BY KATHERINE RIZZO
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- With the $500 billion spending deal hanging in the balance, the White House brandished a last-minute veto threat because of a road-construction dispute at the center of a hotly contested Ohio congressional election campaign.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich swiftly backed down and the measure, which threatened to damage the political chances of a Clinton ally, was removed, according to Republican and Democratic sources, who spoke on the condition they not be identified.
Nevertheless, Republicans hoped to use the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to their advantage in the next 2 1/2 weeks as they try to wrest Ohio's 6th district congressional seat from Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland, a Clinton ally.
The GOP had slipped into the omnibus spending bill a short provision allocating road money the way Mr. Strickland's opponent, Ohio Lt. Gov. Nancy Hollister, has proposed and made a key issue in her campaign.
Last Tuesday, Mr. Strickland made a personal appeal to Mr. Clinton, buttonholing him at an education event in Silver Spring, Md., to get the provision stripped from the bill. The president and Deputy White House Chief of Staff John Podesta "promised me that they would not let this happen," Mr. Strickland said Friday.
As negotiations continued on the spending legislation, the White House team told Mr. Gingrich, R-Ga., that the Ohio language would trigger a veto of the huge spending measure needed to keep the government running. Republicans gave in. The politically perilous language came out.
"They knew we were not going to give up on it," Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said Friday. "I think that Clinton might have vetoed it."
Mr. Strickland is locked in a ferocious re-election battle for a seat that has traded hands by razor-thin margins in each of the last three elections. The district is the poorest in Ohio and people there chronically complain that they can't get money for road construction because of a formula that favors more populous parts of the state.
Two Ohio members of the House Appropriations Committee -- Reps. Ralph Regula and David Hobson -- put language into the spending bill that would have changed the way federal highway money would be doled out in Mr. Strickland's district. Republicans claimed it would have given the district an additional $110 million, a figure Mr. Strickland has disputed. Now, Ms. Hollister is using the White House budget arm-twisting to attack Mr. Strickland.
"It is just inconceivable to me that the president would veto the spending bill for the entire government just to protect his political ally," Ms. Hollister said Friday.
