>>Against Tom Davis, the Good Fight Seems Futile
By Marc Fisher
Tuesday, October 17, 2006; B01
The energetic challenger tosses out great big slabs of red meat: His opponent, the incumbent, takes big money from the oil and gas industries, supports the war in Iraq and votes with President Bush 90 percent of the time. Judging by the murmurs in the audience, the pesky young Democratic upstart is scoring points.
Then the Republican incumbent stands up to speak to the Vienna-Oakton chapter of an association of retired federal workers.
Sure, I take PAC money, the congressman says. But I got you the money to upgrade Maple Avenue, and $200,000 for Vienna's Little League, and $900 million for rail to Dulles, and the first dedicated funding for Metro in 25 years, and a limit on development at the old Lorton prison site, and the list goes on and on. By the time Rep. Tom Davis finishes -- interrupted by applause when he mentions the new dental and vision benefits federal retirees will be getting -- there's no doubt who owns this room.
Davis doesn't bother to mention Iraq or terrorism.
He doesn't need to go there, because in the ensuing hour of questions from the audience, no one asks a single question about the war.
"They're using the Senate race to express those frustrations," Davis tells me later, alluding to his embattled fellow Republican, Sen. George Allen. Davis faces no such crisis; he boasts that his polls show him with a commanding lead in his campaign for a seventh term in the House.
Every single person who queues up to pigeonhole Davis after his debate with challenger Andy Hurst has a question about a local issue. And every single person who waits to talk to Hurst has a national topic in mind.
If Hurst, a 36-year-old lawyer on his maiden voyage into the wilds of elective politics, has a prayer in this race, he must persuade Fairfax and Prince William county residents to focus on national and foreign matters. "Tom's campaign is: 'See that bridge? Built it. See that ballfield? Got the money.' So I have to say, 'Wait, some of the kids he built that field for are dying in Iraq right now.' "
Davis, who is gearing up for a run for the Senate seat that John Warner is expected to vacate in 2008, keeps winning handily in an increasingly Democratic district. Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, won Davis's district by 13 points last year. In 2004, John Kerry managed a near tie with Bush in the district. But Davis collected 60 percent of the vote that year.
"His popularity is 70 percent in the district," says Hurst. "I was at a Democratic club at a huge seniors complex, and I had to convince a woman to stop voting for Tom Davis -- in a Democratic club! "
In this gerrymandered democracy of ours, where politicians draw maps to assure single-party domination of as many congressional districts as possible, there are lots of Andy Hursts on the ballot, earnest challengers who are assumed even by their own party to have as much of a chance to win it all as the Washington sports team of your choice.
Hurst impresses audiences with his pledge not to accept money from special interests, not even from his own law firm. But he readily concedes that even if he did take cash from lobbyists and PACs, he'd still fall far short of the incumbent's funding, and he'd still lack the money to advertise on TV. The reason: Few people want to cross a powerful committee chairman such as Davis. "I can't tell you how many people I've hit up for money," Hurst says, "and they tell me, 'Sorry, but Tom's been by, and he says to sit it out.'"
The Hurst-Davis race might be a nail-biter if the Democrats had put up a well-known candidate, such as Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly, but such figures saw no reason to risk their careers by opposing a popular incumbent. Only now, after the Mark Foley sex scandal and the souring of public opinion about the war, do Democrats look back and wish they'd selected a stronger challenger.
"No one believed it could be this close," Hurst says. "It's not as close as I'd like it to be, but I have a shot, and nobody thought that would happen."
The challenger, who lives in Springfield, is a cheerful dynamo, but he's the first to pay tribute to the incumbent's energy and effectiveness. "Everywhere I go, Tom's been there -- twice," Hurst says. "I went to my own Giant in Lorton, and there was Tom, handing out lollipops. I have to give him credit: He goes to everything, and he drops campaign money everywhere, on Little League teams, on every local official's campaign."
So Hurst has to keep running. He drives off, in search of people he calls Webb-Davis voters, those who will send their antiwar, anti-Bush message by supporting Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb but then turn around and vote to keep Davis in the House.
"Those voters really don't want to hear from me," Hurst says with a grimace. "They've already settled this in their minds."
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