Maryland's Mr. Right

Rep. Barlett believes in limited federal government, saying that "if you can't find it in Article 1" of the Constitution, "you can't do it." (David Deal)

Bartlett only nods. "Gay marriage," says Glenn Murphy Jr. of Westminster. "I'm finishing Bible college, and I know what's right and wrong . . . The next thing is, John Smith wants to marry his 7-year-old daughter, or he likes the tree out back, or his neighbor's billy goat looks good."

As Bartlett works his way toward the door, "We need more Christian men like him," Murphy says. "It used to be God and country in America. Now it's just country."

This is the 6th District, home to conservative castaways marooned in a liberal state. Vast and isolated, a land of picture-book vistas and clear-cut principles, its foothills and switchbacks hold a lesson for Republicans and Democrats alike. The 6th has drifted over decades from majority Democrat to majority Republican. Today, its 378,000 registered voters are only 38 percent Democratic. But, like their congressman, pure party fealty does not guide them. It's the self-reliance born of humble beginnings that often stay that way, belief in a God who brooks no shades of gray, and resentment of people who do. These habits of life, more precious than politics, are what make the 6th District feel farther from Washington than the hour drive it is. They are what make its Republican congressman say, only weeks before Election Day, "I love our president, but not everything he does."

Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich calls 6th District Republicans "a socially conservative wing of the party."

Ehrlich says he and Bartlett "have a lot of similarities on economic and defense issues. But you'll find differences on social issues."

Dan Rupli, a veteran Democratic activist who heads the John Kerry campaign in the 6th, says the district is populated by "people who feel like nobody out there gives a crap."

Roscoe Bartlett, he says, "is their angry man."

A thin, sprawling slice along Maryland's mountain frontier, the 6th District contains 662,000 people, more than 90 percent of them white -- compared with 64 percent in the state overall -- and 97 percent American-born. Fewer than 5 percent speak a language other than English, compared with 12 percent for the state. One-quarter of people over age 25 have college degrees, compared with 31 percent for the state and more than half in Montgomery County. They work on farms, in factories and in prisons. One quarter of families make less than $35,000 a year, compared with 14 percent for Montgomery County, and just about nobody makes more than $200,000.

In the closing months of his campaign, Bartlett meandered along the campaign trail, meeting the like-minded and hot-headed at open houses and private meetings, veterans' events and county fairs. The 6th begins at the tip of the Appalachian panhandle, with the mined-out mountain slopes and dying industry towns of Garrett and Allegany counties, where one of the district's thousands of war veterans, Paul Cordial, 73, of Cresaptown, waters his lawn and says, "Iraq is a money men's war."

It winds over the mountains into the prison-and-manufacturing economy of Washington County, where Celia Palmer, 50, an electrical contractor in Williamsport, says, "I fought to get a license because they" -- the state -- "didn't think I knew my job." Bartlett, she says, fights "for the little people."

It takes in the exurbs-turned-suburbs of northern Montgomery and Frederick, where Sharon Ramboz, 43, a mom who bought her Christmas presents in the National Rifle Association's gift shop last year, says, "What really kills me is how Kerry's trying to look like a Christian. He doesn't know the Bible. If he did he wouldn't be pro-abortion, he wouldn't be pro-gay rights. Those things aren't biblical."

And the district ends at the Susquehanna River, just beyond the dwindling horse and dairy farms of rural Baltimore, Harford and Carroll counties, where Dan Strickler, 74, a part-time farmer from Westminster, says, "When Bush starts talking about giving illegals legal status, I'd almost vote for a third party just to protest."

Soccer moms and prison guards, evangelical truckers and frugal farmers, soldiers, hunters and the poor. People who say Roscoe Bartlett, scientist, gentleman farmer and keeper of the faith, speaks for them.

IN RURAL FREDERICK COUNTY, in a dim barn hung with cobwebs, Bartlett, his thumb curled inside his arthritic fist for a better grip, milks Gigi, a Swiss Alpine goat.

He fills a jar, hands it to his wife, Ellen, and wipes his hands on his overalls. Walking toward the house, running late for work, he takes time to gulp in the view: from the pastures where the goats are grazing, to the barnyard where the roosters crow, to the house where photos of his 10 children line the walls and a songbook on the organ sits open to a hymn. To him, the scene stands for everything he's been fighting six terms to preserve, an ideal of hard work and no free lunch, of faith and family and respect for country.

He was born in Kentucky, the son of a tenant farmer who kept a loaded shotgun at the front and back doors and would "rather have died" than accept charity. "We canned a thousand quarts a summer, or we didn't eat," he remembers. He ran for Congress, he says without irony, "because I was concerned my kids and grandkids were not going to grow up with the same opportunities."

"I'm probably the luckiest congressman down there," he says. "I always vote my conscience, and it's okay with the district."