Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Salt Lake Sleazy=BY MARY McGRORY= Date: Sun, 1 Nov 92 09:14:31 EST Message-ID: <43.1992Nov1.091431@AmeriCast.com> Salt Lake Sleazy=BY MARY McGRORY= SALT LAKE CITY - Utah is a place where Republicans tell you apo- logetically that George Bush is "only" 35 points ahead. Only? Yes. This time in other years, Nixon, Reagan and Bush too were coasting home with billowing majorities twice that size. "Utah," says pollster Peter Hart, "is to Republicans what the District of Columbia is to Democrats: never in doubt." Clinton has no campaign here. This year, the mountainous Mormon state is, in its Senate race, grappling with all the strains that are bedeviling voters else- where: ghosts of the past, bouncing checks, term limits, negative campaigning, reform and incumbency. Robert Bennett, an alumnus of Watergate - he did chores for some of the key rogues - is running against Democratic Rep. Wayne Owens, a member of the committee that voted to impeach Richard Nixon. Today Owens writhes in the coils of the House banking scandal. He wrote 87 bad checks. "It's Rubbergate vs. Watergate," chuckled Bill Martin, a genial entrepreneur who attended a breakfast meeting of businessmen where Bennett and Owens had another of their innumerable debates. At such encounters, they talk about the politically correct to- pics: health care, education, Social Security and taxes. But in newspaper and television ads, Owens hammers at Bennett's well- documented, although fringe, role as an enabler for the likes of Howard Hunt, Gordon Liddy and Howard Hughes and accuses Bennett of dodging the truth about it now. Bennett doesn't refer to Owens's overdrafts. He doesn't need to. Owens's primary opponent made it the centerpiece of his campaign, and it is so far a greater liability. Bennnet is a spectrally thin man, long-legged as a crane. He is bald and bland and speaks in soothing tones - "like a parson," said John Dean in his Watergate memoir. He is easily conversant with all legislative matters that he might face in the Senate. His fans say he's "right" for Utah, which is a way of saying he's a rich, conservative Republican. Moreover, in the heart of term-limit country, his pledge to serve only six years is pleasing. Owens, a rather youthful 55, has a harried air, totally under- standable in a Utah Democrat. Although he is a Mormon, he is, be- cause of his politics, "not representative" of Utah. A fiscal conservative and a social liberal, he supports the balanced budg- et amendment and gay rights; and he shows a streak of innocent, against-the-grain stubbornness that earns him some respect but also reluctance about giving him statewide office. He's tried twice and failed.