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Politics

Democrats on offense in final days

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 4, 2006

WASHINGTON - Democrats opened two fronts Friday in the battle for control of Congress, unleashing a costly televised attack against a Colorado Republican and airing radio ads on Christian stations favored by Republican listeners.

Republicans looked to President Bush and their proven get-out-the-vote operation to minimize their losses in Tuesday's elections, held at a time of widespread unease with the status quo.

"It was meant to be a little on the stealth side," Democratic chairman Howard Dean said of the radio ads, part of an attempt to appeal to conservative voters who have long backed Republicans.

The television commercial, by the party's House campaign committee, was aimed at Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, a second-term Colorado lawmaker in an unexpectedly tight race for re-election. "She works overtime for special interests," says the ad, which drew a swift rebuttal from her campaign.

"The special interests she works overtime for are her constituents - farmers, ranchers, small business owners," said spokesman Guy Short.

The last-minute advertising underscored the extent to which the Democrats have been on the offense and the Republicans on defense in the runup to the election. As many as 60 seats in the House and a half-dozen or more in the Senate remained competitive - almost all under GOP control - as Democrats sought to ride a wave of discontent with the war on Iraq to victory.

Bush on the move

Bush campaigned Friday to try to prevent it. In rural Missouri to help Sen. Jim Talent, Bush invoked God's name in defending his administration's policy in Iraq. "I believe freedom is universal. I believe there's an almighty, and a great gift of the almighty to each man and woman and child on the face of the Earth is a desire to be free," he said, recalling that thousands of Iraqis voted in free elections.

Bush's schedule for the last stretch going into the election is taking him to small communities where a presidential visit can have a big impression.

A presidential visit to a place like Philadelphia, where Republican candidates for governor, the Senate and the House are in danger of losing, might get relatively short clips in the city's news, White House advisers pointed out. But a visit to western Nebraska, where he plans to stop Sunday to help an endangered Republican congressional candidate, is likely to result in three days of wall-to-wall coverage.

Bush made two stops in Missouri Friday, not to St. Louis or Kansas City but to Springfield and Joplin. A stop earlier in the day in Billings, Mont., drew thousands for Sen. Conrad Burns, one of the most endangered Republican incumbents.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview taped for airing Sunday on ABC, conceded that the war may not be popular with the public. Still, he said, "it doesn't matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. ... We're not running for office. We're doing what we think is right."

Counting absentees

The GOP said their get-out-the-vote operation was producing results. Rebutting Democratic claims in Arizona, Republican officials said GOP voters had requested nearly half of the absentee ballots distributed in the state, while making up slightly less than 40 percent of the voting population. They said Democrats, representing about 36 percent of the voting population, accounted for about 33 percent of the absentee ballots.

"This is the stretch run," said Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, his bid for a third term long since written off by GOP strategists.

Santorum's Pennsylvania loomed as a particular challenge for Republicans. Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell appeared to be cruising to re-election, Senate challenger Bob Casey has led in the polls for weeks, and the GOP signaled several days ago that 10-term Rep. Curt Weldon would likely lose his seat in the fallout from a federal corruption investigation in which he has not been accused of wrongdoing.

It wasn't only personal and political scandal that was hampering Republicans. Polls showed Bush's popularity was below 40 percent, and the war, which has cost the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, was a clear loser with the voting public.

"What this race is about is changing the course," said Democratic Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., a young congressman hoping to make history as the first Southern black elected to the Senate in more than a century.

Republicans said they were optimistic that former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker would prevail over Ford in one of the three races likely to determine Senate control. The party plowed $400,000 more into last-minute TV ads.

[Last modified November 4, 2006, 01:19:06]