Stimulus 'nay' carries risk for some House Republicans

US Representative David G. Reichert talked with Jane Milhans at the Lincoln Day Breakfast last Saturday in Tacoma, Wash. (Jim Bryant/ Associated Press)

TACOMA, Wash. - US Representative David G. Reichert's first mention that he "voted no twice on the stimulus package" earned him a standing ovation that echoed through the Elks Club auditorium. A declaration that "we should be angry" provoked screams of, "We are!"

Not all of his Seattle-area constituents thrum with such ready outrage at the $787 billion collection of new spending and tax cuts President Obama signed into law a week ago. A day earlier, Reichert met a couple forced to close a 25-year old millwork business and lay off 170 workers. Together they went through the stimulus bill to see if it offered any aid. Often these days, Reichert has one staff member uncovering new outrages in the 1,071-page legislation as another pores over it hoping to find help for besieged constituents.

When Obama addresses a joint session of Congress in a televised speech tonight to outline his budget priorities and policy agenda, he will face 176 House Republicans who voted unanimously against his stimulus bill. Fewer than one dozen share Reichert's predicament: He represents a district carried by Obama in November, in this case by 15 percentage points.

He is the type of endangered Republican most sought by Obama's gestures of bipartisan outreach, but also the type whom the new president's successes would be most likely to dislodge from office.

Yesterday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced plans to target him and 11 other House Republicans facing reelection next year with radio ads and phone calls informing voters that they "voted against President Obama's economic recovery plan." Since first winning office in 2004, Reichert has been reelected in tough races because his sensibility - an even-tempered, pragmatic centrist - fits the prosperous Seattle suburbs he represents.

"I wish Democrats would spend a lot of money in the Eighth telling people Dave Reichert voted against the stimulus. But people also want to hear you're also not a 'no' on everything," said Luke Esser, the Washington state Republican chairman. "People would not want to see - in a district like the Eighth - Dave Reichert to be reflexively against everything just because Barack Obama is for it."

Reichert believes voters have grown more skeptical of the stimulus as they have learned more about it. On the day of the vote, as the phones in his Capitol Hill office jangled with constituent calls, Reichert started answering them himself: Not one of the dozen callers asked him to support the bill. (Aides told him the total tally ran 10-to-1 against the bill.) Last week, when he held a "tele-town hall," more than 5,000 people joined the conference call, more than 10 times the usual, and he could not find a stimulus proponent to engage.

"People are beginning to realize the impact of the amount of spending," said Reichert. "This figure is hard for people to understand."

Obama acknowledged the criticism, but told governors at the White House yesterday, "We agree on 90 percent of the stuff, and we're spending all our time on television arguing about 1, 2, 3 percent of the spending."

National polls have shown that voters retain confidence in Obama, even as their doubts have grown about whether the stimulus plan will have its intended effect. An average calculated by Pollster.com shows that just more than 60 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing, nearly identical to the number that disapprove of Congress.

"If that goes forward, it will probably be good for Republicans that Obama is not on the ballot in 2010," Esser said. "Republican and Democrat candidates will be judged on their qualities."

Reichert takes pride in being an ideological outlier. He has happily met with antiwar activists Cindy Sheehan and with MoveOn.org leaders and boasts of voting against the Republican Party line on stem-cell research, oil-drilling in the Alaska wilderness, and intervention in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case.

"People put too much emphasis on all that junk," Reichert said of partisan allegiances. "The people that voted for me were Obama voters. They wanted change and a congressman that was independent."

Like many Republicans, Reichert offers warnings about the ruinous potential of the stimulus plan, saying that it will do little to boost the economy and leave his grandchildren - pointing them out in the breakfast crowd to make his point - with massive debt.

"I think you'll start seeing by late summer" voters souring on the stimulus plan, said Tom Campbell, a Republican state representative who has already begun a campaign to unseat Democrat Adam Smith in the congressional district next to Reichert's.

"I don't think the Obama tide is as awesome and big as it may appear."

But in the short term, Reichert acknowledges that the stimulus bill will deliver tangible good news to his constituents. By April, they are to start seeing the bill's tax cuts reflected in slightly larger paychecks. Within months, there may be job listings for construction projects, perhaps for the high-speed rail corridor - one of 10 nationwide to share in $8 billion in new funding - that runs along Reichert's district. By the end of the year, local companies in this tech-centric area may be reaching for some of the money to improve the digital infrastructure of the healthcare industry.

"I feel a responsibility at this point to make this still work," Reichert said. "It's passed, it's into law. Like a cop, there may be a law I don't like, but it's my duty to enforce it."

Sasha Issenberg can be reached at sissenberg@globe.com.