BEATING THE SYSTEM

(3 of 4)

Two years later, liberal groups are imitating conservatives with a vengeance. Unionists, environmentalists and pro-choice activists rehearsed earlier this year in Oregon's special election; working in tandem, they put Democrat Ron Wyden into the Senate seat held for 26 years by Bob Packwood. Now liberal groups like these dominate the independent-expenditures game, directing their efforts against the House G.O.P.'s most vulnerable faction, its 73-member freshman class. Philadelphia's Annenberg School for Communication has cataloged 19 separate organizations that have taken to the airwaves this year; 60% of their messages have supported Democrats. "If the Democrats take control of the House," says congressional analyst Charles Cook, "a lot of credit will have to go to the AFL-CIO and these other groups on the left."

The AFL-CIO divided its record-shattering $35 million war chest into $20 million for radio and TV ads and $15 million for field operations. Most of the spending is focused on the few dozen districts where Republicans have the most tenuous hold on their seats. In the final weeks before the election, the union will broadcast a daunting $8 million barrage of attack ads disguised as video voter guides on issues like education and Medicare.

The environmental community has its own ambitious campaign of sneak attacks. The League of Conservation Voters has devoted its $1.5 million kitty to defeat just 12 lawmakers (11 Republicans and one Democrat) whom the organization has called "the Dirty Dozen." The Sierra Club has targeted 30 races with a million-dollar effort, including voter guides (on recycled paper) that list incumbent Republicans who allegedly have damaged the ecosystems of their own districts.

The Republican Party has reacted with alarm to the left's counterattack. It has sued the AFL-CIO to stop its ads, though nothing will be resolved until after the elections. It has unleashed millions of dollars' worth of its own commercials that accuse the unions of trying to buy control of the House. The G.O.P. hopes to create a backlash against what one of its ads derides as "Big Labor bosses, Big Money, big lies, big liberals." Freshmen are repeating the line like a mantra in their stump speeches.

But the response comes late and from a weakened army. One of the Republicans' chief allies, a Chamber of Commerce-led coalition, has struggled to raise the $4 million it has spent to help some of the most endangered freshmen Republicans. A separate effort by the same group to go after Democratic incumbents has been truncated for lack of funding. Grouses G.O.P. pollster Bill McInturff: "We're playing a game of poker with Congress: the other side has doubled its bet, and the business community is just walking away from the table."

Part of the problem is that some of the heroes of the 1994 Republican rout have been wounded. The Christian Coalition still plans to distribute 45 million voter guides in 100,000 churches. But a suit by the Federal Election Commission that accuses the coalition of working in cahoots with the G.O.P. has forced the coalition to make its flyers less obviously partisan.