G.O.P. Collapse in Indiana Emblematic of Larger Loss

By Adam Nossiter, New York Times, November 12, 2006

EVANSVILLE, Ind., Nov. 10 - As he campaigned for re-election, the Republican who lost his seat in the House of Representatives here on Tuesday threw several incendiary barbs suggesting that the opposition was beyond the mainstream of these placid southern Indiana environs: "Homosexual agenda"; "San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi"; "New York liberal Charlie Rangel"; "Detroit liberal John Conyers."

The attack backfired, and the Republican incumbent, John Hostettler, lost, as did two other incumbent Indiana Republicans in what proved to be a crucial state for Democrats in winning the House.

The mechanics of those defeats offer insights into the larger loss, and point to traps that Republican candidates appeared to have unwittingly entered: In all three cases, to demonstrate being a Washington insider was to court doom, no matter how much the incumbents railed against the ways of the capital.

Nowhere was that dynamic more striking than in Evansville, an old industrial city on the Ohio River, with its stolid manufacturing plants at the edges and its seasoned red-brick neighborhoods downtown. Mr. Hostettler had fashioned a determinedly unconventional image for himself over 12 years, from his contrarian vote against the Iraq war to his claim that abortion and breast cancer were linked.

Mr. Hostettler was a principled "citizen legislator," a "Mr. Smith," his press secretary said, and when it came time to run for re-election in a district that President Bush won by 24 points in 2004, the congressman tried associating his Democrat opponent with the worst of Washington’s taint, at least in conservative eyes.

"Eighth District voters are concerned about the homosexual agenda," Mr. Hostettler was quoted as saying. Ms. Pelosi was certain to "put in motion her radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda," a Hostettler radio advertisement said.

The flaw in that strategy was that Nancy Pelosi was hardly the household name on the banks of the Ohio that she was on the banks of the Potomac. Mr. Hostettler knew who she was, of course, but in Evansville and the little towns stretching up to Indianapolis, that was less of a sure bet, said Brad Ellsworth, the Democrat who beat Mr. Hostettler.

"The question I get the most is, ‘Who is Nancy Pelosi?’ " Mr. Ellsworth said. "People to this day don’t know who Pelosi is."

In any case, he said, attacks on Ms. Pelosi "offended a lot of women in this area."

In the end, Mr. Hostettler ended up tarring only himself by demonstrating his superior knowledge of and close association with Washington. Mr. Ellsworth, by contrast, came across as the ultimate outsider: he appeared to struggle to remember whom he voted for in the 2004 presidential election, or whether he voted at all.

Mr. Ellsworth, 48, the easygoing sheriff of Vanderburgh County, was also nearly as conservative as his Republican opponent. He said he became a Democrat only because Republicans on the County Council voted against paying for bulletproof vests for sheriff’s deputies in the early 1980s.

A similar chain of events unfolded elsewhere in Indiana.

East along the Ohio in the neighboring Ninth District, supporters of Representative Mike Sodrel, the freshman Republican who lost his race for re-election, routinely described him as a nonpolitician inured to Washington’s ways.

"For most of us, we don’t look at Mike as a politician, we look at him as a patriot," said Jan Whittenberg, the outreach director at Graceland Baptist Church in New Albany.

Yet the wealthy but down-home Mr. Sodrel, a self-made trucking magnate, was among the most assiduous of all House candidates in enlisting campaign support from Republican power brokers. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Laura Bush and various cabinet members made repeated visits to Indiana on Mr. Sodrel’s behalf -- "essentially the entire Republican establishment," said Abby Curran, the campaign manager for the Democratic candidate, Baron Hill.

Mr. Sodrel’s campaign came out with the usual Republican talking points, jabbing at Mr. Hill on gay rights, flag-burning and "Hoosier values." A billboard on Interstate 65 in southern Indiana proclaimed Mr. Hill’s support for abortion, though Mr. Sodrel’s campaign said it was paid for by a third-party group.

But as in the other race, Mr. Sodrel found it virtually impossible to outflank his conservative Democrat. Outside Graceland Baptist two days before the election, Stephen Baldwin, a Sodrel supporter, said of his candidate: "He’s a member. He’s no politician."

Yet the message conveyed by the cavalcade of Republican stars through southeastern Indiana was exactly the opposite.

"I think there was a perception out there, Who’s going to be the Washington insider?" Mr. Hill said. "He created an impression that he was going to be beholden to all these people."

In the Second Congressional District, which contains northern industrial precincts, Representative Chris Chocola, a two-term Republican, saw his re-election bid fail under similar tactics. Mr. Bush made the district his first stop in a House race this election season, in February, and candidate and president formed a tight bond from the start.

"Chocola followed the Rovean line early on, to stick as close as possible to Bush," said Peri E. Arnold, a political science professor at Notre Dame, which is in the Second District, in a reference to Mr. Bush’s adviser Karl Rove. "There was no effort to separate himself from Bush, and in this district he paid a significant price for that."

Katie Nee, the campaign manager for the winning Democrat, Joe Donnelly, put it this way: "There was just a general feeling that Washington was not working for the people in this district."

Days after the election, Republican operatives here continued to express bitterness and bewilderment at Tuesday’s outcomes, insisting that the best men -- the experienced ones -- had not won. Yet of Indiana’s three Democratic winners, the candidate with easily the biggest margin, Mr. Ellsworth, had the weakest ties to politics. Both of the other Democrats had run for elected office before (Mr. Hill, in fact, had served two terms in the House before he was defeated in 2004 by Mr. Sodrel).

But Mr. Ellsworth was such a novice that when Steny H. Hoyer, the House minority whip, called to recruit him to run, Mr. Ellsworth said he called Washington back and asked to speak with "Congressman Steny."

Though national Democrats may have nudged Mr. Ellsworth into running, he insisted on a grass-roots, on-the-ground campaign up and down the district. "That’s the only way I knew how to run this thing," he said. "Get out and meet people."

His new constituents took note. Rick Wahl, a technician for Terminix pest control, finishing up a job at the First Avenue Diner here, did not vote for the incumbent and expressed gratitude at his demise.

"We’re the people who do the electing," Mr. Wahl said. "He’s a servant of the people. And he seems to have forgotten who the people are."

Fair Use Statement: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.