GOP Targets Dem 'Scandal Babies'
By WILL SCHULTZ / WASHINGTON
There's nothing quite like an incumbent's predilection for corruption, bribery or sleazy sex for helping an underdog win a congressional seat. And there was plenty of muck to exploit in the 2006 midterm elections, when a raft of Republican scandals helped more than a dozen Democrats get elected in districts thought to be safely Republican.
But can they stay there? This year Republicans have pegged as top targets two "scandal babies" who defeated the most prominently shamed Republicans of 2006. Tim Mahoney, Representative from Florida's 16th Congressional District, holds the seat once occupied by Mark Foley, who resigned after revelations about his sexually explicit e-mails to House pages became public. Nick Lampson of Texas' 22nd District succeeded Tom DeLay, the Republican majority leader brought low by his connections to shady lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Mahoney and Lampson "have been labeled kind of a pair of accidental Congressmen," says Isaac Wood of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Their districts are far from Democratic strongholds: Mahoney's went 54% for Bush in 2004, and voters in Lampson's patch cast 64% of their vote for Bush. "Both districts are very high on our priority list," says a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
History suggests that scandal babies do not fare well when they face an opponent free of ethical baggage. Michael Patrick Flanagan, for example, won an improbable victory in the Republican tsunami of 1994 over scandal-scarred Democratic veteran Dan Rostenkowski, but he was crushed two years later by an energetic young Democrat named Rod Blagojevich (who went on to be elected governor of Illinois — and is now suffering through his own ethical travails). A scandal, it seems, is a onetime thing: it's helpful for getting elected but is of little use when re-election rolls around...
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