BY JIM BARON

In a campaign where two men are vying for a six-year term to the U.S. Senate, you might think there are a host of issues on the minds of voters — the war in Iraq, maybe, or perhaps health care.

But if there is one thing on which Democrat Jack Reed and Republican Bob Tingle agree it is that there is only one thing on the minds of voters: the current financial crash and its aftershocks, which have shaken Wall Street, worried Main Street and crumbled the 401(k)s and IRAs that are the foundation of their savings and retirements. Both acknowledge, there is no Issue #2. 
“The economy is on everybody’s mind,” Reed said in a recent interview. “They are looking at layoffs taking place around the country — and in Rhode Island, too. They are looking at increased prices for energy, for food. Gasoline prices at least are tapering off, but the home heating oil issue is coming right up. They have seen for the last eight years their family income has been basically flat or even negative and the squeeze is really difficult.
Up until two years ago, Reed, 58, said, “people have had the ability to use their residence for equity loans and things like that,” but that, too, has now gone away.
“It’s generally about the economy,” he concluded. “Paying for the necessities of life and then looking ahead to see how they afford college education for their kids or what happens to health care. More and more people are losing employer-based health care they are wondering how they are going to get it. All these issues are at the forefront of people’s concerns, and they should be.”
Tingle, 50, insists the current financial mess is at least partly Reed’s making.
“Sen. Reed sits on the Banking Committee,” Tingle said, “he sits on the finance (Appropriations) committee. He’s the chairperson of the Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investments. And over the course of three Senate terms he has taken more than $2.8 million from the banking and insurance and investment corporations at the same time he is chairperson of the subcommittee that is supposed to have oversight over these industries.
“There is a conflict of interest there,” Tingle says. “It’s not just Sen. Reed, it’s all of them. It certainly does appear it could have influenced a lot of people, including Sen. Reed.
“Everybody’s 401(k)s, their retirement savings, they are down, 30 to 40 percent,” he noted. “People are mad. They want to know: how could this have happened? A lot of people planned on retiring in a couple of years and now they can’t,” because they have lost large chunks of the money they put aside for retirement and they are in jeopardy of losing their jobs.”
On his website, Tingle – who works as a pit boss at Foxwoods and notes that 700 of his co-workers were recently laid off -- calls for giving people what he calls “conservative investment options with their Social Security savings similar to a 401(k).”
“What were these guys in Washington doing?” Tingle asks. “Were they asleep at the wheel or did they just pretend it wasn’t happening because over the years they have taken millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the securities, investment and banking industry? It’s troubling.”
Reed insists that “my votes are unrelated to campaign contributions.
“I’ve always do what I think is in the best interest of the people of Rhode Island, the people of the nation,” the senator said. “I can recall voting against the bankruptcy bill, one of about 20 members of the Senate to do that because it was really detrimental to consumers. That was a top priority of the financial services industry that year.”
It is because of that work, Reed said, “that I was just recognized by the Consumer Federation of America with their achievement award for going above and beyond working for consumers and not big institutions.”
But in a small, single-media-market state, where he invariably faces unknown, underfinanced opposition, why does Reed need to amass millions of campaign bucks?
“We run serious campaigns,” Reed said, “I don’t take campaigns lightly. I get prepared for campaigns and I do it following the law scrupulously and ensuring that we have resources to go ahead and campaign. When I look ahead six years from now, as we must, I don’t know what the opposition is going to be like, I don’t know what the issues are going to be like.
Vowing not to accept any campaign contributions (he said he returned an unsolicited $1,000 check sent to him by a man in Texas) and pledging not to spend more than $500 of his own money for his rematch against Reed, Tingle concedes that he is “the biggest of underdogs” and acknowledges forthrightly that the only reason he is in the race is that the GOP didn’t have anyone else willing to run against the state’s senior senator.
“I became the nominee the same way I became the nominee six years ago,” when he says he spent $375, Tingle related. “They didn’t have anybody to run against Jack Reed.” So he volunteered both times to carry the party banner against the Democrat who consistently scores the highest job approval rating among elected officials on polls conducted in the Ocean State.
“It would be a shame if an incumbent U.S. Senator were to run unopposed for re-election. That should never happen.
It is the millions Reed has reaped from the banking industry contributors, which Tingle ties to the financial meltdown, that Tingle says are the reason “things have changed a little bit.” Biggest of all underdogs or not, Tingle talks like he is getting the whiff of an upset.          
“On November 5,” he boldly predicts, “the newspaper headlines are going to read ‘Incumbent Senator Who Spent $4 Million on His Campaign Was Defeated By Somebody that spent less than $500.”
Nonetheless, political professionals consider Reed’s Senate seat as one of the safest up for election this year.
Among the most influential Democrats in Congress on defense and strategic issues, Reed made a high-profile trip to Iraq and Afghanistan this summer with his Senate colleague, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He is often the point man for making the Democrats case on the Iraq war, and, by extension, for criticizing President George W. Bush.
Reed is so authoritative on military issues, that the political scuttlebutt that he could be appointed as Secretary of Defense if Obama becomes president. Reed, for his part, adamantly says he will refuse the cabinet chair if it is offered, preferring to stay in the Senate.
But if Obama becomes president in January, Reed said, “the policy of the United States will be a redeployment in 16 months of our combat forces out of Iraq and we will endeavor to shift additional resources to Afghanistan to confront the increased violence up there.”
Reed noted that the Bush administration is now negotiation with the Iraqis on a “status of forces agreement” and “there is every indication that the Iraqis will demand the withdrawal of all of our forces by 2011.”
Tingle says if the government of Iraq asks us to leave, “then it’s time to go. It’s their country.”
But he says it is imperative that the U.S. to continue the fight against al Qaeda.
“We need to defeat them with the same urgency that we defeated the Nazis,” Tingle said. “They can’t be negotiated with. They can’t be trusted. The only way this situation is going to end is if we crush them.”
Reed says he expects the current Congress to return right after the election to pass another economic stimulus measure.
He supports Obama’s proposals for infrastructure projects to create jobs while shoring up the nation’s roads, bridges, water distribution systems and the like; for a tax cut to families with incomes less than $250,000 and allowing penalty-free access to 401(k)s if people are in emergency need of money.
“We could pass an economic stimulus package in November, the question is, would President Bush sign the bill? I think, given what is happening in the economy, there might be strong support on both sides of the House and Senate so that the bill would be, if not veto-proof, the president would go along with it.”
Tingle says he is pro-life and maintains that many in the Ocean State agree with him.
Citing its older and heavily Roman Catholic population, Tingle says, “I disagree with the notion that Rhode Island is a pro-choice state, I really do.” He notes that other pro-life candidates such as Gov. Donald Carcieri, Congressman Jim Langevin and former Congressman Robert Weygand.
He says he will make overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion a top priority and he opposes embryonic stem cell research and human cloning.
On immigration, Tingle says he favors legal immigration while looking to close the borders to those seeking to come here illegally.
“I think the way Rhode Island has been going about dealing with the situation is wrong,” he said. “I think the way we should go about fighting illegal immigration in this state is not to round up the illegal aliens, but to go after the people who hire them. If the people who hire them see that they are going to be fined and their business are going to be shut down and they might go to jail, they’re not going to hire them any more. And I think our problem with illegal immigration would be diminished greatly.”