Crime Bill Is Law and Democrats Hope for Gains

WASHINGTON —  For at least a generation, ever since Richard Nixon made “law and order” a centerpiece of his 1968 presidential campaign, crime has been among the strongest weapons in the Republican Party’s arsenal of political issues.

But with President Clinton’s signing of the crime bill Tuesday, Democrats hope that they finally have built a workable shield on the issue. Indeed, in a fall campaign season that promises little but pain for Democrats, passage of the crime bill has become one of the party’s few bright spots--one that congressional candidates are vigorously exploiting in races across the nation.

Needless to say, Republicans are not yet ready to abandon the field. As Democrats trumpet the bill’s popular features--a “three strikes and you’re out” law, federal aid to put more police on the streets, a ban on military-style assault weapons, new federal death penalties and funds for crime prevention programs--Republicans already have continued to sound the complaint that they issued during the congressional debate on the bill this summer: too much spending.

The conflicting claims in that debate, however, should not obscure two substantial developments. First, Clinton can rightly say that, in winning passage of a crime bill, he succeeded in breaking a six-year jam in which gun control opponents on the one side and death penalty opponents on the other had been able to block passage of any bill.

Clinton emphasized that point in signing the bill Tuesday. Surrounded by police officers, clergy and members of Congress on a flag-decked stage, Clinton hailed the bill as an example of how Washington gridlock can be defeated.

“For six years, Washington debated a crime bill without action while more and more children died and more and more children became criminals and foreclosed a productive life for themselves,” Clinton said.

“Today, at last, the waiting ends,” he added. “Today the bickering stops, the era of excuses is over, the law-abiding citizens of our country have made their voices heard.”

So far, that claim has not helped Clinton much. Pollsters who have conducted surveys recently said that voters give Clinton credit for having stood up for the bill’s assault weapons ban and for fighting the National Rifle Assn. But the President’s overall popularity has continued to slide in recent weeks and the polls show little indication that the crime bill has altered that trend.

White House aides blame that fact on the intensity of Clinton’s opponents. “When you get $25 million of opposition shoved down your throat, it has an impact,” said one White House official. Aides hope that, with more events like Tuesday’s aimed at reminding voters of the parts of the bill they like, they can begin to overcome that impact.

Beyond Clinton, however, the bill’s second impact is noticeable. While individual Republicans--California Gov. Pete Wilson is a notable example--continue to find that they can make substantial gains by labeling their Democratic opponents as “soft on crime,” the GOP as a whole appears to have lost its once-exclusive hold on the issue. Democrats cannot claim to have captured the issue for their own but at least they no longer are running from behind.

One prime example is Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). At Tuesday’s ceremony, Feinstein stood directly behind Clinton, visible from almost any camera angle, and smiled broadly as Vice President Al Gore praised her for her sponsorship of the bill’s assault weapons ban. In the last week, Feinstein has called a series of press conferences to discuss the bill and has picked up the endorsements of several police organizations, including some that opposed her in the past, because of her work on the bill.

“Crime was an issue we owned forever and ever,” said Bruce Blakeman, who heads campaign research in the polling firm run by Richard B. Wirthlin, who was Ronald Reagan’s pollster. Republicans lost their lock on the issue after the 1992 election and so far they have been unable to get it back, Blakeman said.

Ironically, after years of pushing for “tough on crime” measures, some prominent Republicans now have begun arguing a different line--that nothing Washington can do will make much of a difference.

“When youth gangs are the dominant form of social organization in many of our cities, new laws are irrelevant. When 11-year-olds murder and are murdered in turn, enhanced penalties are irrelevant,” former Vice President Dan Quayle said in a recent speech in San Francisco.

Democrats are counting on the hope that voters have not yet grown that skeptical. “Members can go home and say to their constituents: ‘I voted for three strikes, I voted to put more cops on the street.’ It’s a way of saying, ‘I’m not an out-of-touch liberal,’ ” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “It gives us increased legitimacy in what used to be a Republican area.”

Democratic candidates have been quick to tout key elements of the bill in their speeches and advertisements. Generally, candidates have talked about specific parts of the bill, rather than the overall package--reflecting the fact that, while many of the bill’s parts are extremely popular, voters remain less certain about the whole.

Party strategists hope that the crime issue will help particularly in the Northeast, the industrial Midwest and California, but concede that it will be of less utility in the South and Rocky Mountain states, where Democrats seem headed for their worst losses.

Democrats concede, however, that Republican attacks, coupled with pre-existing voter skepticism about Washington, have left voters with doubts about the bill’s contents.