By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Donna Edwards and Judy Feder live on opposite sides of the Potomac, two first-time Democratic congressional candidates in districts that couldn't be much more different.
But in their campaigns against two of the region's longest-serving incumbents, Edwards and Feder are the local representations of major national themes emerging in the 2006 midterm congressional elections.
When Edwards looks at fellow Democrat Albert R. Wynn in Maryland's 4th Congressional District, she says she sees Joseph I. Lieberman. Like the Connecticut senator, Edwards said, Wynn voted for the war in Iraq, one of several signs that he has lost touch with the liberal attitudes of voters in one of the country's most reliably Democratic districts.
And when Feder looks across Virginia's 10th, she sees a rapidly growing district -- stretching from inside the Capital Beltway through Loudoun County and beyond -- that voted for President Bush in 2004 but where most voters now disapprove of the job he is doing.
If this is the year of the anti-incumbent, she says, no one better represents the status quo than Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a low-key Republican first elected 26 years ago who is a loyal Bush supporter.
Can the challengers win? Feder and Edwards, reared in the worlds of public policy and political activism, are aware that the odds say no. Only a handful of congressional incumbents lost in 2004.
And in the lists of competitive races compiled by political experts -- in the Cook Political Report, Congressional Quarterly and the "Ferocious Forty" by University of Virginia professor Larry J. Sabato -- neither Edwards-Wynn nor Feder-Wolf ranks. But with three congressional incumbents rejected in other state primaries this month, it's hard for challengers not to think that lightning could strike in these races.
Edwards's aggressive and well-organized campaign has drawn interest from liberals across the country -- Barbra Streisand is a contributor -- and wins accolades from the same blogosphere activists who supported the once unknown Ned Lamont in his Democratic primary victory over Lieberman.
"This is not a daunting challenge for me, and the more I talk to voters in the district and the more I listen to voters, the more convinced I am that this will be the story of the election cycle," said Edwards, who faces Wynn in the Sept. 12 primary.
For Feder, it's her fundraising ability that gives her hope. For two straight reporting periods, she raised more money than Wolf. And Democrats in Virginia and other parts of the country are interested in testing whether stretches of Northern Virginia that have been Republican are ripe for realignment.
"When we looked at our baseline poll" of the district, Feder said, "the state of discontent was really quite powerful."
In Md., 'I Will Not Be Bought'Donna Edwards had packed the auditorium with supporters at a recent NAACP candidate forum, and then she brought the house down.
"When I'm your representative in the United States Congress, I will not be bought, I will not sell you out, I will represent you every single day ," said Edwards, 48, a petite woman with a distinctive gap-toothed smile she didn't use much that night.
"And I will bring our troops home from Iraq now. This is unconscionable. And my opponent will say, 'Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have voted for it.' Well, sorry is just too late."
Wynn, a large man dressed that night in a black suit and turquoise tie, seemed taken aback by the unrelenting attack. "Passion and volume," he told the crowd, "are no substitute for truth."
Wynn said that, like many Democrats, he was misled by the Bush administration about the war. Wynn told the NAACP group that Edwards distorts his positions, and he mentioned what he has done for the district: securing more money for a new Metro station, gang intervention, emergency services and new roads. "There's a stark difference between rhetoric and results," he said.
Wynn, 54, has represented the district -- a twisting slice of Montgomery and Prince George's counties that stretches from north of Germantown through parts of Silver Spring and Bowie to Fort Washington -- since 1992. He has steamrolled any opposition and has become a political power in Prince George's County, where about two-thirds of the voters live.
Although Wynn's voting record is generally graded as liberal, he has split several times with the national party and with other Maryland Democrats on some environmental issues, the Bush administration-backed bankruptcy bill and repealing the estate tax.
"We can't take back the House and have people [like Wynn] undermining Nancy Pelosi and her progressive leadership," Edwards said in an interview, referring to the House minority leader. "No matter what, Maryland's 4th District will have a Democrat. It will just have a real one with me."
Edwards, who lives in Fort Washington, is executive director of the Arca Foundation, which funds progressive causes around the country, and she has served on the boards of Common Cause and the League of Conservation Voters. Locally, she has led community concerns about the scale and scope of the National Harbor project in Prince George's.
Gloria Steinem is a supporter, as is actor and activist Danny Glover, whose voice can be heard on automated phone calls to voters. "I've run a couple of different national organizations, so I have many, many friends," Edwards said, and her campaign contributions reflect that. She has raised more money from California than Maryland.
"In a solidly Democratic district, it's a good year, because our voters, Democratic voters, are tired of the absolute silence of congressional Democrats," she said.
"This is the first credible challenge Al Wynn has faced. I want him to know that he's in the fight of his life."
In Va., Trail Blazed by KaineWhen Democrats talk about their hopes for Virginia's 10th Congressional District, they mention three numbers: minus 9, plus 4 and 600,000.
They are referring to the fact that although Mark R. Warner lost the district by nine points when he won the governorship in 2001, fellow Democrat Timothy M. Kaine won the area by four points four years later. And the 600,000 refers to the number of dollars that Judy Feder has raised since beginning her campaign in January.
Kaine's surprise sweep of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties in November energized Democrats, including Feder. "I believe that I've got a lot of talent and expertise, and certainly energy, and can do more to make a difference," she said. "And after the November elections, with the changes that we saw, it looked possible."
She has reassembled Kaine's media team, pollster and direct mail strategist for the campaign and recently added campaign manager Scott Arceneaux, who was directing Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan's bid for Maryland governor before Duncan withdrew for health reasons.
"This is the year for change," Arceneaux said. "And this is the district that kind of typifies the discontent with Washington."
Although Bush won the area twice with about 55 percent of the vote, Feder's poll conducted in the spring found that 58 percent of district voters now disapprove of the president's performance, 44 percent of them "strongly." And she said the poll showed that 68 percent of voters are unhappy with the direction the country is taking.
The problem for Feder is Wolf, 67, who has not received less than 60 percent of the vote since first being elected in 1980. Wolf is a conservative Republican with an independent streak. He says he has not lost touch with his district, no matter how it changes.
"I've been involved in every major transportation project in the region," Wolf said in an interview. "I saw the gang issue when no one else did. . . . I'm literally returning to my district every night, and I know what's going on there."
Wolf is known for combining meticulous constituent service -- Feder thinks that is the basis for his popularity -- with a deep interest in human rights abuses around the world. "Shouldn't we all be interested in Darfur?" he asked.
Feder, 59, is a first-time candidate but a longtime veteran of Washington policy wars. The dean of Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute, she is a nationally recognized expert on health-care policy and was an architect of President Bill Clinton's health-care plan.
Her long list of contributors includes a number of former Clinton officials, think-tank executives and academics. It also shows what the longtime McLean resident describes as a lack of activism in the district: About 80 percent of her money comes from outside Virginia, and 30 percent of her contributions come through Act Blue, a national organization that directs money to Democratic candidates.
Transportation and growth are major issues in the 10th District, and Feder has relentlessly tried to tie Wolf to high gas prices. She said Wolf deserves criticism for voting for the administration's energy bill and for the number of contributions to his campaign from oil companies.
And she said the war will be an issue, as Democrats such as herself will present themselves as the only ones demanding "accountability" from the administration.
About one-third of the district's voters live in Fairfax, a third in Loudoun and the rest in the mostly rural counties that stretch to the West Virginia line. It is among those rural voters that the Harvard PhD said she still has work to do.
When she is out campaigning, Feder said, "people will say sort of quietly, 'What party?' and I've learned to stand tall and say I'm a Democrat, and after a little bit of shaking hands, it's not quite the anathema maybe it once was. Although I have to say I haven't been to very many tractor pulls."
Staff researcher Derek Willis contributed to this report.
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