Her Best Defense: Bring Out The Vote

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It is understandable if you have never heard of David Wu or Molly Bordonaro: neither have half the voters in Oregon's First Congressional District, and both are on the ballot. But while people in western Portland and its environs seem profoundly uninterested in who will represent them come January, the decision is getting plenty of attention in Washington. For the district, home to roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, is the sort of place that will determine the makeup of the next Congress, and probably with it Bill Clinton's future.

The latest and biggest in a parade of big names to campaign in Oregon's First District: Hillary Clinton, whose tribulations have helped make her the hottest ticket on this season's fund-raising circuit. More than 200 Oregonians paid $250 each to Wu's underfinanced campaign to hear the First Lady declare over lunch, "We need to change the Congress!" The biggest favor Clinton did for Wu was to remind Democrats there is an election coming up and offer them a rationale for voting in a year when turnout promises to set a record low. Even in Oregon, where mail-in balloting makes voting convenient, two-thirds of those registered sat out the May primary. "This is the least interested electorate in my 20 years of polling," says independent pollster Tim Hibbitts. The numbers show, moreover, that the people most inclined to vote are disproportionately Republican. Recent polls give Democrat Wu a 6-point lead overall, but among those likely to vote, the G.O.P.'s Bordonaro has a 5-point edge. Nationally, in a TIME/CNN poll last week, registered voters favored Democratic congressional candidates 48% to 41%. But the results were dramatically different among likely voters: G.O.P. candidates held a 49%-to-45% advantage.

Those are the sorts of numbers that explain why the President's approval ratings are of little comfort to Democrats. For now, at least, only the most desperate Republican candidates seem inclined to try to turn the election into a referendum on the President's behavior. But Democrats sense that the sex scandal is contributing to a general alienation that will keep voters--particularly their voters--away from the polls. This concern is underscored by the fact that Democratic fund raising is not meeting expectations while G.O.P. coffers are bulging to the point where the party is able to give even its long-shot candidates the maximum amount allowed by law. Its election committee has decided to subsidize a dozen races in which G.O.P. candidates were considered lost causes just a month ago.

Enter Hillary. In the days after her husband's confession of an "inappropriate" relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the First Lady resisted--wisely, it now appears--the pleas of her husband's allies and advisers for her to bestow her forgiveness ostentatiously in a nationally televised interview. Instead she is making the case for her husband's survival in private. Two weeks ago, she served coffee and danish and reassurance to about two dozen adoring women lawmakers at the White House. She also lobbied Capitol Hill by phone to shore up Democratic support for the President, helping quiet the grousing of at least one of his more outspoken critics, Virginia Congressman James Moran. There is talk that she may even address the House Democratic Caucus.