c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Sitting in her cramped Capitol Hill office, Rep. Linda Smith, R-Wash., points to a Washington Post newspaper on her coffee table and shakes her head. On the front page are new revelations about President Clinton’s role in authorizing overnight White House stays for Democratic Party contributors. “It just makes me so sad. What kind of example are we setting for our children?”asks the 46-year-old grandmother of six.

But hers is a bipartisan sorrow.

In January, Smith was one of four Republicans who voted against Newt Gingrich’s re-election as Speaker of the House because of the pending ethics investigation against him. For Smith, that vote was a matter of keeping faith with the American people.”I felt they would trust us more if they could trust how we operate,”she says.

Since her election to Congress in 1994, Smith has been making enemies on both sides of the political aisle with her outspoken crusade for financial ethics and campaign finance reform.

A member of the Assemblies of God denomination, she says her position flows directly from her Pentecostal religious beliefs.”The Bible is very clear about the relationship between money and power, and money and justice,”she says.

The crusade has been a lonely one for Smith, a social and economic conservative who favors a balanced budget amendment and staunchly opposes abortion. Often she has been thrust into unfamiliar coalitions with new political allies while much of her natural constituency in the conservative and Christian communities has either stayed on the sidelines or come out in opposition to her proposed reforms.

But Smith is undaunted.”In fact,”she says,”the more I know, the more I am determined that this place has to be changed.” Overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds has been a hallmark of Smith’s political career. A former tax consultant who was elected to the state legislature in 1983, Smith came to Washington, D.C., as part of the”Republican Revolution”that took control of Congress in 1994.

During that election, Smith made Washington state history as the first person to ever qualify for a general election ballot as a write-in candidate. The write-in campaign was organized just a few weeks before the primary.”Even people who don’t usually believe in miracles had to call that a miracle,”Smith says.

When she arrived on Capitol Hill, Smith says she was shocked to see how much big money politics was integrated into the process. She describes how freshmen members of Congress are immediately trained to raise money from lobbyists and special interest groups.”I felt that the money was too close to the vote,”she says.”How can I be just to the people at home wanting me to balance all values and all voices when one voice comes with $10,000 or $5,000 or $1,000?” So Smith began her outspoken”Clean Congress”campaign. She prohibited her staff from participating in the almost nightly round of special interest- sponsored fund-raising events, and she began introducing legislation to reform the campaign finance system by eliminating political action committee donations and placing restrictions on party spending.

Smith says her views on the subject were shaped by her faith.

An evangelical Christian, Smith and her husband Vern are members of the Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Vancouver, Wash. She is also active in a Bible study and prayer group that meets on Capitol Hill.”I am one who believes there are principles for leadership and those principles demand that a leader be a servant first. I must always do the best I can to be fair and just and keep a balance in my decision-making,”she says.

In the Bible, she adds,”God warns leaders about the love of money.” Smith’s efforts drew the ire of colleagues from both parties, including fellow Christians. Many accused her of being self-righteous and judgmental.

Looking back, Smith concedes that in her anger over the system, she may have hurt people she didn’t mean to.”I was pretty strong-spoken,”she admits, adding that she can now understand why she upset so many colleagues.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)”Most of them are individually very, very good … and they don’t want to be treated as though they are guilty for something they don’t think they did or that they are not responsible for,”she says. She said she believes most members are caught in a system they don’t know how to change.

Smith’s campaign also drew the attention of special interest groups, who targeted her for defeat in the last election. In her re-election bid, Smith only accepted contributions from individuals, who each gave less than the federal limit of $1,000. Her opponent ran three times as many TV ads as she did, all financed by special interest”soft money,”she claims.”It truly tested whether or not I would do what I said,”she says.

It was a close race. The day after the election, both The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Smith had lost. But after the absentee ballots were counted, she was officially certified the winner on Dec. 5 by a margin of 887 votes.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

This term, Smith’s battle was re-joined early on, when in the first week of the new session, the House voted on whether or not to re-elect Republican Gingrich as speaker. The vote came before a House ethics panel had completed its investigation into the financing of a college course taught by Gingrich. The panel subsequently fined him for violating House rules.

Smith wanted the vote delayed until after the ethics committee’s final report was released.”I didn’t want to hurt him personally, but I felt it was important for the institution that America see us do things in the best way, to stand up and look very clean,”she says.

Smith was one of only four Republicans who voted for someone other than Gingrich. (Five other Republicans voted”present.”)

It was a difficult decision.”There is a standard here that if it is done by your party, it’s practically like your religion,”she says.

One fellow Republican called her a”traitor”for breaking the party line.”I just about died inside,”she says.”I’m always going to go with the team when they’re going right. But when I think they are seriously going wrong, I can’t do it.” In many ways, Smith is also out of step with conservative Christian groups on this issue. Many leaders of the religious right have not spoken out about campaign finance reform, although recently the National Right to Life Committee released a statement opposing a Senate reform proposal similar to the bill Smith is advocating in the House.

On the March 5 broadcast of the”700 Club,”conservative commentator Pat Robertson also denounced the Senate proposal as a violation of free speech.”We’re not always on the side of the ACLU, but on this one, those guys are right,”Robertson said.

Smith is puzzled and disappointed that more conservative Christians have not joined her effort.”They have picked up traditional moral values, but they have discarded one that God spent a whole lot of time on in the Bible, and that is money and power,”she says.

She believes conservative Christian groups will eventually have to address the issue.”I am fearful that some of the more conservative churches could look like they condone (the system) by their inaction,”she says.”But if you get out into the real world … the pastors of conservative churches are talking about this and asking people to pray for their leaders.” Although she has long urged the public to demand reform of the campaign finance system, Smith says she takes no pleasure from the new national attention on the issue, largely fueled by allegations against the Clinton administration’s fund-raising efforts.”I don’t want the people to see what I’ve seen, but I know they have to,”she says.”Even though it makes me sad for the rest of America to see … our representative government auctioned off, maybe they’ll see it enough to understand what I’m saying.”

MJP END LAWTON