Michigan's Senate contest a 'cliffhanger'

By Ed Garsten
CNN Detroit Bureau Chief

July 19, 2000
Web posted at: 6:47 p.m. EDT (2247 GMT)

DETROIT (CNN) -- Freshman Sen. Spencer Abraham is in a tooth and nail fight to hold onto his job. Recent polls have him only slightly ahead of his challenger, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow.

Observers call Abraham one of the Republicans' most endangered incumbents.

"He's not naturally being picked up in this state," Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus said. "He's not catching fire on his issues. He's been a sort of behind the scenes kind of person."

With less than half of Abraham's $5 million war chest, Stabenow says she may be outspent, but she won't be outworked.

Sen. Abraham supports a plan to encourage private insurance to cover drug costs.

A single mom and Michigan native who is well known throughout the state, Stabenow is hitting the road on a bus packed with senior citizens crossing the border to Canada to buy cheaper prescriptions.

"We need to take away the protections for the companies right now and allow Americans to buy American made, federally approved medications anywhere in the world you can get the best price," she said.

Stabenow supports a Clinton plan to allow Medicare to underwrite the cost of prescription drugs for seniors. On every mile of her excursion, however, her bus is trailed by a billboard sponsored by the Abraham campaign, decrying that plan as too expensive.

For his part, Abraham supports a plan to encourage private insurance to cover drug costs. "The difference is," he says, "our plan doesn't charge a costly premium to seniors to participate."

Abraham has suffered some political setbacks in the campaign. His attempt to abolish the federal gas tax to bring down high fuel prices fell flat. And his support for relaxing immigration quotas for certain workers sparked an angry attack ad from an outside group, the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform, alleging that he is "pushing to import more than 200,000 foreign workers a year to take good American jobs."

"They don't like me because I believe legal immigration should not be abolished," Abraham counters.

Rep. Stabenow backs a Clinton plan to allow Medicare to underwrite the cost of prescription drugs for seniors.

And while the ad is seen to benefit Stabenow, she says she doesn't appreciate that kind of help: "I wish they were not in Michigan as an extreme group. I like to run my own campaign."

With much less to spend, Stabenow is not running any television ads yet. Seeing an opening, the well-financed Abraham campaign is airing a spot starring the man who won the Michigan presidential primary: Arizona Sen. John McCain.

"In the Senate, there are two kinds of horses, workhorses and showhorses. Spence Abraham is a workhorse," McCain says in the ad.

The ad appears to have helped.

"He's at 50 percent favorability plus, and finally got job rating around 50 percent. So the McCain ads have finally caught some traction," Sarpolus explains.

But that traction might not hold for the duration. Sarpolus predicts the Senate race here will be a cliffhanger, with the very real chance this freshman could be expelled by the voters.