The Storm Before The Storm

In a small studio in the basement of Kansas City's KMBC Channel 9, Sam Brownback is getting nervous. Political reporter Michael Mahoney is taping a Sunday morning program, and in the bright heat of the studio lights, Mr. Mahoney warns the freshman congressman and Senate candidate that he's going to open the show with footage of Bob Dole taking a shot at Rep. Brownback.

Rep. Brownback, a loyal Republican from tiny Parker, Kan., has paid his dues and paid his homage to Bob Dole. He was Sen. Dole's heir-apparent. But when Lieutenant Governor Sheila Frahm, a Christie Whitman-style pro-choice Republican, was appointed to fill the seat Sen. Dole left, Rep. Brownback began to see the state Republican party officials distance themselves from him. The Republican party nomination for that Senate seat should have been a slam-dunk. But now it's up in the air, with a runoff election between Rep. Brownback and Sen. Frahm slated for Aug. 6.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

A few minutes after 8 p.m., KMBC's Michael Mahoney signals the producer to start taping, and Rep. Brownback stiffens. After a few words of introduction, Mr. Mahoney plays the clip. As Rep. Brownback watches on a studio monitor, an annoyed Bob Dole declares he's not going to get involved in the Kansas senate race, but he doesn't appreciate Sam Brownback "attacking Bob Dole." He uses the third-person regally, and he makes it clear that we don't need that sort of person in the Senate.

Mr. Mahoney turns to Rep. Brownback for a response.

"I'm not attacking Bob Dole," Rep. Brownback says, clutching a small notebook. "None of us running for this office can fill his shoes."

Mr. Mahoney comes back quickly with the quote that annoyed Dole, a comment Rep. Brownback made the week before about being more committed to budget cuts and a balanced budget than even Bob Dole was.

Rep. Brownback fumbles his reply, talking disjointedly about his commitment to reduced spending. Mr. Mahoney offers him a gracious "Let's move on," and Rep. Brownback starts to relax.

The Kansas campaign is the present-day Republican party in microcosm. Sam Brownback, 39, finds it hard to criticize Bob Dole, even though the Republican presidential candidate seems to be waltzing Sheila Frahm-and the "moderates" in the party-toward Washington in three-four time.

For many, the Brownback-Frahm race is, to use a different metaphor, a miner's canary, an indicator of pro-life strength in the Republican Party. If Sheila Frahm is permitted to keep her perch in the Senate, it's a sign of serious weakness. At least, that's how the media will play it, asserts Colleen Parro, director of the Republican National Coalition for Life. "If we lose this race, it's going to be portrayed as a big loss for the pro-life movement going into the Republican convention," said Ms. Parro.

The polls show that loss is likely, though the Brownback campaign says that Sheila Frahm has peaked. "We're seeing a turnaround," asserts Mr. Brownback's spokesman Bob Murray. "Several weeks ago, we were down 20 to 23 points, but now we understand we're nearing single-digits."

And Ms. Parro has some strong words about Bob Dole's role in the race. "I think it's shocking that he seems to be supporting Frahm," she said. "At the very least, he could stay out of it. You'd think he'd want his replacement in the Senate to be someone with views consistent with his own." Maybe her views do track with Mr. Dole's.

Which is why Rep. Brownback finds it so easy to upset Mr. Dole and other party leaders. He does it on a regular basis, with pronouncements that show the heady zeal of a conservative with a lot of friends. His friends, the freshman class of the 104th Congress, came into Washington ready to rumble.

"We've given them their spine back," Rep. Brownback said of the Republican leadership in 1995. That elicited rebukes from Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) and Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas). Rep. Armey said, "I hadn't frankly noticed a lack of spine in the writing of the Contract (With America) and helping him get elected." Added Rep. Kasich, "It would be hard to argue that Newt needed to have a spine transplant."

The comment that sparked Bob Dole's latest shot at Rep. Brownback was the same sort of statement: heartfelt, happy, and just slightly injudicious in the eyes of get-along party aparatchiks.

On the drive back to Topeka from Kansas City, Sam Brownback dutifully defends Bob Dole. "It's got to be his advisors," he says. "I like Bob Dole. I trust him. I think he's going to make a great president. He knows the federal government system, and I think he's the man to deliver the fundamental changes we're trying to get done. I've said that all along. He is conservative."

Rep. Brownback is uncomfortable when asked about the speech Bob Dole made when he left the senate, listing as his proudest achievements the Americans with Disabilities Act and other such government expansions.

"He's been in Washington a number of years and in leadership positions," he explained. "He knows the system, and I think he's going to take the federal government through downsizing which it desperately needs."

It's not hard to get Sam Brownback off politics and on to the subject of farming. As the dry hills of Kansas roll past, he talks of the drought and its effect on everything from supermarket prices to international trade. This is the real Sam Brownback, who grew up on the family farm, who played high school football, who won election to student body president and national office in the FFA while in college.

He's a small-town lawyer-turned-author, but not in the John Grisham sense; he's written not thrillers but textbooks on agricultural law.

He's married to the former Mary Stauffer, whose family is wealthy and influential in state politics, but his accomplishments have been his own. The couple has three children, Abby (9), Andy (8), and Liz (6). They've stayed at the family's home in Topeka. "They are deeply important to me," he says. "It's been the hardest part about serving in Congress, leaving my wife and kids every week and flying back and forth to Washington."

For seven years Mr. Brownback was Kansas' secretary of agriculture, taking his first steps and missteps in the world of politics. He then spent two years as a White House Fellow before making a run for a House seat, eventually beating out former Kansas Gov. John Carlin.

In the House, Rep. Brownback founded the New Federalists, a studious bunch of freshman Republicans who have pushed to sell off a House office building and abolish four federal agencies. This Determined Dozen, which includes Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma and Rep. Sue Myrick of Charlotte, N.C., won praise from the Heritage Foundation and columnist George Will, but even Mr. Will acknowledged the band was making life uncomfortable for Republican leaders in the Senate.

Rep. Brownback likes talking about the New Federalists and their first congressional session. "There's been such an excitement," he says. "The liberal democrat model was clearly no longer supported in the country, yet they'd had enough political power to maintain the liberal superstructure for years, and we broke through it. It felt like being the first ones that broke down the Berlin wall and passed through it. We just had this sense of excitement, that we were going to change this place."

Did the expectations hold true? He thinks for a moment.

"In that first 100 days we were marching on an aggressive agenda," he said. "But now we've gotten stalled on the budget fight. Since that time, we've not had as much focus or discipline, but we've gotten a number of things done, farm bill reform, telecommunications, line item veto."

Though it was a "historic Congress," he says, there were some disappointments. "We didn't get a budget agreement. And I really am disappointed at how the president misled people, particularly on Medicare. I got so irritated about that, because just none of it was true. It was a total disinformation campaign."

The president's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban was another irritant. But he adds that the attempted ban was the right political move in the fight to end abortion.

"I think the route we're going now as far as putting up narrow bills like the partial birth abortion bill is a good way of saying to the American people what this is really about," he said. "For too long, the issue has been way up there in the atmosphere, and it starts a big fight without people knowing what it's about."

Which brings us back to Mr. Dole. Again, Rep. Brownback is uncomfortable in talking about the presidential candidate's apparent desire to change the abortion plank in the Republican party platform: "I'd like to just leave the plank alone, really."

He maintains that, in the end, Bob Dole will reach a peace with the evangelicals in the Republican party. Sam Brownback counts himself among those evangelicals, having committed his life to Christ as a boy. He can tell the time and the place he made that commitment, and he's refreshingly open about Christ's role in his life.

He smiled as he talked. "I was 13 years years old, and I was on the farm, taking a bucket of feed back to the sows in the back pen. I'd been thinking about it, and I felt that it was time to make a commitment. So I did. I've been a born-again believer ever since. I haven't been the believer I want to be all the time-I have lots of failings, but it's a deep part of my life and it shapes who I am."

It has also helped shape his political career. "Politics is a full-contact sport," says this former high school linebacker. "Yet we as Christians are called on to love our enemies. For me that means I pray for whoever I'm running against. Just because we are running for the same seat doesn't mean there should be hate involved. I worry a lot about that, because these things are so conflict oriented. You just have to try to keep it about the issues."

When asked what he would tell other Christians about Bob Dole to sooth their fears, Rep. Brownback said, "I've never known the man to go back on his word. If he stakes out a position on abortion, that's where he's going to be."

For now, Sam Brownback says he has to concern himself with his own political race, and try to ignore the problems within the Dole camp and within the party itself.

Shelia Frahm has the goodwill of the party and of the state's other senator, Republican Nancy Kassebaum. But she also has a record that should make her vulnerable in a primary election, where conservatism counts.

"It's simple," Rep. Brownback says. "I'm against tax increases, while she has voted for tax increases. I'm for term limits, she's against term limits. I'm pro-life, she's pro-choice."

And Sen. Frahm handed her opponent a boxful of political ammunition last month, when Roll Call published portions of a fundraising letter that seemed to show Sen. Frahm as the politician-as-usual.

"We are asking for $1,000 from individuals and $2,500 to $5,000 from PACs," said the letter, penned by lobbyist William Taggart, a former Dole aide. "Believe me, the funds contributed at this time will NOT be forgotten."

Frahm campaign staffers have tried to shrug off the letter-they didn't write it, they said, and anyway, it's not a big deal-but Rep. Brownback has been able to capitalize on it. At an afternoon news conference, he was able to play up his efforts for political reform.

It hasn't been easy for him to become an effective campaigner.

"I'm a policy wonk," he admits. "The White House Fellowship was really, in many ways, my dream job. The difficulty of campaigning as a policy wonk is that campaigns are about very short, clear, concise, over-generalized statements of clarity. But policy wonk-ishness is about minutia of detail and knowing everything about something."

The evening news has little time or patience for details, he said.

"The difficulty is making sure I shift out of the wonk-mode," he added. "It takes me a little while, but that's the only way to put out my message in understandable terms, which is the important thing for people. To communicate with people a lot of times you have to talk about things that are right there and right now."

He paused to pick up his cellular phone and punch a speed-dial button. He made some polite conversation with his wife, then asked for the score of a basketball game he was interested in. She hasn't been watching it, she responded. She and the kids were watching a video. "No, that's fine, you don't need to find it for me," he said. "I'll check when I get home."

He hung up the phone and talked more about the race for the Senate seat. With the backing-though unofficial-of Bob Dole in the race for his Senate seat, Sheila Frahm is favored to win, Mr. Brownback admitted.

"If I don't win, I'll be out of a job, I guess," he said. "But I don't think my family would mind that. And I'd get to see a game for a change."