Even in Wartime, Voters Think Locally

As Antiwar Groups Pressure GOP Lawmakers, Constituents Voice Other Concerns

READING, Pa. -- All day, official Washington had been buzzing about Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's order to extend combat tours in Iraq by three months, but at Calvary Baptist Church on Wednesday night, Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) sat stiffly at his own town hall meeting, ignored and largely silent for much of the event.

The citizens of the down-at-the-heel, working-class neighborhoods around the church had other issues on their minds. They browbeat Reading's public works director over the stench from the sewage treatment plant, hectored the police chief over his unfriendly patrolmen and harangued the mayor over delayed plans to install anti-crime cameras downtown.

Gerlach, who got 51 percent of the vote in November in a swing district still high on Democrats' target list, all but invited questions on his votes against a resolution opposing President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, then against a war spending bill that would set a firm date for the removal of troops. He was there to talk about crime and transportation, he said, but added gamely that the audience was free to "stray into some other issues which we can discuss as well."

Iraq never came up.

"I don't think people are thinking about that around here. They're thinking about their community," Janet Martz, who left the meeting shortly after her congressman, said with a shrug. "Come to think of it, I wouldn't have thought to bring it up."

Democratic leaders and antiwar activists had hoped that Congress's spring recess would strengthen their position in the showdown with President Bush over the war spending bills. Activists mobilized. Antiwar advertisements were on the air. A group called Code Pink delivered little toy soldiers to lawmakers. Republicans, they hoped, would return to Washington with a new appreciation for the views of their constituents.

Tom Matzzie, the Washington director of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org Political Action, boasted that his antiwar coalition raised more than $5.6 million for a full-throttle campaign to crack GOP support for the war. The targets have been chosen: the 15 Republicans who voted for the nonbinding resolution against the troop buildup but against the war spending bill; 25 others -- the "party before country" caucus, as Matzzie called them -- who have spoken against the war but voted with the president; and the "squealers," Republicans who can expect tough races in 2008 regardless of the war.

"We're going to give them a choice," Matzzie said. "Break with the president and the war, or political extinction."

But if the pressure on them is building, Republicans aren't showing it. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) shrugged off the protesters who had occupied one of his home-state offices and dogged his spring break.

"You know what people care about? Passports," he said. "I had 600 people in March alone come to me for help with their passports, thanking me for saving their vacations. Politics is still local."

GOP lawmakers say the votes of February and March will be eclipsed by events, both in Iraq and in Washington, long before voters begin to focus on the next round of elections. And with so many Iraq issues coming before Congress, they will have plenty of time to gauge constituent views and possibly change course.

It is not as if voters are oblivious to the debate in Washington. Martz said she understands where the Democrats are coming from in placing conditions on the emergency legislation to fund the war. But she said she can't support timetables for withdrawing the troops.

Once prodded, Bonnie Ehst said she feels differently. "I personally believe our boys should be brought home. Our boys are over there dying for what?" she asked.

But that exchange came after Gerlach and his wife drove off in their new blue Chrysler. For the hour and a half inside the church's community center, Gerlach had the luxury of speaking on his own terms, pledging to help fund local law enforcement efforts, coordinate efforts to build a commuter rail line between Reading and Pottstown, and try to secure money for the city's rotting sewage plant. The toughest question he got was whether he had ever been asked for sewage treatment money.

The real venom was saved for Reading's local leaders. "The city council is acting like a bunch of spoiled brats," said one angry woman, as Gerlach looked on from his fold-out picnic table, seemingly bemused by the tumult.