Just before Congress adjourned so that its members could hit the campaign trail, Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Fairfax County Democrat, made a very public display of criticizing his own party.
President Obama had just announced that he wanted to raise taxes on America’s wealthiest earners — those making $200,000 a year; $250,000 for families — by allowing some Bush-era tax cuts to expire at year’s end. Connolly, whose 11th Congressional District includes some of the nation’s wealthiest enclaves, opposed the plan and wanted to make sure his constituents knew he was fighting it.
The tax dispute, Connolly claimed, proved he was an independent lawmaker.
“In Congress, I’ve made both parties mad,” Connolly said in a campaign ad as he tries to fend off a surge by Republican challenger Keith Fimian.
But Connolly’s opposition to Obama’s tax plan was a rare departure for the freshman lawmaker, who otherwise sided with Democrats’ congressional leadership and the president on economic-stimulus spending, restrictive environmental laws and a package of health care reforms that Connolly boasted were the kind of achievements about which “Democrats, Republicans, and the American people can be proud.”
Voters, it turns out, aren’t proud of those reforms. Recent polling shows the public is increasingly opposed to the new health care law and many Republican candidates, including Fimian, are pledging to repeal it. Connolly’s district, once considered relatively safe since he won it two years ago by beating Fimian by 12 percentage points, is now considered a tossup. And Connolly’s greatest vulnerability is his voting record and past support for Democrats who are wildly unpopular with voters this year.
Though there have been no outside polls on the race, Fimian is gaining attention across the district by riding the wave of voter discontent while spotlighting Connolly’s voting record in campaign ads and debates.
A new Fimian ad accuses Connolly of a “disturbing pattern” of voting for “reckless spending, higher taxes and more debt,” and he accuses Connolly of voting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., 97 percent of the time. Those attacks are likely to further undermine Connolly’s support, political analysts said, just as similar assaults have left Democratic incumbents across the country trailing their Republican challengers.
Ironically, the vote that may be most damaging to Connolly was the one he boasted loudly of casting, his support for Obama’s health care reform, said Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University.
“For many voters, that is a core issue in this campaign,” Rozell said. “It’s a signal as to what side the candidate is on.”
