Bucks County, Pennsylvania
WITH FOUR of its congressional races still close in the final weeks of the midterm campaign, Pennsylvania could end up determining who controls the House of Representatives. Polls and other barometers have analysts watching the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth Districts, held by Republicans Jim Gerlach, Curt Weldon, Mike Fitzpatrick, and Don Sherwood respectively. In the most recent Evans-Novak Political Report, Gerlach's and Weldon's districts joined Sherwood's in the "Leans Dem" column. How much danger are these incumbents really in?

Of these GOP incumbents, the two who are clearly in trouble--Weldon and Sherwood--are in districts that are generally safe for Republicans. Weldon won in 2002 with 66 percent of the vote, and in 2004 with 59 percent, while Sherwood has run unopposed in the last two elections. Yet the most recent polling shows both of them trailing. Their downfall: the "culture of corruption."

Both men's opponents have been able to portray them as the local embodiment of Republican corruption, in a year when the Democratic leadership is making GOP sleaze a national issue. Their predicaments bring to mind that of another Pennsylvania incumbent defeated in a national sweep--Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, the only Democratic incumbent in Pennsylvania to fall to the Gingrich revolution of 1994. A freshman representative, Margolies-Mezvinsky had cast the final vote to pass President Clinton's 1993 budget, whose massive tax increase helped provoke the Republican sweep. Made to personify the tax-and-spend Demo crats, she was handily defeated.

This year, Weldon and Sherwood have given their opponents the rope with which

Weldon and Sherwood seem doomed to be the Margolies-Mezvinskys of this cycle. Fitzpatrick and Gerlach, by contrast, have kept their noses clean. Consummate politicians, both have good images in the media and good rapport with their constituents. Instead of personal problems, they are up against the increasingly Democratic demographics of their districts.

Gerlach is running in a most peculiarly shaped district, with tentacles stretching north and south from its main body. "This is not a district drawn up in heaven," says Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall Keystone Poll. Redrawn in 2002 specifically for Gerlach, the Sixth "has no core, no center," Madonna says, "and it's extraordinarily difficult to represent because of its diversity and complexity." It's also difficult to campaign in. In some neighborhoods you cross a district boundary every few blocks.

That hasn't stopped Gerlach from tireless campaigning. He both touts his local credentials and warns of the dire effects of a Democratic takeover of the House. Touring a packaging plant in Exton, Gerlach was informed that a constituent wanted to know why businesses should get involved in lobbying Congress and endorsing candidates. He chuckled and said, "Tell her to give me a call. I'll tell her what her world would look like with Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House, and with Charles Rangel as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee." The Republicans' commitment to lower taxes, he stressed, would be good for both individuals and small businesses.