House Republicans see last best hope in Kanjorski seat

WASHINGTON -House Republicans seem to have found one bright spot in an election cycle even they concede is shaping up to be grim: the battle for the seat of U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Nanticoke), the northeastern Pennsylvania Democrat who is in a life-or-death struggle to win a 13th term in Congress.

"According to our polling, we're still up outside the margin of error and I don't think money can save him at this point," former National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) said today.

At a National Press Club luncheon also featuring sitting Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Davis conceded that House Republicans faced long odds, and went so far as to predict that the party's losses on Election Day would be in the double-digits. But he kept returning to Kanjorski.

Asked in a question-and-answer session to name the most endangered Republican members, Davis demurred.

"I can tell you in their party who I think it is," Davis said. "Kanjorski is the most endangered."

"I'll just say, since Mr. Kanjorski's name has been raised a couple of times in the forum...he understands he's got a very tough race," responded Van Hollen. The Maryland congressman went on to point out that Kanjorski's Republican opponent, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, "has problems of his own."

Kanjorski notwithstanding, Van Hollen was quick to argue that Democrats had managed to limit their list of endangered incumbents, a fete that effectively allowed the DCCC to stay on offense this cycle. He said House Democrats now counted 12 vulnerable members, down from 33 at the start of the cycle.

Van Hollen would not predict how many seats Democrats would pick up nationally, he said, because too many races were tossups and too many still volatile.

Republicans have pounced on a series of missteps on the part of Kanjorski, including his $10 million earmarking in federal funds for a company controlled by his relatives and a statement he made that prior to the midterm elections Democrats oversold voters on their ability to end the war in Iraq. Republicans say that Barletta, who failed in a 2002 bid to oust Kanjorski, is in a position to win the 11th Congressional District seat.

Public polling has largely favored Barletta, with a September survey conducted by Franklin & Marshall University showing the Republican leading Kanjorski 44 percent to 35 percent.

After the luncheon event, Davis said Democrats had spent about $2.5 million on Kanjorski's behalf but had so far failed to improve his standing in the race, a sign the veteran incumbent was endangered.

But if Davis was focused on Kanjorski, it was for a reason: the former NRCC chair had little other positive news to share.

Chief among the party's problems, he said, was that Democrats were poised to outspend the GOP on the congressional, senatorial, and presidential levels. The NRCC currently trails the DCCC in cash on hand by an historic four-to-one margin.

"I don't think we've ever been as out-resourced as we have been this year," he said.

The NRCC, which has been noticeably quiet on the advertising front this cycle, would be going up on the air heavily for sitting incumbents in conservative districts in the weeks prior to Election Day, Davis said. But he conceded that in some races where Democrats had already spent heavily, "the mold had hardened."

The NRCC, despite its publicly optimistic outlook, has yet to spend through its Independent Expenditure arm in Pennsylvania's 11th Congressional District race. But, Davis said, "I don't know that they'll have to."

The luncheon came a day after Stu Rothenberg, widely seen as one of the most respected nonpartisan political analysts, wrote of the potential for a "blood bath" for Congressional Republicans in November.

Alluding to the grim political environment in his introductory remarks, Davis joked darkly of an elderly woman who missed her husband's funeral to attend her beloved Washington Redskins' football game.

"Why am I talking about funerals, right?" Davis asked to laughter.