ASHEVILLE, N.C., Oct. 28 — In their push to win back control of the House, Democrats have turned to conservative and moderate candidates who fit the profiles of their districts more closely than the profile of the national party.
One such candidate, Heath Shuler, was courted by Republicans to run for office in 2001. Mr. Shuler, 34, is a retired National Football League quarterback who is running in the 11th Congressional District in North Carolina. He is an evangelical Christian and holds fast to many conservative social views, like opposition to abortion rights.
“My guess is that if Democrats are in the majority, it’s going to be because of these New Democrat, Blue Dog candidates out there winning in these competitive swing districts,” Representative Ron Kind of Wisconsin, co-chairman of a caucus of centrist House Democrats, said in an interview.
But if candidates like Mr. Shuler do help the Democrats gain majority control of Congress, it could come at a political price, which may include tensions in the party between its new centrists and its more liberal political base.
While Democratic leaders have gone to great lengths to promote the views of these candidates, some, like Mr. Shuler, have views on issues like gun control and abortion that are far out of step with the prevailing views of the Democrats who control the party. On some issues, they may even be expected to side with Republicans and the Bush White House.
Continue reading the main storyDemocratic officials said they did not set out with the intention of finding moderates to run. Instead, as they searched for candidates with the greatest possibility of winning against Republicans, they said, they wound up with a number who reflected more moderate views.
That was especially true in suburban areas and some rural districts, said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “As a group, they are moderate in temperament and reformers in spirit,” Mr. Emanuel said.
In Indiana, for example, Brad Ellsworth, a Democrat running to unseat Representative John Hostettler, brags about the “A” rating he has received from the National Rifle Association. In Kentucky, Mike Weaver, a Democrat who opposes abortion rights, is running against Representative Ron Lewis, a Republican. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat running for an open House seat in Arizona, is presenting herself as a fiscal conservative, saying she would oppose Congressional pay increases until the federal budget is balanced.
If this crop of moderate and conservative Democrats arrived on Capitol Hill as members of a Democratic majority, they would not have much power individually to change the face of Congress — an argument that has been used against Mr. Shuler by the incumbent, Representative Charles H. Taylor, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior.
Instead, party veterans would remain in chairmanships and House leadership posts; several officials said they did not expect a moderate revolution to erupt or to threaten the position of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California as the Democratic leader in the House.
“But will they have an impact? Absolutely,” Mr. Emanuel said. “They’re going to have an impact on the Congress and the caucus.” A prime example is Mr. Shuler, who addresses environmental conservation from the viewpoint of an avid hunter and speaks of health care for the poor as a moral responsibility.
Collectively, the group could tilt the balance of power within the party, which has been struggling to define itself in recent elections. The candidates cover the spectrum on political issues; some are fiscally conservative and moderate or liberal on social issues, some are the reverse. They could influence negotiations with Republicans on a variety of issues, including Social Security and stem cell research.
There are two main groups of moderate Democrats in the House: the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of socially conservative and moderate members formed in 1994; and the New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of centrists formed in 1997. While there are differences between the two — the Blue Dogs tend to be more rural and Southern, with occasional alliances with Republicans, while the New Democrats are more suburban and wealthy and place a premium on party loyalty — there are members who belong to both. Both, of course, have a stake in helping the centrist candidates succeed.
Representative Ellen O. Tauscher of California, a co-chairwoman of the 47-member New Democrat Coalition, said that 27 of the top 40 contested House seats were being pursued by Democrats who have pledged to become members of the group, which says its chief issues are national security and fiscal responsibility.
“I think there’s tremendous agreement and awareness that getting the majority and running over the left cliff is what our Republican opponents would dearly love,” Ms. Tauscher said, adding that this was something “we’ve got to fight.”
The centrist movement was embodied by former President Bill Clinton, who rose to prominence through the Democratic Leadership Council, which embraced a so-called third way of politics and eschewed what it saw as outdated liberalism.
Yet since Mr. Clinton left office, Democrats have seemed to drift back in the direction of their liberal identity, nominating two presidential contenders who were seen as less committed to the moderate cause.
“The Democrats as a whole have begun to understand and recognize, as I did, that we have the extreme left and the extreme right, and 80 percent of America is in the middle,” Mr. Shuler said on a campaign stop last week at the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. “People need to start working together.”
Mr. Shuler grew up in a Democratic family, the son of a mailman in Bryson City, N.C. He has set out to bring Democrats who have voted Republican, like Brenda Davis, back into the fold.
From behind the counter at the Spud & Deb’s hunting and pet supply store in Enka, N.C., Ms. Davis, 41, said she voted Republican in the last election because of her religious beliefs, but this time is supporting Mr. Shuler.
“Considering my son is a marine and he’s done two tours in Iraq,” Ms. Davis said, “I’m with the Democrats.”
In 2001, Republicans tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mr. Shuler, who was then living in Knoxville, Tenn., to run for Congress even though he had rarely shown interest enough in politics to vote.
But Democrats found Mr. Shuler an equally appealing candidate, for some of the same reasons. After intense recruiting, he agreed to run this year as a Democrat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, where he was a high school football star. Despite his lack of political experience, polls indicate that he has pushed the Republican incumbent, Mr. Taylor, into a dead heat.
In this corner of the state, where the rivers churn with whitewater and the mountainsides brighten into rusty glory each autumn, second homes for the wealthy have driven up the cost of living even as manufacturing jobs have become scarce, and the social spending cuts that people associated with the Republican Party are no more palatable than the social liberalism of the Democrats.
Mr. Taylor, a wealthy tree farmer and banker, took office in 1991 and has held it since, and he has talked up his ability to bring federal money to the district.
Asked if he could envision a Democratic Party with, say, an anti-abortion platform, Mr. Shuler did not hesitate. “I’m pro-life and I’m part of the Democratic Party, so I hope it’s part of the platform,” he said. “Someone needs to lead.”
In this election cycle, the Democrats’ desire for a victory in Congress has overridden concerns that candidates like Mr. Shuler are too far right for the party base. But there are questions about what will happen down the line.
“I don’t think people like Shuler will be the core of the Democratic Party,” said Mark Bloom, a writer who is a volunteer for MoveOn.org, the liberal advocacy group, at its storefront office in downtown Asheville. “If people like Shuler turn out to not be progressive enough for my tastes, I’ll work to replace him.”
In the view of Don Yelton, a Jupiter, N.C., resident, a decisive nationwide realignment is playing out in conservative districts like this one. Although the majority of registered voters are Democrats, President Bush won here by a comfortable margin.
Mr. Yelton, 59 and a lifelong Democrat, said he recently changed parties, in part because he believed that the Democrats had suppressed anti-abortion viewpoints. He is running as a Republican for clerk of court in Buncombe County.
“There’s going to be a moderate party for Joe Blow, and whether that party is the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, that’s the battle we’re seeing,” Mr. Yelton said. “I expect to see Hillary Clinton quoting Scripture before it’s over with.”
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