December 4, 2007
Vulnerable Democrats Afraid of Clinton By CARL HULSE
MANHATTAN, Kan. ? Nancy Boyda, a Democrat who ran for Congress in this district last year, owed her upset victory partly to the popularity of the Democratic woman at the top of the ticket: Kathleen Sebelius, who won the governor?s seat. Now, with a tough re-election race at hand in 2008, Ms. Boyda faces the prospect that her electoral fate could be tied to another woman: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton is a long way from winning the Democratic presidential nomination, and over the last few weeks has struggled to hang on to the air of inevitability that she has been cultivating all year. But the possibility that she will be the nominee is already generating concern among some Democrats in Republican-leaning states and Congressional districts, who fear that sharing the ticket with her could subject them to attack as too liberal and out of step with the values of their constituents.
And few incumbent Democrats face a greater challenge next year than Ms. Boyda, whose district delivered almost 60 percent of its votes to President Bush in 2004.
Ms. Boyda, 52, is a former Republican who represents the state capital, Topeka, and a surrounding expanse of prairie and pasture interspersed with conservative small towns, military posts and this college community, home to Kansas State University. It was by appealing to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans that she was able to defeat Jim Ryun, a five-term congressman, by 51 percent to 47 percent last year.
This time both Mr. Ryun and another Republican, Lynn Jenkins, the state treasurer, are lined up to run against her. And while vulnerable Democrats like her are not likely to have an easy time even if Senator Barack Obama, John Edwards or any of the other Democratic presidential candidates wins the nomination, Republicans in Kansas say Mrs. Clinton?s presence on the ticket would unite their party in opposition to her and give dispirited conservatives a reason to get excited about the race.
Ms. Boyda is one of a group of House Democrats ? including fellow freshmen like Zack Space of Ohio, Nick Lampson of Texas, Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth of Indiana ? who will be battling for re-election in Republican territory.
In the Senate, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana faces a similar challenge, and in an indication of what she and other Democrats, including Senators Max Baucus of Montana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, could face, Republicans unveiled a Web commercial on Monday linking Ms. Landrieu directly to Mrs. Clinton. In the advertisement, Mrs. Clinton?s face morphs into Ms. Landrieu?s, and they are described as ?two peas in a pod.?
Advisers to Mrs. Clinton, who has long sought to parry concerns within her party that she is too polarizing, dispute the idea that she could hinder Democratic candidates in Republican districts. They note that New York Democrats gained a net of four House seats in her two Senate elections and that she campaigned actively for House contenders in both.
?Anyone can speculate, but there are a set of facts that tell a very different story,? said Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton campaign. ?The actual evidence makes clear that she is an asset in tough districts.?
But Patrick Leopold, campaign manager for Ms. Jenkins, said a Clinton nomination would work in favor of either his candidate or Mr. Ryun, the other prospective Republican opponent of Ms. Boyda. ?Whether you are a moderate Republican or a conservative Republican in Kansas, you are pretty much of the same mind on Hillary Clinton,? Mr. Leopold said. ?There is no question Hillary is going to be a drag for Boyda.?
The mere mention of Mrs. Clinton?s name as a potential president drew a strong reaction from Tom Doperalski, an official in rural Pottawatomie County who had just finished meeting with Ms. Boyda about how to contend with growth issues arising out of the increase of troops stationed at nearby Fort Riley.
?The people I talk to, they just cannot imagine a worse scenario,? said Mr. Doperalski, a Republican who heads the county commission. ?They just don?t think she can be trusted.?
Ms. Boyda, who is trying to establish a political identity as independent, said her intent was simply to show the voters of both parties in her district that she was delivering for them. Of the presidential race, she said: ?It is something I have no control over, quite honestly. They will demonize any Democrat who becomes the nominee. I just put my head down and work.?
She said she was putting her faith in Kansans? willingness to split tickets. ?Kansans are very practical people,? she said. ?They just want people who will get the job done.?
To try to create some distance from her party, Ms. Boyda has publicly opted out of a special Democratic fund-raising and strategy program for endangered House members. She is taking conservative assaults head-on, appearing regularly on talk radio programs in her district to try to establish a dialogue and, she says, challenge misconceptions about her record.
She is also keeping a busy schedule of appearances throughout the district in an effort to show residents that she has not ?gone Washington.? An impression that Mr. Ryun had done so hurt his chances in her race against him last year.
House Democrats do not like to discuss the idea of reverse coattails for fear of giving it too much credence and angering the Clinton camp. But they are privately nervous about what Mrs. Clinton?s nomination might mean in Republican-leaning locales where they made gains in 2006 that were crucial to their becoming the majority.
Democrats say they have not polled on the issue, though a private survey that surfaced this year found that the nomination of either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama could cut into support for House Democrats in tough districts.
Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says incumbent Democrats in generally Republican districts proved very capable of holding on in the last presidential election. He says the national race gives House candidates a chance to emphasize their independence by breaking with the presidential nominee when they differ.
?This is an opportunity to distinguish themselves on the issues from whoever the nominee is,? Mr. Van Hollen said. ?If they approach it right and tell their constituents where they stand, it enhances their credibility and independence.?
There are indications that Ms. Boyda is making progress on that score. Greg Unruh, the administrator of a hospital that she visited the other day, said, ?I may be of a different political party, but she has done a good job as a freshman.?
And Mr. Doperalski, the county commissioner, as well as his two fellow Republicans on the three-member board, says any antipathy toward Mrs. Clinton will not necessarily mean enmity toward Ms. Boyda. ?She will be judged on the job she does,? he said.
Joe Aistrup, chairman of the political science department at Kansas State, said Ms. Boyda was putting the advantages of incumbency to good use, and would need them. Mr. Aistrup estimated that as the nominee for governor, Ms. Sebelius was worth five percentage points to Ms. Boyda?s vote total in 2006 ? the difference between winning and losing ? and said the congresswoman should count on no such assistance from above this time.
?I don?t think Hillary Clinton helps her in any way, shape or form,? he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/politics/04ballot.html
