VOTERS MIXED ON PRE-ELECTION MOOD

Feelings of apathy, alienation and frustration are thought to be rampant among voters in this mid-term election year. Many pundits expect them to throw the bums out of office Tuesday almost willy-nilly.

Russell Renka, a political science professor at Southeast Missouri State University, blames talk-show hosts and attack ads for the current state of disenchantment.

Demagoguery, whether on the part of TV personalities or politicians, amounts to an abuse of the political system, Renka said. "They're pretending there are easy ways to fix the problems and that's not so," he said.

Crime is example number one, he added. "Neither party knows what to do about it."

He called the current campaign season "a pretty sorry excuse for public discourse about politics."

Voters are faced with "the horrible Mrs. Robinson feeling: That ultimately you don't have a choice," he said.

Missouri's U.S. Senate race is an example of the political gamesmanship now passing for a campaign, Renka said. "John Ashcroft won't even state a position on Hancock II. How are we to define the difference between him and Alan Wheat?"

Television and money are now in charge of the American election system, Renka said. "It is mass media-driven. They run a lot of negative political ads and hope their opponent runs out of money to counteract them."

Voters might be turned off to politics, but nobody is fooled, Renka said. "The public knows it's getting cheap substitutes for real political dialogue."

But while he isn't fond of negative campaigns, Peter Bergerson doesn't think this campaign season is particularly bad.

"Politics can be a contact sport," said Bergerson, chairman of the Political Science Department at Southeast. "Unfortunately we are seeing that in the campaigns."

Bergerson said that despite talk of anti-incumbency, 90 percent of incumbents likely will win re-election on Tuesday.

If Republicans gain control of the House and Senate, an outcome he considers a 50-50 possibility, they will do so by winning their share of the 50 or so seats that don't have incumbents.

"The largest segment (of voters) that feels alienated and is disenchanted with the institutions of government seem to like their own congressmen and senators," Bergerson said. "But the institutions they do not have a particularly high regard for."

He thinks the voters' discontent is real but has been blown out of proportion.

For whatever reason, randomly phoned voters in the Cape Girardeau area seem to agree with him.

Mike Jansen of Cape Girardeau is as excited as ever about voting Tuesday. "It's a right and privilege we all have as citizens," he said. "We ought to be happy to participate."

Jansen thinks "people in public office need to operate a little more conservatively. I'm not saying that from a Republican or Democrat standpoint, but from the standpoint of the country drifting away from the beliefs it was founded on."

Jansen doesn't agree with voters who feel powerless. "As long as the American people have that kind of attitude, nothing will change," he said.

No single issue is getting Aaron Ellinghouse of Cape Girardeau out to vote Tuesday. "They're all important to me," he said.

And negative campaigns haven't changed his belief that the American political system provides voters with good choices.

Gayla Smith of Millersville will walk into a voting booth for the first time Tuesday. A 19-year-old nursing student at the university, Smith says she's already seen enough ads.

"I'm getting sick of seeing them," she said. "I really don't like the negative stuff."

The ads don't really say anything about the candidates, Smith complained. "They don't really say what they stand for."

But faith in the political system remains, she said. "I think it's been lost a little bit, but it can be fixed."