Word: culver
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Pugnacious. The word fits liberal Democrat John Culver as well as his football helmet did when he was a fullback at Harvard. Now, after ten years as a Congressman and six as a Senator from Iowa, the beefy Culver, 48, is running for re-election with all of the ferocity that he once showed on the gridiron. His opponent this time is not simply mild-mannered Republican Charles Grassley, 47, a conservative Congressman and corn farmer, but the entire New Right-the antiabortion, anti-liberal and conservative-evangelical Christian groups that have put Culver on their nationwide hit list...
Feet apart, fists chopping the air, Culver roars that he received a zero-percent rating from Christian Voice, a fundamentalist lobbying group. With fire and brimstone in his voice, he adds sarcastically: "If you were for SALT II, you couldn't be a good Christian. If you were for normalization of relations with China, you couldn't be a good Christian. My opponent [who got a 100% rating] voted against foreign aid. What would Jesus Christ have said to that when 1 billion people in the world are going to bed hungry every night...
...opponent, the boyish, personable Congressman, neither looks nor acts like the venomous creation of the New Right that Culver depicts. To Culver's charge that Grassley accepted campaign funds from out-of-state oil and chemical companies and right-wing groups like the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Grassley notes that the incumbent has received money from out-of-state labor unions and New York City liberals. Says Grassley: "Who's a tool of what organization? He talks about N.C.P.A.C., but what about ADA [the liberal Americans for Democratic Action...
...While Culver is at his bombastic best before large groups, Grassley is in his element in one-on-one encounters with voters, on street corners, at coffees, in backyards. He is trying to focus his campaign on the economy. Says he: "I am diametrically opposed to John Culver, the biggest spender in the Senate. He has never voted against a single spending bill to come out of the Senate. These policies have brought the U.S. economy to its knees." By contrast, Grassley has regularly opposed foreign aid and voted no on many spending bills, including the 1979 bill to raise...
Both candidates are equally matched in budgets (more than $1.4 million apiece) and, according to polls, in support among voters. Thus no one in either camp disputes Culver's analysis: "We're in the fourth quarter, and we're even...