Edition: U.S. / Global

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN; Campaign on Shoestring Ousts Veteran

Published: September 22, 1994

Virgil Cooper, a retired school principal and political novice, spent all of $16,900 in his race for the Democratic nomination in Oklahoma's Second Congressional District against Mike Synar, an eight-term incumbent.

The 71-year-old Mr. Cooper bought no television advertising and hired no staff to campaign against Mr. Synar, one of the best-known politicians in the state, a player in the House of Representatives and an unabashed ally of President Clinton.

Mr. Cooper barnstormed in his pick-up truck, nailing homemade signs to telephone poles and tucking business cards under the windshield wipers of parked cars. His chief campaign position was that he was not Mike Synar. "People would grab your hand and you would tell them that you're running against Mike Synar, and they would say, 'You've got my vote,' " Mr. Cooper said.

And on Tuesday night, Mr. Cooper narrowly won the primary runoff, 51 percent to 49 percent.

Mr. Synar, who came to Congress as a 27-year-old reformer, has always been more liberal than the district he represents. He and his supporters sought to cast the defeat in the runoff election as the bitter fruit of years of attacks on him for his crusades against guns, against tobacco companies and against low grazing fees for cattle ranchers.

But more than that, he seems to have hit a wave of voter anger toward incumbents that threatens to remake Congress this fall. The paradox of Mr. Synar's defeat is that after surviving many races in which his opponents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to oust him, he was finally done in by someone who campaigned on a shoestring.

Here in Muskogee, the heart of Mr. Synar's district, voters seemed much more angry with the whole system in Washington -- the President, the Congress, all of it -- than they were in particular at Mr. Synar, whom many described as an honest and likable person.

"Synar's been in there a long time, and nothing ever changes in Washington," said Terry Hardage, the manager of a Subway sandwich shop here who voted for Mr. Cooper. "So what we need in government right now is people who have never been there. That's all there is to it."

Voters in the district also ousted their 24-year incumbent State Representative in favor of another political novice and statewide, Oklahomans approved, by a two-to-one margin, a term-limit measure that would force all Congressional Representatives out of office after three two-year-terms.

The importance of Mr. Cooper's victory may extend beyond Oklahoma. "This is a jolt for every Democrat in Congress," said William Schneider, a political analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based research group. "The Synar race sends dual signals, one about Democrats and one about Congress, and people will argue about which spin to put on it. But Democratic incumbents are very nervous, no matter which spin you put on it."

In Washington, President Clinton's press secretary fought off questions about whether the race was a referendum on Mr. Clinton, maintaining that the result really showed how tough things were for all incumbents. And House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, Democrat of Washington, insisted that all House races are local, so that Mr. Synar's defeat did not herald a trend.

Mr. Hardage, the Subway manager, growing more animated as he spoke, said he really did not care if his Congressman was versed in the intricacies of how to craft legislation or how to forge a consensus on a complicated issue.

"That Cooper guy's never had any experience in Congress, he's never been in there; therefore he knows exactly how the people feel," Mr. Hardage said. "If it takes inexperienced people up there to get what we want, so be it."

Asked to define "what we want," Mr. Hardage pondered before replying, "To be able to control our lives, control our kids, low medical costs for people like us to be able to get by on eight or nine hundred dollars a month, be able to afford groceries."

Of course, many similar sentiments were expressed by Bill Clinton two years ago, but Mr. Hardage, like many voters, said he hated Mr. Clinton and would never consider voting for him.

Danney Goble, a historian at the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Study Center at the University of Oklahoma, said the margin in the narrow defeat could well have come from people who typically do not vote but who turned out for the term-limits proposition.

"Certainly those who went to the polls most interested in term limits would be predisposed to vote against a long-term incumbent," he said.

Mr. Synar attributed the defeat to years of attacks by "a variety of interests, whether tobacco, or grazers, or the radical right" or the National Rifle Association.

"When you've been as active as I have and lived on the edge as long as I have, we've always had this potential problem," he said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he flew hours after delivering a concession speech here.

Some of his supporters suggested that while Mr. Cooper was an unknown without much money, plenty of money was being spent on anti-Synar messages in anticipation of his campaign against the Republican nominee, Tom Coburn, a doctor. One huge yellow billboard along a highway in the district was not at all subtle: "Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Synar," it read.

Mr. Synar, anticipating a birthday next month, said: "I'm 44, and it's not like my life is over."

Photo: Representative Mike Synar conceding the Democratic primary on Tuesday in Oklahoma's Second Congressional District. (Associated Press)