It is the election after the Year of the Woman, and the historic gains by women have collided with the radical right’s nostalgia for the way things were. Conservative radio-talk-show hosts feed the resentment of many men over what they perceive as “fem-centric” policies that promote women’s concerns at their expense. Freshmen House women are getting hit particularly hard. When a caller to a local radio show called Rep. Karan English a “feminazi,” her initial impulse was to laugh. The first woman elected to represent Arizona in Congress in 60 years, English ran as a working mother who understood real family problems. She even had Barry Goldwater’s blessing. The feminazi label, popularized by Rush Limbaugh, seemed to represent everything she is not. “I thought [the caller] was talking about some real leftwinger. I consider myself down to earth, middle of the road,” she says. “Then I realized, they’re trying to tag me.”
Homophobia is this year’s wedge issue. Any woman candidate who supports gay rights is just a rumor away from a whispering campaign that she is a lesbian. Oregon Rep. Elizabeth Furse is married with two grown children, but that did not protect her from a cartoon that “nearly put a mustache on her,” says campaign manager Paige Richardson. Her opponent, Bill Witt, stresses family values, and has the backing of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, a conservative group that opposes gay rights. A letter to the editor complaining about Furse’s support of gay rights addressed her as “Mrs. Furse Briggs Platt,” pointedly adding the names of her ex-husband and current husband to the maiden name she goes by.
Smear campaigns are hard to combat. Florida Rep. Karen Thurman got a call from a reporter asking where her divorce papers were filed. She replied that she is still married. Her husband is a circuit-court judge. Rumors have circulated ever since her teenage daughter moved back from Washington to live with her father in Florida. Many congressmen leave their families at home, since they are often there on weekends anyway. But when women do it, they are suspect. Thurman’s husband is on dialysis, which makes her more vulnerable to whispers that she is not fulfilling her wifely duty. “It’s a little under-tow that they use,” she says. Thurman’s likely opponent is “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, a race-car driver, who cites the Bible to reinforce his assertion that the man should be the head of the family “because he’s got the strong hand.”
Much of the right-wing fear over “fem-control” seems to center on the First Lady, and that is setting the tone for races across the country. Mrs. Clinton “is viewed as aggressive, effective and able to get things done, which are pluses,” says Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin. “But they turn into negatives, because she is not the president.” Magazine articles that portray Hillary scheming for power feed the paranoia. But even feminists are unnerved by the backlash, and unsure what to do about it. “If I were Hillary, I’d get pregnant,” jokes a Washington communications consultant.
Some of the fem-bashing could provoke a backlash of its own. Furse had been virtually dismissed by Democrats until the GOP fielded a far-right candidate and revived her chances. Other women are tailoring a more conservative image. Thurman hopes that her vote for the Hyde Amendment, which limits abortion, and her votes against gun control will undermine any attempt to portray her as a radical feminist. Still, the attacks suggest that the time has not yet come when women officeholders are judged on their work in the House rather than on the housework they left behind.
AT 43, STEVE GUNDERSON IS A SEVEN-term incumbent in Congress and a specialist in milk-price supports-which is heavy stuff back in his home district in rural western Wisconsin. But Gunderson, a tireless worker who was elected to the House at 29, has a new image these days. Last year, during the House debate on gays in the military, he rose to deliver a plea for tolerance that was unusual even for a moderate Republican. “Imagine the reaction today if I were to come to this body and use such ugly and demeaning labels as ’nigger,’ ‘kike,’ ‘wop’ or ‘chink’,” he told a hushed chamber. “And yet I doubt few here would be equally offended by the word ‘faggot’.” He went further in remarks published last fall in the Congressional Record. “I have experienced what it feels like to have my life - who I am, what I am, and what I have accomplished - reduced to and judged by a single irrelevant factor,” Gunderson said - though he never said just what the “irrelevant factor” was.
It will come as no surprise that many people think Gunderson is gay-or that, in an election year already marked by smear tactics from the right, at least some conservatives are targeting him. A Rush Limbaugh wanna-be in Eau Claire, Wis., talk-show host Chuck Lee, scoffs that Gunderson “is rapidly becoming the poster boy for the homosexual movement.” Rep. Robert K. Dornan of California, a foghorn of the very far right, went further during a debate last spring on AIDS education. Gunderson, Dornan cracked, “has a revolving door on his closet - he’s in, he’s out, he’s in.” (Dornan later withdrew his remarks from the official record-but did not apologize.)
Gunderson argues that his sexual orientation is not anybody’s business-which would work better, politically, if he were not so conspicuously trying to have it both ways. Rumors about his private life have surfaced in past campaigns. But Wisconsin is a civilized place, and Gunderson has benefited from a tacit “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement with the voters and the news media. All that began to change after the 1992 GOP convention, with its strident talk about “family values” and its explicit homophobia. Appalled that his party had been “kidnapped by the hard right,” Gunderson began speaking out for tolerance. He also resigned as deputy to Newt Gingrich, the Republican House whip, to distance himself from what he saw as the party’s narrow-minded positions.
Last March, in an eloquent speech before a gay political group in Baltimore, Gunderson warned his audience that bigotry toward gays won’t change until they show more tolerance toward Americans who disapprove of gay lifestyles. He also mentioned that he has a male companion-who was, he acknowledged, in the audience at that time. He has been equally candid in discussing attempts by gay extremists to “out” him, including a 1991 incident in which a member of Queer Nation dumped a drink on him in a gay-owned restaurant in Virginia. Press coverage back home has been sympathetic but frank. The Milwaukee Journal, reporting the Baltimore speech, said Gunderson “now appears comfortable at least leaving the impression that he is gay.”
Gunderson thinks the paper was wrong to focus on his private life and insists he doesn’t “advocate gay rights.” He is, he says, “a fierce opponent of blatant discrimination” against any group, including women and the disabled. But the issue-is he or isn’t he?-is out of the closet and his claim to privacy is wearing thin. His opponent in this year’s Republican primary, 71-year-old Donald Brill, says he won’t “attack the person or the lifestyle.” Others probably will. Even if most voters don’t care about Gunderson’s personal life, many Republicans in the district disagree with his position on gays in the military. Gunderson will probably survive the primary. But Democrats are likely to hit him with the same coded attack in the general election. Steve Gunderson is “out of touch with his district,” a leading Democrat says, particularly on gays in the military. Translation: tolerance has its limits, even in Wisconsin.
Gunderson says he believes his constituents are “committed to justice for everyone” and that they know a good congressman when they see one. But he also notes that this race will be his last, regardless of the outcome. So the real issue in Wisconsin’s Third District isn’t whether the incumbent is gay-but why it should matter if, by some chance, he is.
