Inhofe, Walters battle for Senate seat

Fri Oct 25, 2002

By Tim Talley
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Former Gov. David Walters says Jim Inhofe is ineffective in the U.S. Senate. Inhofe says Walters' accusations can't be taken seriously.

The voters will decide who they believe in the Nov. 5 general election that pairs Walters, a Democrat who served one term as governor, against Inhofe, a Republican who is running for his second full term in the Senate.

Independent James Germalic of Stigler is also running for Inhofe's Senate seat.

The campaign has been characterized by television ads commissioned by Walters and Inhofe in which they trade charges and defend their records.

"I would call these ads comparisons," said Walters, 51, who was elected governor in 1990. "Campaigns are for purposes of making those comparisons.

"The easy thing about our position is it's almost completely opposite to his."

Inhofe said there is no foundation for Walters' attacks.

"He says things that aren't true with great conviction," Inhofe said. "What he's trying to do is get at my integrity. We're going to win. We're going to win by a large majority."

Walters maintains that Inhofe, 67, is ineffective because he consistently votes along party lines and is taken for granted by his Senate colleagues.

"He doesn't have to vote 100 percent of the time with the party. There's nobody holding a gun to his head saying he has to do that," Walters said.

In campaign appearances, news conferences and TV ads, Walters has charged that Inhofe opposes prescription drug benefits under Medicare, voted to raid Social Security trust funds and consistently votes against public education programs.

In his own TV ads, Inhofe said he voted for prescription drug benefits and opposes using Social Security trust funds for other purposes.

Inhofe also said Walters is wrong when he accuses the incumbent of being "too far on the right and not a centrist person."

"I'm more of a maverick," he said. "They don't know where I'm going to be coming from."

Inhofe said he frequently votes against his party and was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

He said he opposed it because it balanced the budget by cutting Medicare reimbursements to hospitals, which might have closed up to 26 rural hospitals in Oklahoma.

"To do that I had to go against these hard-core conservatives who criticized me," he said.

But Inhofe said he is proud of his conservative credentials. "I think that government should not be involved in the things they're involved in today," he said.

He said he is a strong supporter of the military and Oklahoma's five major military installations.

Inhofe also supports creation of a national energy policy that would provide incentives for oil and gas production from marginal wells in Oklahoma.

Walters has been on the defensive because of his guilty plea to a campaign finance violation during his 1990 gubernatorial campaign.

Walters became the state's only sitting governor to be indicted following a grand jury investigation into his campaign finance activities. In 1993, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating campaign finance laws.

In 1991, Walters' only son, Shaun Walters, 20, took his own life with an overdose of prescriptions antidepressants.

Walters reached the general election by defeating Tulsa attorney Tom Boettcher in a runoff for the Democratic nomination. Boettcher later endorsed Walters.

Inhofe did not face primary opposition.

Attempts to reach Germalic were unsuccessful.

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Inhofe, Walters battle for Senate seat