Scandal Fans Voter Anger to Fever Pitch : Ethics: House overdraft issue crystallizes public’s negative feelings about how government is working--from the deficit to unemployment.

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. —  Rep. E. Thomas Coleman (R-Mo.) could hardly contain himself as the latest town meeting in his district got under way. “I thought you’d be happy to know that I didn’t bounce any checks,” he declared before anyone had a chance to ask. “I didn’t even have an account.”

No matter. Voters here are so upset that some are ready to roast him even if he was not one of the 300-plus lawmakers who ran up overdrafts on their House bank accounts. If Coleman was not involved himself, someone always asked, why didn’t he blow the whistle on those who were?

Coleman’s experience is not unique. All over the country, lawmakers who wrote overdrafts and those who did not are finding that the “check-bouncing” scandal has crystallized voter anger like nothing else in recent memory.

“I’m 60 years old and I’ve been in the newspaper business all my life and I can’t remember a time when people have been so mad,” said George Lockwood, executive editor of the St. Joseph News-Press, the major newspaper in Coleman’s northwest Missouri district.

Roger Davidson, a Washington-based congressional scholar, said that the House bank scandal has become “a symbol for a whole bundle of negative feelings about how government is working these days,” from the continuing budget deficit to the high unemployment rate.

“People feel intensely about bounced checks,” Davidson said. “It cuts at the very heart of middle-class feelings.”

The House bank scandal has contributed mightily to the heaviest number of departures from Congress since the late 1970s.

Even before the full list of House members was made public Thursday, about a dozen lawmakers either had lost in primaries or had announced that they would retire for reasons related to the House bank scandal.

In all, at least 54 House members will not be returning next January, and analysts said that, if present trends continue, the list could grow substantially and become the biggest turnover in congressional seats since just after World War II.

The outlook in the Senate--which has been untouched by the scandals that plague the House--is almost as dramatic. Seven senators already have announced their retirements, and one--Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Ill.)--was defeated in a primary race. According to some predictions, as many as 19 senators could be replaced this year.

Thomas Mann, a Brookings Institution congressional analyst, conceded that the turnover could have some positive consequences. “New blood is healthy for an organization,” he noted, “and we haven’t had much turnover in the past several elections.”

But Mann also said he worries that “the bad side is . . . they’re coming in without a clue from the voters as to what to do,” and, “as (Rep.) Vin Weber (R-Minn.) put it, the new members will have ‘a mandate not to use the House bank or the House gym.’ ”

“It isn’t obvious how it adds up to anything,” Mann said.

Efforts to turn the House bank scandal into a partisan issue also have backfired as Republicans, who earlier viewed it as a golden opportunity to turn voters against Democrats, have found casualties among their own party.

The latest, Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), withdrew from a tough primary race Tuesday after wrestling with reports that he had written 300 bad checks totaling $104,000.

A few days before, Weber also decided not to run again. Weber, who had about 125 overdrafts in the now-defunct House bank, is secretary of the House Republican Conference and was regarded as one of the party’s brightest hopes.

The unexpected political furor over the bank scandal also has discouraged some lawmakers from continuing in politics at all. Many view the issue as overblown and irrelevant and believe that they are being pilloried unfairly for something that they did not even know was taking place.

Lowery, for example, expressed such thoughts at his press conference Tuesday, complaining that the check-overdraft label “describes the entire San Diego delegation.” He added: “I am simply not willing to put my family through this anymore.”

There’s little doubt that constituent anger over the check scandal is deep--and unusually intense. In dozens of interviews here during the last several days, voters almost unfailingly raised the issue without being asked.

“If they can’t manage their own checkbooks, how can they manage the federal budget?” asked Kathy Huffer, a 42-year-old St. Joseph housewife, in a refrain heard frequently in conversations with voters.

Coleman’s campaign to distance himself from the bank scandal has been almost as frenetic as if he had been deeply embroiled in it.

Earlier this month, the Missouri lawmaker sent postcards to 255,000 constituents announcing that “I have never had an account at the House bank, I have never bounced a check in my life.” He was among the first to call for full disclosure of all those who had written overdrafts.

“Those in Congress who did bounce checks should be dealt with under the full force of the law,” the card declared.

The congressman’s aides said that the postcards were necessary to help Coleman set himself apart from Rep. Ronald D . Coleman--no relation--a Democrat from El Paso, Tex., who was cited for having racked up 673 overdrafts. The mailing was paid for by taxpayers, under the congressional franking privilege.

Another lawmaker who had no overdrafts, Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), also is busy touting his innocence.

Levine, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the seat of retiring Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), began running statewide television ads on March 31 telling voters: “My account’s at a local bank, like yours.”

How the scandal finally shakes out remains to be seen but scholars are apprehensive. Brookings’ Mann worries that the tension over the check scandal “will only increase the frustration about Washington, both among insiders and the public outside.

“I just think they’ll be so frightened, it’ll be ‘pander city,’ “he said.

Times staff writer Alan Miller contributed to this story.