Republican senator faces trial in Texas: Kay Hutchison faces charges that could spoil her party's prospects, writes Patrick Cockburn

'KAY just became irate and pounded on the desk and she was screaming and shaking her finger,' says Sharon Ammann, a former aide to Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas Senator. 'Then she came over with this kind of notebook and just hit me repeatedly, with every word she spoke, on my left arm.'

Brutality to staff by itself is not enough to bring down a sitting Senator. But in the case of Ms Hutchison, elected as a Republican this June, she is not just accused of hitting and pinching people working for her. She is also alleged to have forced government employees to do political jobs and then tried to destroy the evidence.

A first indictment was dropped on a technicality but a second will lead to Senator Hutchison standing trial next year. The most damaging accusation is that she told a computer operator in the state Treasury to wipe out records that proved she used government officials to work on her campaign for the Senate.

Ms Hutchison, a blonde who looks like Mrs Thatcher and emanates rectitude, has a simple explanation for her troubles. She says: 'I am the victim of a huge Democratic leadership plot.' She sees the Democrats as taking revenge for being trounced in the Senate election, though this defence is weak because most of her accusers are Republicans. Ms Ammann is the daughter of John Connally, the former Texas governor best known for being wounded on the day John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

'She is obviously a weirder woman than we thought,' said one political specialist in Houston. Educated as a lawyer she worked briefly as television reporter before entering Republican politics. In 1978 she married a wealthy Dallas lawyer, a former Texas Republican party chairman, but her political career did not take off until she was elected state treasurer in charge of Texas's dollars 47bn ( pounds 32bn) budget in 1991.

In this office frugality was obviously a virtue. But Ms Hutchison told treasury employees travelling out of town to lodge with her friends rather than stay in a hotel. Before receptions at her office she would negotiate at length with the local cafeteria about the price of sandwiches. She gained a reputation for intense hard work, good organisation and meanness.

She also had political luck. In recent years Texas has slid towards the Republicans. Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic Senator, was popular and well organised, but when he resigned last November to become Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, the Democrats were obviously going to have difficulty holding his seat. They then made life more difficult by choosing as candidate Bob Kreuger, a professor with a history of losing elections.

Ms Hutchison fought an effective campaign that capitalised on President Clinton's unpopularity. She managed to straddle the abortion issue. Mr Kreuger had the bad idea of dressing up as Batman in a television commercial to make himself look less dull. In the election on 5 June she routed the Democrats by a two to one margin taking all but 15 of the state's 245 counties.

Five days later Ronnie Earle, the district attorney for Austin, the capital of Texas, raided Ms Hutchison's old office. 'We received information earlier this week that crucial evidence was being removed from the treasurer's office and was being destroyed,' said Mr Earle, who has prosecuted enough Democrats to make it unlikely he is pursuing a political feud. Ms Hutchison hired Dick DeGuerin, a leading Houston lawyer best known for representing David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians at Waco, to defend her.

A problem for Ms Hutchison is that the best legal tactics may not be in her political interests. Getting the grand jury, which issued the first indictment, dismissed because of a technicality (a jury member had passed a bad cheque) may turn out to be an own goal. The trial will now take place uncomfortably close to next year's elections.

It is trouble the Republicans could well do without. Ms Hutchison's victory had raised hopes that they might take control of the Senate in 1994. But her approval rating is down from 59 per cent to 34 per cent in three months.

There is little doubt that Ms Hutchison did use government employees to staff her campaign but this is not a very shocking crime in Texas. The real danger for her, like Richard Nixon during Watergate, surrounds the cover-up. Did she try to get incriminating records wiped from state computers? And, whatever the outcome of a trial, Republicans wonder if she can survive another six months of negative headlines.

(Photograph omitted)