NEWS ANALYSIS: TOBACCO BILL'S FUTURE DEPENDS ON VOTER INTEREST

Lawmakers Consider Possible Effect On November Elections

The Senate may have killed its big tobacco bill, but whether the measure
still might rise from the proverbial ashes is anyone's guess.

Washington's day-after obituaries opened with scathing sound bites from
Democrats and promises to pummel Republicans on tobacco in November.

``It became entirely clear that in this merger era that we're in, (tobacco
company) RJR merged with the GOP,'' said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

Daschle promised nonstop parliamentary warfare to revive a bill before
November. ``Piece by piece, drip by drip, we're going to make this
happen,'' he said. ``We're going to force action on this legislation over
and over again.

But Republicans are betting that while tobacco has replaced Monica Lewinsky
as the hottest Beltway topic this summer, it's no burning issue in the
hinterlands. By the time November rolls around, they calculate, voters will
have forgotten the big tobacco bill, which even legislators didn't fully
understand.

``The sense now is a general shrug,'' said a top Senate GOP aide. ``People
never understood it or believed in it much to begin with. Most members are
not worried.''

Conservative pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick said it was an easy call for
the GOP, whose mantra is tax cuts.

``If you have an R after your name and a Cong. in front of your name, this
one was not even close,'' she said. ``The greater risk for Republicans than
being tarred as being in the pockets of the tobacco industry was going on
record voting in favor of taxes.''

Still -- just in case -- backdoor negotiations are continuing to see if any
kind of legislation might be revived. House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested
a much scaled-back version yesterday, but he offered few details.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., is teaming with Orrin Hatch, R-Utah,
to fashion a new bill that would keep the key regulatory and tax penalties
intended to discourage smoking, but without the extra baggage from both
parties that ultimately brought down the original bill sponsored by John
McCain, R-Ariz.

Said Feinstein: ``As the McCain bill got bigger and bigger, went from the
$516 billion to the $800 billion figure and they added the marriage penalty
(tax cut) and the drug program and the voucher program, what happened is
that the money left for public health went way down to a fraction. . . .
That is not a good bill.''

Republicans would like to immunize themselves from the tobacco issue by
passing a narrow bill to encourage education and other efforts to reduce
teenage smoking. The House leadership's version would contain no tax
increase.

Without revenue, such a bill would allow Republicans to say they are doing
something to cut teen smoking but avoid the charge that they are raising
taxes and expanding government with the big new federal programs.

But Democrats and anti-smoking lobbyists are dead-set against that
approach. White House spokesman Mike McCurry said yesterday that ``there is
no such thing as a slimmed-down bill that protects kids from smoking. . . .
A fundamental premise of the way in which you curb youth smoking is to
raise the price per pack of cigarettes.''

Linda Crawford, a top lobbyist for the American Cancer Society, said all
parties from public health groups to the tobacco companies (which at first
sought legislation as a way to limit their potentially staggering legal
liability) are ``going to take a step back'' to see what might be rescued.

But Crawford said any bill ``can't be `tobacco-light'; it can't be just
something to get them through, saying they've done something for kids. It
has to be comprehensive and effective.''

The tobacco legislation has taken so many surprising turns -- dead one day
and alive the next -- and has developed so many shifting political
crosscurrents that even seasoned lobbyists won't hazard a guess as to what
will happen next.

Conservative publisher Bill Kristol said Republicans will probably go home
for the July 4 recess to see how voters react. If there's a big yawn, as
Kristol suspects, nothing more will happen.

``But it's possible it will turn out there really is grassroots interest in
this bill,'' Kristol said, ``in which case Republicans will come back here
and revive it.''

Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist insists Republicans just saved
themselves. ``No Republican ever lost an election by voting against a tax
increase in the history of the world,'' Norquist said. ``There is only one
thing voters will not forgive a conservative party for, and that's raising
taxes.''

But Democrats clearly smell an issue. Tobacco companies are now the Great
Satan of American society, polls show. And while polls consistently show
that most people hold smokers, not tobacco companies, responsible for their
smoking, sentiments reverse when it comes to teenagers.

``If I were a Republican, I would be very nervous about being identified
with the tobacco companies,'' said a leading Democratic strategist. Come
November, he said, ``it won't be about all this nuanced reasoning over the
nature of the bill and taxes and where the money would go, but rather, `Are
you pro-tobacco or are you against tobacco?' And on that one the Democrats
win.''

Republicans counter that while nearly everyone thinks teens shouldn't
smoke, smoking is not a top parental concern.

``If you ask the question, `Do you support legislation to help curb teen
smoking,' of course you're going to get upwards of 80 percent saying yes,''
said Fitzpatrick. ``But that's like the questions, `Do you support
protecting the environment or improving education or even cutting taxes?'
You get 80 percent saying yes, and I often wonder, who is the other 20
percent?''

Yet when asked what teens do that most concerns them, Fitzpatrick's polls
show 39 percent say drugs; 17 percent say gangs, crime and random violence;
9 percent say reckless driving and another 9 percent alcohol; 7 percent say
sex; and 2 percent answer smoking.

Nonetheless, public fallout from the Senate defeat of the tobacco bill
remains unclear, and no one knows where the issue is headed. ``It's very
hard to tell at this stage,'' Feinstein said.

WHAT'S NEXT

With the tobacco deal dead, the next big battles will come in the courts,
beginning with the nation's first class-action lawsuit brought by smokers,
which goes to trial in Florida on July 6.

The next trial of a state's lawsuit seeking to recover costs of treating
smoking-related illnesses is Washington's, set for mid-September.

Other states with trial dates set for suits against the tobacco industry
are Arizona, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New
York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

Trial dates have not been set for pending suits by California, Iowa,
Michigan and Utah.

About 800 lawsuits of all kinds are pending against tobacco companies,
although legal experts believe many will disappear or fail because they
were filed simply to be in a position to cash in on a potential
congressional settlement.

1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page A3