Coffin and Ensign prepare for November battle

Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

After spending more than a year defending his own record, Rep. John Ensign plans to attack Democratic state Sen. Bob Coffin for supporting higher taxes in Nevada.

Coffin, in turn, accuses the freshman Republican congressman he wants to unseat this November of distorting his position on issues.

The head-to-head battle between Ensign and Coffin in Nevada's 1st Congressional District was officially launched after the state legislator's easy Democratic primary victory Tuesday over three opponents.

With 181 of 509 precincts reporting, the 53-year-old Coffin, a Las Vegas antiquarian book dealer, received 68.2 percent of the vote to outdistance Robert Gross, 13.6 percent, Daniel Banta, 12.4 percent, and David Mautner, 5.8 percent. Coffin now must contend with Ensign and one of the fattest campaign accounts held by a House freshman.

Ensign, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, has about eight times as much campaign money as Coffin and practically the entire Las Vegas gaming industry behind him.

That means voters can expect a deluge of Ensign television advertisements between now and the Nov. 5 general election without much return fire expected from the state senator.

Ensign said he plans to convince voters that he's taken a lead role in welfare reform while ensuring that Nevada doesn't get shortchanged in funding formulas designed to return federal dollars to the states. The congressman also will hype his efforts to force prison inmates to work instead of enjoying such perks as cable television and racy magazines.

"He (Coffin) was one of only three state senators to vote against welfare reform in the Legislature in 1995," Ensign said.

The congressman also said he's fought hard to lower taxes. But he added that Coffin was chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee when "they pushed through the largest tax increase in state history."

"That compares to my record of letting working families keep what they earn," Ensign said.

But Coffin scoffed at Ensign's characterization of his votes.

"They always try to blame the Democrats for the taxes," Coffin said. "But how do you keep the schools open, the roads paved and the cops on the street without money?"

The state senator said he'll stick to issues such as Medicare and Medicaid reform, education and the environment. Coffin and fellow Democrats have repeatedly asserted that Ensign and the Republicans have voted for cuts that would hurt the working class, senior citizens, students and the poor.

"People don't forget that Mr. Ensign cast several votes for that $270 billion cut in Medicare to pay for $245 billion in tax cuts," Coffin said.

Charging the Democrats with unnecessarily scaring seniors, Ensign and the Republicans have said they merely want to lower the rate of Medicare growth over the next seven years. Ensign also has said the GOP wants to streamline environmental regulations, not destroy the environment as Coffin and the Democrats have charged.

Coffin, a state legislator since 1983, has tried to score points by tying Ensign to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who has high negative ratings in public opinion polls. Coffin also has criticized Ensign for being one of the leading recipients of political action committee funds from special interests among House freshmen.

"He's been trying to act like a Democrat for the past eight or nine months," Coffin said of Ensign. "He's trying to continue to distance himself from Newt Gingrich. But if you re-elect John Ensign, you keep Newt Gingrich as speaker."

But the legislator has spent little time defining his own message, and already has had to defend himself from Ensign's advertising onslaught. Just last week, Ensign aired commercials pointing out that Coffin's biggest campaign contributors support a proposal to store high-level nuclear waste in Nevada. The ads ran despite Coffin's personal opposition to the proposed dump.

The contributors weren't named in the ads but they happen to be building trade unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The nation's largest labor organization has a $35 million war chest to defeat GOP congressmen this year, alleging that the majority party in Congress is bad for the working class.

Labor already has run a year's worth of ads alleging that Ensign has voted for cuts in programs that impact senior citizens, students and the environment. Ensign has countered that his party simply is eliminating government waste, and wants to return power to the states.

The congressman, a veterinarian and former casino executive, is the son of Circus Circus Enterprises executive Mike Ensign.

Other candidates in the general election race are Independent American entrant Ted Gunderson of Las Vegas, Libertarian James Dan of Reno, and Las Vegan Richard Eidson of the Natural Law party.

The congressional district includes Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson.