Democrats Push Fight
for House in the Northeast
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George Ruhe for The New York Times, left; Steven Lee
Miller for The New York Times, right
Nancy L.
Johnson, center, a 12-term Republican congresswoman in Connecticut,
discussed issues recently with two constituents, Leo McIlrath and
Alice Neville. Ms. Johnson faces a challenge from Christopher S.
Murphy, right, a state senator, as Democrats try to make inroads
nationwide |
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ,
NYTimes on the Web, May 3, 2006
WATERBURY, Conn. — In the
battle for control of the House of Representatives, Democrats are concentrating
their efforts on defeating a particularly resilient set of opponents, Northeast
Republicans who have held their seats despite the region's tendency to vote
Democratic.
Independent analysts say there are at least a dozen competitive races in New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Connecticut, many involving
districts where voters have supported Democrats for president in recent
elections while electing Republicans to Congress.
Now, with many polls showing President Bush's support at its lowest level yet,
Democrats in those districts are running heavily against the president, hoping
to tie Republican incumbents to his agenda. The Democrats need to pick up
15 seats to take control of the House, where Republicans have had a majority
since 1994. Party strategists believe that the Northeast, with the largest
number of potentially competitive battles, could provide Democrats with the bulk
of those seats.
The Democrats' strategy is on prominent display here in Connecticut's Fifth
Congressional District, where the Democratic challenger, Christopher S. Murphy,
32, a state senator, has accused the 12-term Republican incumbent,
Representative Nancy L. Johnson, of playing a leading role in helping advance
the agenda of President Bush and conservative House leaders on issues including
the war in Iraq and health care.
Ms. Johnson, 71, has made a point of distancing herself from the president, a
strategy that appears to have the blessing of Republican leaders seeking to
retain the party's seats in the Northeast.
"As one who has been a Republican in a heavily Democratic state, I have always
been independent," Ms. Johnson explained after at a recent appearance at the
Town Hall in neighboring Brookfield. "I try to keep in touch with my
constituents at a very practical level so that I can drive very practical
solutions."
The political climate in the Northeast is such that even Representative Thomas
M. Reynolds, an influential western New York congressman who is the chairman of
the National Republican Congressional Committee, has to keep an eye on his own
seat. Mr. Reynolds faces a potentially strong challenge from Jack Davis, a
wealthy businessman who captured 44 percent of the vote against him two years
ago and has vowed to spend at least $1 million on his campaign this time.
Still, independent analysts and politicians in both parties say that Republicans
have advantages in raising money, along with the high visibility that comes with
incumbency.
For instance, Ms. Johnson enjoys a huge monetary advantage over Mr. Murphy.
So the challenger has been aggressively trying to tar the incumbent by linking
her to the president.
"In the past, the success of Northeast Republicans has been due to their ability
to distance themselves from the national Republican agenda," Mr. Murphy said in
a recent interview. "But Johnson has been in step with the national
Republican agenda. And her claims that she is different have not been
holding water."
The Northeast has long had a relatively large number of swing districts where
Republicans are often viewed as an endangered group. Many Republicans in
the region have survived by embracing a more moderate brand of politics,
disagreeing with the Southern Conservatives who dominate their national party on
issues like abortion rights, gay rights, gun control and labor. But this
year could be tougher for even Republican centrists in the Northeast, analysts
say, because of the problems that have been plaguing the president and his party
since last year.
Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, argued that the troubles that have afflicted
President Bush and his party could spell trouble for Congressional Republicans
in these swing districts in the Northeast.
"The big question," Mr. Emanuel said, "is whether the Congressional map in '06
will align itself with presidential performance" in these districts.
The dozen Congressional Republicans that Democrats are focusing on include eight
representatives from districts where President Bush lost in the presidential
election of 2004. Perhaps more problematic for these Republicans is the
fact that voters in their states seem to have greater misgivings about the
direction of the nation under Mr. Bush than voters elsewhere.
In a CBS News Poll conducted in April, for example, 43 percent of adults
nationwide said the United States made the right decision in going to war in
Iraq. But only about a third of voters in Connecticut, New Jersey, New
York and Pennsylvania held that view, according to a similar poll conducted by
the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
But even as Democrats cast these races as referendums on the nation's direction,
Republicans argue that 2006 will be a typical midterm election with voters
responding to the candidates themselves and to local issues rather than national
ones.
Here in Connecticut's Fifth District, Representative Johnson is exactly the kind
of Republican whom Democrats must unseat to have any serious shot of taking
control of the House. Her district, which stretches west from the wealthy
suburbs of Hartford to the rural towns of Litchfield County on the border with
New York, backed Senator John Kerry for president two years ago.
Democrats have recruited Mr. Murphy, who has raised roughly $750,000. His
feisty campaign has prompted the Johnson camp to respond with an early string of
television advertisements attacking him.
Yet Ms. Johnson's huge cash advantage — she has nearly $2.5 million —
underscores the hurdles confronting Democrats.
Republican leaders, bent on holding a majority, are getting behind their
incumbents aggressively even as they let them put some distance between
themselves and the national party, political analysts monitoring these races
say.
The fight for the Fifth District is just one of the competitive House races in
Connecticut, where two other Republican incumbents — Christopher Shays and Rob
Simmons — face what independent analysts say are fierce challenges.
Even Democrats concede that it is hard to imagine how their party could reduce a
Republican majority without gains in Connecticut and New York, where Democrats
are mounting competitive challenges against two prominent Republican incumbents,
John E. Sweeney in the 20th District in the Albany region and James T. Walsh in
the 25th District in the Syracuse region.
The threat that independent analysts say Mr. Sweeney faces is something of a
surprise, since he represents a district where registered Republicans roughly
outnumber Democrats, 200,000 to 100,000, with about 100,000 independents.
In fact, Mr. Sweeney won re-election with 66 percent of the vote in 2004, while
President Bush won the district with 54 percent of the vote.
But the Democrat seeking to unseat him, Kirsten Gillibrand, a lawyer, is
counting on what she describes as the disenchantment of certain traditional
Sweeney supporters — chiefly independents and moderate Republicans — with the
direction of the nation. In that context, she has aggressively sought to
tie Mr. Sweeney to Republican leaders in Congress and the Bush White House.
"I think John Sweeney is in trouble because he is not independent and he is not
standing up to the administration," Ms. Gillibrand said. "The climate with
voters in the district, whether they are Republicans, Democrats or independents,
is they want a change in leadership."
By most appearances, her strategy has placed Mr. Sweeney on the defensive.
The Sweeney camp maintains that he has always exercised independence in
Washington. "He works with leadership to bring what needs to his district
and he opposes leadership when their policies hurt upstate New York," said
Melissa Carlson, a Sweeney spokeswoman.
Democrats are also going after a first-term congressman, John R. Kuhl Jr. of the
Southern Tier region of New York State, which includes Cattaraugus and Steuben
Counties. Mr. Kuhl is perhaps the most vulnerable of any incumbent, after
barely winning the seat in the 29th District in 2004. And Democrats are
making a play for the Eighth District seat in the Utica area that is being
vacated by Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert, one of the most liberal
Republicans in Congress.
Democrats have pinned their hopes elsewhere in the Northeast, and independent
analysts say they also appear to be in the position to threaten at least five
incumbents in New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The hope of
Democrats is that the Northeast will provide a substantial number of the overall
victories they will need nationally to claim a majority.
The race in Connecticut's Fifth District typifies many of the dynamics shaping
the competitive races elsewhere. Ms. Johnson is a fixture in local
politics who has managed to survive, election after election, despite the fact
that Democrats outnumber Republicans here. But Democrats see her ties to a
Republican majority in Congress as a potential vulnerability.
For instance, Mr. Murphy has tried to exploit Ms. Johnson's role as one of the
chief architects of the new Medicare prescription drug program. Supporters
say that the program will bring the skyrocketing cost of drugs under control for
older Americans. But critics say the program has done more to help
insurance and drug companies than to help older Americans.
One recent morning, Ms. Johnson paid a visit to a center for retirees in
Waterbury, where officials organized a workshop to assist beneficiaries who were
obviously struggling to figure out how to sign up for the new plan before the
deadline in three weeks.
But she did not react defensively. Instead, she suggested that the program
was well on its way to success, noting that 75 percent of people eligible for
its benefits had already enrolled. And she accused Democrats of
undermining its success by discouraging them from enrolling with frightening
claims about it.
"I am proud of it," Ms. Johnson said, referring to her role in helping to create
the program.
As for Mr. Murphy's attacks, she said: "Bring it on. I want people
to know what I have done. I believe what I have done will help people."
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