More than 200 of the 216 Democrats who will vote in this election are committed to one or the other candidate. The handful of remaining Democrats will decide the winner.
The push from women is having an effect, though not entirely what the Pelosi forces intended. The emphasis on her gender has tended to overshadow her credentials for the job, which are considerable, and allowed Hoyer to run against her as a showy symbol while portraying himself as the heavyweight in the race, the insider’s insider. Framing the contest as style versus substance, shorthand many in the media have adopted, also exposed one of the enduring splits within the Democratic Party. Is it better to stay close to the party’s base and energize the faithful? Or must Democrats reach out more to moderates and independents? Hoyer pointedly notes that Pelosi represents urban San Francisco, a reliably Democratic area, while his home county in Maryland went for George W. Bush in the last election.
Their differences on issues are so minor they are hardly measurable. Each got a 100 percent rating from the liberal American Civil Liberties Union and an “F” from the conservative National Taxpayers Union. Yet Hoyer’s message boils down to his being better able to woo centrist voters and win back the swing districts that are essential if the Democrats are ever going to recapture control of the House. Pelosi backers counter with the reminder that on election night last year, it was Pelosi who could claim credit for five Democratic gains in California, all seats previously held by Republicans. “All this talk about knowing how to win swing districts, Nancy’s the one who’s done it,” says California Rep. Anna Eshoo.
With the outcome of the race in the hands of a very few, those remaining prized votes carry a price. Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, whose working-class district has been hurt by globalization, wants to know how each of the candidates will respond to the economic concerns of her constituents. She notes that each candidate is cushioned in ways that she isn’t in representing their districts. A large number of government workers live in Hoyer’s district while Pelosi represents one of the country’s financial centers in Silicon Valley. Kaptur wants the whip operation to create a working group on the economy that includes various ideological and geographical strains within the party. Both candidates have expressed interest in her idea.
Nobody questions Pelosi’s preparedness for the job, and her gender, if anything, should be a plus for a party that relies on the votes of women for victory. Pathbreakers in the party like former Texas governor Ann Richards and former Colorado representative Patricia Schroeder, the longest-serving woman in the House before she retired, are making calls to Capitol Hill on Pelosi’s behalf. “Male, female, purple, whatever, she’s the best candidate,” says Schroeder. “The only negative is that she’s a woman.” Asked to explain, Schroeder says the undercurrent in this race is what she calls “the Bubba beat-the Bubba tom-toms-that the party needs somebody who can talk to Bubba.”
Democrats want to win, and it may not be enough to count on the gender gap to carry them to victory. Getting back the votes of white men is a subtext in this race, Schroeder believes, with some in the party regarding Hoyer, chiefly because of his gender, the better messenger. It’s a debate that she saw played out many times in her two decades in the House. “We’ve been looking for Bubba for how many years?” she asks. “Bubba left the party a long time ago, and Bubba isn’t going to come back. As a consequence, women and minorities get frustrated with the party.”
Acting as confident as possible is important because undecided members want to go with the victor. Each side has a vote count that shows their candidate winning. But this is a secret ballot, and commitments can be broken. (Geraldine Ferraro, when she was in the House, thought she had the eight votes needed for a committee assignment. When the chairman looked at the ballots, he announced they would have to vote again. There wasn’t a single vote for Ferraro, and the chairman, who had promised her his vote, realized he would be exposed.)
Ranking Democrats on powerful committees backing a candidate bring along their committee members like local ward healers. Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette told Pelosi early on that she couldn’t support her, at least in part because of Michigan Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a Hoyer supporter. As a committee member, DeGette felt compelled to line up with him. “Dingell has his foot on the neck of everybody on his committee,” says a Pelosi supporter.
Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has a well-deserved reputation for speaking his mind. He had just come from lunch with the president when he addressed The Council for Excellence in Government, a group he had helped found 18 years earlier. “I’m told, ‘You have failed if you make news’,” he joked. “I promised the president I’d stay on message.” A relentless optimist about the economy to the point where he has been portrayed as a cheerleader, O’Neill finally yielded to the new post-Sept. 11 reality. “Can we get out of the third quarter without being negative? I don’t think so,” O’Neill said.
Walking back to his office at the Treasury Department just a block from the Willard Hotel, where he had spoken, O’Neill asked a reporter if he’d managed to avoid making news. Told his downbeat assessment qualified as a story, O’Neill then launched into all the upbeat signs he sees. “I’m a data maven,” he says. Among the data: car sales aren’t down as much as expected though O’Neill conceded six-year loans with no interest might have something to do with that.
