By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 6, 2000; Page A01

"I think Bayh is very bad," declared Patricia Ireland, president of the

National Organization for Women.

Kim Gandy, executive vice president of NOW, told the Indianapolis Star, the biggest paper in Bayh's home state, that she "did not think Gore would ever select someone who is so weak on women's rights."

Bayh, whose political life until now has been a ride in the fast lane, has suddenly discovered what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of the more specialized forms of public torture in the nation's capital: the testing under fire of a prospective vice presidential candidate.

At first, the process is exhilarating: Being mentioned as a potential running mate for Democrat Al Gore or Republican George W. Bush means calls from reporters, a staff shifting into high gear, invitations to the Sunday morning television talk shows and becoming a prime catch for anyone throwing a Georgetown dinner party.

And then, it can get nasty.

The massive network of ideological, corporate, labor and professional special interests based in Washington begins its own vetting process. And, if the politician has voted "wrong" or taken offending stands, the offended groups begin a concerted drive to discredit the prospective nominee.

The process is relentless and lacks subtlety. Its purpose is to destroy the political attractiveness of a politician. The negative campaigns are conducted most often either in the media or in private communications, where the chances of effective rebuttal are minimal.

In Bayh's case, because he voted once to ban a procedure that critics call "partial birth" abortion, he has been identified as an enemy by leaders of the women's rights movement, one of the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party. Bayh is just coming to grips with what hit him.

"My record on women's rights and opportunities for women, any objective analysis would conclude, is very strong," said Bayh. He said that as governor of Indiana he won a "breaking the glass ceiling" award for putting women into top positions and that he voted as a senator to endorse the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Bayh said that in the Senate so far, he has been on the side of abortion rights supporters on four out of five key votes. But in the "all or nothing" politics of the nation's capital, "there is no room for any mixed feeling, when the American people themselves have some mixed feelings," he said.

The same issue, abortion, has placed Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge at risk as a vice presidential aspirant on the GOP side. While Bayh is under attack from the left, Ridge faces a barrage of criticism from the right.

"Tom Ridge has become a proxy for unhappy conservatives," said Kate O'Beirne, an editor of the National Review, a conservative magazine that has led the charge against Ridge. The magazine published an article that accused Ridge not only of supporting abortion rights but also of criticizing defense spending, especially space-based missile defense, a top priority for conservatives.

Ridge, who won a Bronze Star in Vietnam, countered in the New York Times: "I'll bet the only combat ever seen by the guy who wrote that has been in front of a Nintendo machine."

The National Review has been joined by leaders of the religious right, the weekly Human Events and a host of others in the conservative movement determined to prevent a perceived moderate such as Ridge from being next in line to become president if Bush wins in November.

"I pledged in 1988 before a group of 400,000 never to cast a vote for any candidate who is not pro-life, and I will keep that pledge in 2000," James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, told Human Events. "If George W. Bush chooses a pro-choice running mate, I'm going to vote for someone else."

In perhaps the most damaging attack on Ridge, who is Roman Catholic, Steven Wagner, president of the polling firm QEV Analytics and a consultant to the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis, said his data suggest that "a Catholic candidate who is pro-choice does more harm in terms of the ability of the ticket to appeal to Catholics than a pro-choice non-Catholic." That's because Catholic voters have higher expectations of Catholic politicians, Wagner said. These findings, he added, were given directly to the campaign by Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis and a Bush adviser.

Ridge and Bayh are the targets of the two most substantial attacks under way, but they are not alone.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), for example, has a formidable adversary in Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who sees Hagel as a defiant renegade on the Senate floor. Lott contends he is doing nothing to pierce the Hagel balloon, although he pointedly questioned Hagel's political reliability to a reporter who works for a prominent conservative publication, the Weekly Standard. Lott reminded the reporter that Hagel had endorsed Bush in 1999 only to switch later and back Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Anti-tax groups that are influential in the GOP are geared up to conduct an intense lobbying campaign against Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) if he begins to gain traction as a possible vice presidential contender. Voinovich is anathema to this wing of the party because he raised taxes during his tenure as governor in Ohio.

While these negative campaigns can put a damper on a politician's ambitions, the process of vetting candidates can have unexpected consequences.

When, for example, word leaked that Gore was considering Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), many in the party expected the National Education Association (NEA), one of the party's strongest interest groups, to block Lieberman because he has been a supporter of school vouchers over the strenuous objections of the NEA.

But in an unforeseen development, Lieberman received a kind of backhanded boost when the NEA decided not to mount a negative campaign. "We have not voiced an opinion on any vice presidential candidates and [will not] have done so at least for the foreseeable future," said Bob Chase, the NEA president, without elaborating.

A more subtle consequence of the anti-Ridge campaign, according to a number of conservative activists, is that by focusing on Ridge as the threat to Republican ideological purity, Ridge's critics are making it easier for Bush to consider other candidates whose antiabortion credentials might otherwise be suspect.

"Tom Ridge has drawn the sting in a way that could be helpful to the Bush campaign," O'Beirne said. "Anyone else might look a lot better because Ridge has become the person not to go with."

Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a Bush supporter, said that the furor over Ridge has improved the vice presidential prospects of Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, who can claim the unique honor of being supported by both Pat Robertson, president of the Christian Coalition, and Ann Stone, executive director of Republicans for Choice.

Norquist, mounting what amounts to a positive campaign, said Gilmore "would be a great VP pick; the whole center-right coalition is happy with him." In the case of abortion, Norquist noted, Gilmore "is for all the restrictions" on abortion but he would not overturn Roe v. Wade.