a well-known Louisville family), her record (probusiness, antiabortion rights), and her family values (she is Roman Catholic, married, and has six children).
Northup carried the district, which has twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans and a sizable African-American community, by fewer than 1,300 votes, even as President Clinton was winning Louisville and the surrounding county by 30,000 votes.
Rewarded by the House GOP leadership for her victory, Northup won a seat on the Appropriations Committee and now takes credit for bringing $450 million in aid home to Louisville, from money for bridge construction to a gorilla exhibit at the zoo.
But Northup says this is her toughest race, even though the latest poll for the Louisville Courier-Journal shows her leading Jordan by 10 points. It is one of 12 woman-versus-woman House contests in the nation.
''This is an enormous challenge, every single day,'' Northup said, insisting that her opposition started the mudslinging last summer with a TV ad that falsely accused her of voting to put arsenic in the local drinking water. ''As people get desperate, there is no telling what will happen.''
Northup supports school vouchers, tax cuts, an insurance-company plan to pay for prescription drugs, a partial privatization of Social Security, and she has been a leading foe of proposed federal regulations for workplace injuries. In her own ads and those paid for by the US Chamber of Commerce and the pharmaceutical industry, Northup defines Jordan as an ill-informed, tax-and-spend liberal who wants to scare seniors about Medicare benefits.
Jordan, who differs with Northup on all those issues, says what troubles her most are ''subtle race messages in some of her media spots,'' particularly the way Jordan is pictured as an ''angry black woman'' in many of Northup's ads.
''It's a little unusual - most politicians don't advertise their opponent as much as Anne has done,'' Jordan said. ''It may not be as obvious to some, but I have lived with those kinds of messages all my life, so when I see them, it's not hard picking them up.''
Terry Carmack, Northup's top aide, calls Jordan ''a divisive person'' who has tried to ''pit the young against the old, the rich against the less fortunate over tax cuts, and the black against the white community.'' He denied Northup is doing the same thing.
Jordan, 47, the child of a maid and a pool-hall operator, became a single mother in high school and received welfare. She eventually finished college, ran a day-care center, got involved in community affairs and politics, and won a seat in the Kentucky General Assembly in 1996. Now a divorced mother of three, she would be the first black woman elected to national office from Kentucky.
She calls this race a ''litmus test'' that will prove if a black, female candidate in Kentucky can make history. Already, she said, it has demonstrated that she can raise money competitively and that ''a home girl from the 'hood'' can go toe-to-toe on the issues.''
Elizabeth Sherman, who directs the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massaschusetts in Boston, believes this may also be the year when women break the stereotype that they are somehow going to make the political arena a kinder, place.
''Politics is a place for conflict, where almost anything goes, where you wage a war without guns,'' Sherman said. ''I see women are coming of age. They have self-confidence, they aren't afraid of the political fight, and they are in it to win.''
