Two Tough Spring Campaigns Approach Full Bloom --- Wisconsin Battle For House Joined By Interest Groups
MILWAUKEE -- The special election for a Wisconsin congressional seat may turn less on Bill Clinton's economic program than on Barbara Lyons's computer program.</br></br>From her unassuming basement office here, Mrs. Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right-to-Life, deploys a database listing 47,000 dues-paying members and "hundreds of thousands" of sympathizers behind the candidacy of antiabortion Republican Mark Neumann. More than just voters, she says, "we have tremendously dedicated volunteers and a lot of them."</br></br>But the Democratic candidate, Peter Barca, can count on a volunteer army of his own: thousands of union members mobilizing for the May 4 election that has turned into a test of organizational muscle for competing political tribes. "I don't see this as much of a Republican-Democrat thing, or a Mark Neumann-Peter Barca thing," says Bob McNatt, a top political operative for the United Auto Workers. "It's whoever can fill up the bus and get the most folks out."</br></br>If not exactly a referendum on the new president's first 100 days, the race to succeed longtime Democratic Rep. Les Aspin, who resigned to become Mr. Clinton's defense secretary, has national significance nonetheless. At a time when neither major party can claim a majority coalition, the contest playing out across the factories and dairy farms of southeastern Wisconsin promises a telling snapshot of the grass-roots clout held by several important constituencies.</br></br>For an amalgam of teachers, government employees and industrial workers in this heavily unionized region, the race offers another chance to show that organized labor can still deliver for Democratic politicians. Just two weeks ago, labor suffered a bitter defeat when Democrats lost two of three special elections for the state Senate, providing popular GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson with the first Republican majority in the chamber in 18 years.