AUSTIN, Texas -- The special Senate election here next Saturday is supposed to be a high-stakes test of President Clinton and national directions. But it could turn on whether voters believe -- or care -- whether state Treasurer Kay Bailey Hutchison whacked former Gov. John Connally's daughter with a notebook binder in August 1991.
There will be 24 candidates on the primary ballot. The one certainty seems to be that the leader will be Sen. Bob Krueger, the Democrat appointed to replace Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.
But Mr. Krueger has been evoking so little enthusiasm that few Texas politicians would rate him better than even in the runoff June 5 if, as expected, no one reaches 50 percent in that first primary.
The election seems to have escaped the notice of most Texans. Opinion polls show 30 percent to 40 percent claiming to be undecided. The contest attracted remarkably little public attention until the flap over Ms. Hutchison, putatively the leading Republican in the field, and Sharon Ammann, the daughter of Mr. Connally.
In an interview with the Houston Post, Ms. Ammann, who once worked for Ms. Hutchison, said the Republican state treasurer lost her temper and began wielding the notebook one day when Ms. Ammann was slow to locate a critical telephone number. "I'm standing at the file cabinet and she is beating me with every single word that she says," Ms. Ammann reported.
It turned out, however, that both Ms. Ammann and her father are supporting Rep. Jack Fields of Houston, one of Ms. Hutchison's leading Republican rivals. That led to suspicion that the Fields campaign might have encouraged Ms. Ammann to speak out, an initiative stoutly denied by all involved.
Although Ms. Ammann produced a corroborating witness, Ms. Hutchison denied hitting anyone, calling it a "sexist charge" and "sleazy politics." Then, in short order, Ms. Ammann took a lie detector test, and Mr. Fields demanded that Ms. Hutchison do the same, which she promptly did. Each says she passed.
A couple of days later, a Dallas television station aired a re-creation of the incident, with Ms. Ammann playing the part of Ms. Hutchison striking a stand-in with a notebook.
Just how all this back-and-forth is playing is anyone's guess. The poll-taker for one rival candidate says Ms. Hutchison is "bleeding from the arteries" since the controversy erupted. Another campaign strategist says nothing has changed except that Mr. Fields may have established himself as the prime rival to Ms. Hutchison ahead of U.S. Rep. Joe L. Barton, who has focused his campaign almost entirely on conservatives angered by the issues of abortion rights and gays in the military.
