Voter ire may tip scale in House

The following story was reported and written by Susan Milligan, Rick Klein, and Bryan Bender of the Globe staff.

DELHI, Ohio -- As Democratic House candidate John Cranley works the bingo halls and street festivals of Cincinnati, he hands out blue plastic cups that he hopes will help knock Representative Steve Chabot out of office -- and House Republicans out of the majority.

"Had enough?" the cups said.

To the distress of a Republican Party that has held control of the House for the past dozen years, many voters across the country seem to be nodding in angry agreement with Cranley's assertion, according to interviews with voters in four states and new polls showing a double-digit preference for Democratic control of the House.

But no single issue is motivating voters' disaffection with the GOP -- and some issues, such as the Iraq war, are hurting the Republicans differently in various parts of the country.

Those in the Northeast want a quick withdrawal from Iraq, while more conservative, traditionally pro military districts in Pennsylvania are hopeful that Democrats will manage the war more competently than Republicans.

Voters from New York to California are questioning their representatives' commitment to ethics, and those in post industrial pockets of the Midwest are nervous about their economic security.

Voters' anger over such a disparate collection of issues is threatening the political lives of even seasoned Republicans, and Democratic challengers with little or no experience are registering strong support in polls.

"This election is about change versus the status quo," said Cranley, a 32-year-old Cincinnati city councilor, at a debate in Delhi on Wednesday night. "It is a do-nothing Congress at best. It's a corrupt Congress at worst."

As Democrats have risen in polls over the past three weeks, a growing number of seats -- perhaps as many as 58 -- are now considered in play by the national parties and independent analysts. Democrats need to pick up 15 Republican-held seats to retake the majority.

An unusual bipartisan poll released last week showed that 51 percent of voters in 50 of the most competitive districts want the Democrats running the House, compared with 40 percent who want Republicans in charge. When voters were asked about their own districts, Democrats were favored 50 percent to 43 percent, according to the poll conducted by Democrat Stan Greenberg and Republican Glen Bolger .

John Zogby , an independent pollster, said his data shows the Democrats poised to pick up 25 to 30 seats, even though the party has not offered a detailed agenda; rather, a confluence of events has turned voters against Republicans.

"If the Democrats win, it will be a Forrest Gump victory, with things swirling around them over which they had very little control," Zogby said.

GOP candidates still have more than two weeks to turn things around, and a major event, such as a terrorist attack, or a massive infusion of cash from Republican donors, could help the GOP eke out critical victories.

And it remains to be seen whether voters will opt for untested Democrats like Cranley over Republicans like Chabot, a six-term incumbent who rang up 60 percent of the vote in 2004.

But the fact that Chabot's district is considered in play points to the extent of voter anger against incumbents.

"I look at Congress now, and I wonder if they have lost touch with your average person," said Terri Rolfes , an administrative assistant at a Cincinnati-area Christian publishing company who is considering switching her vote to Democratic. "Maybe it's time for a change."

Gasport, N.Y., is friendly territory for a moderate, antiabortion Republican like Representative Thomas Reynolds, who has held the Buffalo-area seat for a decade. Some of the district's rural churches plant rows of tiny crosses in their yards to mark abortions, while affluent suburbanites applaud Reynolds's commitment to lower taxes.

But the news last month that Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, had written sexually explicit e-mails to teenage House pages, put the spotlight on GOP leaders like Reynolds, the chairman of the committee charged with getting other Republicans elected to Congress.

Reynolds was contending with local frustration over the war and the economy. But the revelation that Reynolds had known of Foley's overly friendly e-mails to one page when he encouraged the Florida representative to seek reelection earlier this year has turned more voters against him.

"I certainly won't be voting for him," said Elizabeth Shabala, a 40-year-old speech pathologist, as she visited a local pumpkin farm. "This isn't an issue of Republicans versus Democrats. It's about protection of children."

Democratic challengers have used the Foley scandal to portray Republicans as more concerned with their political futures than the safety of teenagers. Democratic contenders in Indiana, New York, Minnesota, and New Mexico have used the Foley scandal in ads, while numerous others have done so in debates.

Democrats had sought to make the "culture of corruption" a major campaign theme last year, after several GOP lawmakers were linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff; former Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican of California, was sent to prison for taking bribes; and former House majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas stepped down amid charges he misused campaign funds.

But the corruption theme didn't resonate until the Foley scandal, which undermined the "family values" the GOP has been trumpeting for years. While Republicans have sought to draw attention to Democratic corruption as well, the issue has hit Republicans harder.

At a minimum, formerly safe Republican seats held by Foley, who resigned after the scandal broke, Cunningham, DeLay, and Bob Ney of Ohio, who resigned after admitting to accepting bribes from Abramoff's clients, are now considered potential Democratic pickups.

In addition, senior Republicans such as Reynolds and Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio, the GOP's conference chair, are under fire for failing to take action against Foley. And some analysts think the ethics cases have combined to fuel voters' desire to clean house.

"The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts," said Lee Miringoff , director of the independent Marist Institute for Public Opinion. Voters were "already grumpy about the performance of Congress," and the accumulation of scandals could tip the scales in close races, he said.

Mizanur Rahman , perched behind the cash register of Halal Meat and Grocery in Upper Darby, Pa., nearly shouted when asked about his views on the Iraq war.

"We have made more enemies," he bellowed last Sunday, causing the butchers in the back of the store to look up from their carving table. "When our soldier kills their kid they are going to kill us. How many more enemies are we going to make?"

Most of Pennsylvania is not antiwar country, but many voters -- including Rahman -- have lost patience with the way the Iraq war is being run in Washington. Many who supported the invasion now say the war has been mishandled, and some are gravitating toward Democrats who are calling for new leadership -- but not an immediate pullout.

"More and more people -- I think a majority -- believe there must be a deliberate way out," said Joe Sestak , a former Navy admiral who is the Democratic nominee against 10-term incumbent Representative Curt Weldon . "They don't want to leave a mess, but they have come to the conclusion there is no military solution to this."

Sestak's message seems to be resonating. In a race that analysts earlier this year thought was safe for the GOP, Sestak has recently been running even with Weldon in most polls. Sestak's chances may have improved this week when the FBI raided the home of Weldon's daughter as part of an investigation into whether the representative assisted her public-relations firm.

Weldon denied any wrongdoing, and voters still seem more focused on the war than on last Monday's FBI raid.

Even in the so-called "T" of solidly Republican central and northern Pennsylvania, outside the urban orbits of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, concern about the war is helping Democrats.

The voter frustration has given a boost to Chris Carney, a college professor and intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve who hopes to be the first Democrat since 1960 to win the state's northeastern 10th district.

Carney is ahead of four-term Republican incumbent Representative Don Sherwood by double digits in some polls, and analysts attribute much of his gains to the unpopularity of the war in a district heavy with military families. At least 21 soldiers from the district have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sherwood is also dogged by alleged improprieties: A woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair told authorities that he tried to strangle her. He acknowledged the affair but denied the abuse. A recent poll showed that the top issue for voters is Iraq, not Sherwood's personal conduct, said analyst Jonathan Williamson of Lycoming College in Williamsport.

"Among those [citing Iraq], most broke for Carney," Williamson said.

Carney has not called for a pullout; rather, he's pledged to stand up for the soldiers and help bring the war to an honorable end.

"I haven't called for a timeline -- I haven't pulled that trigger yet," Carney said in an interview last week in Clarks Summit, north of Scranton. "But I am starting to think seriously about it."

There is little such hesitation in the Northeast, where President Bush is deeply unpopular and some voters seem willing to toss out even highly respected moderate Republicans just because of their party affiliation.

Democrats ruefully note there is some precedent for a cleansing of the moderates: In 1994, when the Republicans took over the House, Southern voters ousted numerous long-serving moderate Democrats largely because of their affiliation with President Clinton.

"The war has pushed a lot of people over to thinking there ought to be a change in Washington," said Howard Reiter, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Connecticut, referring to the frustration with Republican moderates. "For the past 40 or 50 years, there's been a trend away from the Republican Party in New England and the greater Northeast. It's been a long time brewing."

As a result, moderate Republican House members across the region are seeking to emphasize their ties to their districts, while distancing themselves from Bush.

In Connecticut, where anti war fervor helped political neophyte Ned Lamont defeat incumbent Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in the August Democratic primary, three Republicans are locked in down-to-the-wire House races.

Perhaps the most vulnerable is Representative Christopher Shays, a centrist from Connecticut's New York suburbs who has made 14 trips to Iraq to assess the progress of a war he enthusiastically supported. But he recently called for a timeline for troop withdrawal -- opening him up to charges of election-year pandering.

Democrat Diane Farrell, who came close to defeating Shays two years ago and is leading in some polls this year, is blasting Shays for supporting the war -- and mocking him for being an ineffectual opposition voice.

"When Chris Shays has agreed with the president, have the results been good?" Farrell said during a recent debate. "When he's disagreed with the Republican leadership, has it made any difference?"

Similar dynamics are playing out in New Hampshire, where Democrats are hoping to break into the all-Republican congressional delegation in the only state that flipped from President Bush in 2000 to his election rival, Senator John F. Kerry, in 2004.

In one district, antiwar activist Carol Shea-Porter beat the Democratic establishment's favored candidate to win the right to face Representative Jeb Bradley. And in another district, Democrat Paul Hodes is casting Representative Charles Bass's backing of the war as emblematic of his support for the Bush administration's "failed ideas."

Both Shea-Porter and Hodes trail in most polls, but Democratic strategists believe they are in striking distance.

"The larger context really is that Congress isn't working for us," Hodes said in an interview. "The administration and guys like Bass are in a state of denial."

The economy should be a selling point for Republicans, who have presided over growth in the gross domestic product, relatively low unemployment, and steady job creation. But in parts of the Midwest, voters who have lost jobs to overseas competitors don't want to hear about it.

In the traditional GOP strongholds of Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, the party is in danger of losing critical congressional seats because voters are uneasy about their personal finances. In Ohio, which has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs in the past five years, two-thirds of residents believe the state's economy is worsening, according to a poll by the University of Cincinnati.

"[Representative Steve] Chabot continues to take money from oil companies, and I can't afford the price of gas," said Lee Valerio, a single mother from the Cincinnati suburb of Anderson. "We've lost jobs in Cincinnati, and people are always moving out of the city. We need a fresh face."

While Americans commonly list jobs and the economy as major concerns, the Republican Congress's solid performance on job growth and economic expansion over the past two years has not helped them in most places. Even the recent drop in gas prices has been met with skepticism: 42 percent of voters in a September Gallup poll said they thought gas prices were being manipulated by the Bush administration to influence the elections.

Brad Ellsworth, a Democratic candidate in Indiana, slammed GOP incumbent John Hostettler in a television ad for failing to get "tough" on gas "price-gouging," and bemoaned the high cost for parents driving children to soccer practice.

In Indiana and Iowa, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has run radio ads on the failure of the GOP-run House to raise the minimum wage. In a parody of a game show, an announcer says, "Let's play who deserves a pay raise!" The ad compares a hotel clerk who earns $5.15 an hour to Republican representatives who blocked minimum-wage increases, but voted a pay increase for themselves.

The Bush administration and some members of Congress frequently tout the good performance of the overall economy, but that's not likely to make a difference in critical districts, analysts say.

"It doesn't even make sense to talk about the national economy right now," said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. "The way the economy is playing out is very much local."

And that, like the war and corruption, is hurting the GOP.