Longley’s brother didn’t take the admonition to heart because he was elected to Congress in 1994 as one of the foot soldiers in Newt Gingrich’s conservative movement. He lasted one term. Now it’s Susan Longley’s turn. Same state; different district. She’s one of six Democrats running in the 2nd district of Maine. The primary is June 11.
Polls show Longley doing well enough that the other candidates are boasting that they’re tied with her. But only a fraction of the eligible voters will vote in a primary, and the winner could be decided by a handful of votes. Longley stopped by the NEWSWEEK office this week to talk about her race and to give her ground-level view of the trench warfare that will decide who controls Congress.
The seat she is contesting is an open seat; the incumbent Democrat, John Baldacci, is leaving Congress to run for governor. The Democrats have to hold this seat to have any hope of regaining control of the House. But primaries are tricky. The party committees don’t like to play favorites, so every candidate is scrambling for attention and hoping to get noticed by donors, endorsers and the voters-in that order.
Longley chairs the Health Committee in the Maine Senate, and until the legislature adjourned two weeks ago, she was occupied with the state’s budget shortfall and its impact on health dollars. Various advisers warned her she was making a mistake. She should skip those pesky votes, they said, and concentrate on fund-raising. When her Federal Election Committee report revealed she had raised only $20,000 in the first three months of this year, her opponents seized on it as evidence she was not a serious candidate.
It made her angry, but it also fired her up for the race. Now she’s on the phone every day dialing for dollars. She had been spoiled in her last Senate race. Under Maine’s Clean Election Law, passed by referendum in 1996, she got public funding. She relished giving lobbyists the brush-off when they tried to talk to her in the halls; she didn’t need their money. Now she no longer drinks from those “pure waters,” she says. For example, when she deals with the credit-card company MBNA, a major player in her district, “It’s clear to me they can write big checks. When they call, I call back fast.”
By national standards, Longley’s fund-raising goals are modest. Her district is not wealthy, and most constituents can’t afford big donations. “You get lucky when you get $1,000; if you get $2,000 by three in the afternoon, you get to take the rest of the night off,” she says.
Longley counted on support from Emily’s List, an organization that raises money for pro-choice Democratic women. She was dismayed when that support took five long months to materialize. She hung up in tears after one conversation with the Washington-based group over differences on how to proceed. She wants to rely on grass-roots activists she knows. Emily’s List wanted to send in trained people. “They labeled me hard to work with,” she says.
Longley is focused on health care as an issue. While health insurance premiums are rising 11 percent a year nationally, they are going up at three and four times that rate in Maine. She likens the looming crisis in the affordability of health care to the war on terrorism in the threat it poses to American values, and the resources that it should command from the federal government.
Republicans realize they are vulnerable on health-care issues, and in a recently leaked GOP memorandum they warn candidates that terrorism and taxes won’t win the midterm elections. President Bush’s popularity won’t provide much ballast for GOP candidates. That’s why House Republicans are hustling to pass a prescription drug plan for seniors by Memorial Day. Their proposal covers only a fraction of senior citizens, isn’t adequately funded and will die in the Senate, but it will allow GOP congressional candidates to claim they tried to do something on health care.
Democrats campaigning for Congress will support Bush on the war, and then try to change the subject to domestic issues. “Are we going to talk about Bush?” asks Longley’s media adviser, David Brown. “No.”
Democratic pollster Anna Bennett worked in Texas during Bush’s rise to power and observed his appeal. She remembers a focus group of rural swing voters in Texas and how when they talked about Bush they weren’t sure which party he was from. They knew his father had been president and that he had been governor for almost four years. These voters were clearly not very informed about current events, says Bennett, but they are critical swing voters. She came away marveling at the good job Bush had done of not seeming partisan.
Bush did less well in Washington changing the tone, but after 9-11, being seen as a war president allowed him to regain his above-the-battle image. Bennett recalls how in Texas Bush was initially underestimated, and by the time Democrats began to challenge him on his policies, “he had built up a head of steam” to where he was unassailable. “So it was Democrats against Bush instead of Democrats against this decision or that decision,” says Bennett. “You have to remove Bush from the equation.”
The idea that Bush could be another Reagan with a Teflon persona once seemed unthinkable to Democrats. But now they’re not so sure. Democratic pollster Fred Yang points out that noneducated white women who were once in the Democratic camp have become strong pro-Bush voters. “The reason they’re flipping is personal,” says Yang. “They like him. He’s safe, he’s moral and he’s the commander in chief.”
The challenge for Democrats is to take the voters’ minds off Bush and get them on issues. “They talk about how much they admire the president, but they fear for their jobs,” says Yang. “We’ve got to win them over with a pocketbook agenda.” Longley is a test case for the Democrats. If she prevails in the primary, she will be a must-win for Democrats in November. “I’m told the money will come flowing in,” she says. “And if I lose, I get my life back.”
