Akron, New York
It's Cruise Night on Main Street in Akron, population 3,085. Attendees at the vintage auto show are sizing-up gleaming Oldsmobiles and Fords and swatting bugs. Chris Lee is out, too. A Republican first-timer looking to succeed retiring Representative Tom Reynolds, Lee hops among clusters of middle-aged and elderly folks in folding chairs. He talks jobs and gas prices and touts his record as a manufacturing executive. That's executive, as in, I'm a businessman, not a politician. "Just don't be a politician," requests one blue-haired lady between swats. Check.
Lee campaigns for a little over an hour in this hamlet, and not once do I hear the word "Republican." This has been a Republican district, and not so long ago Tom Reynolds was one of Congress's most powerful Republicans, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. But he was battered two years ago by the Mark Foley scandal and nearly unseated. In March, he made a surprise announcement that he was retiring. Reynolds has endorsed Lee, but the candidate, despite absorbing parts of the incumbent's campaign staff and enjoying strong party backing, makes it quite clear that he intends to be different.
"Everybody has a certain shelf life," Lee tells me over lunch as I probe him on the state of Republicanism. The party suffers from a "Bush hangover" and "deserved to be taught a lesson" in 2006. Lee is concerned about climate change, is visibly uncomfortable when asked about abortion--he is "personally pro-life" but considers abortion to be a matter for a man, woman, and physician--and stresses above all his acumen with pocketbook concerns. Jobs, energy, taxes, health care, and education are this campaign's bread and butter.
In a tough year for Republican House prospects, the race for New York's 26th congressional district--representing a swath from the Buffalo suburbs through farmland and Rockwell-esque small towns to Rochester's edge--is notable chiefly for what it isn't, a Democratic wipeout. It's even more notable when you consider the New York state GOP's own particular incapacity. Four of the party's six House seats are up for grabs thanks to the retirements of Reynolds and Jim Walsh, Vito Fossella's out-of-wedlock child, and the struggles of second-term representative Randy Kuhl with his perennial opponent, ex-Republican Eric Massa.
But this race has tilted toward the Republican column in recent weeks. It's not just Lee pitching his own brand of change, but two Democratic candidates have engaged in a primary battle that can be likened to the Hillary-Barack marathon for its length and brutality. By the August 20 pre-primary reporting deadline, the rival Democrats had spent nearly five times as much as Lee had raised, much of it on television and radio attack ads.
On one side is Jack Davis, a colorful, self-made multimillionaire who used to be a Republican. He came within 2 points of unseating Reynolds in 2006 and shows a Hillary-like determination to stay in the game this time. In late July, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of his lawsuit against the FEC striking down the McCain-Feingold "Millionaires' Amendment," which helped the opponents of wealthy, self-funded candidates by relaxing fundraising limits. Davis has pledged to spend as much as $3 million of his own money on his third try at the seat.
On the other side is a 30-year-old Netroots-funded Iraq veteran: Jon Powers. He is the Democratic party's preferred candidate and very much the Obama of this race. Groomed by Washington power brokers impressed with his biography, he has been featured throughout the national media and in a war documentary, blogs for the Huffington Post, and thrills the partisans of Daily Kos. In spite of this, it is not easy to say what he has accomplished since returning from Iraq in 2004 save for assimilating into the New York-Washington political circuit.
Among the healthy drubbings administered during this primary: The Davis campaign and Republicans alike suggested that Powers bilked a charity for Iraqi children he founded when it was revealed that "War Kids Relief" all but collapsed last year with its founder's salary its biggest expense. "The bottom line is that Powers ran War Kids Relief off a cliff," Davis's gleeful spokesman told the Buffalo News. In April, Powers was forced to return thousands of dollars he wrongly charged his own campaign for "renting" space inside his home. Then it was revealed that he had been charged with disorderly conduct in Ohio in 2004 after a confrontation with a police officer.
