WHEATON, Ill. — The numbers whirring upwards on Illinois
Congresswoman Judy Biggert’s computer screen are starting to
enliven things at congressional hopeful and state senator Peter
Roskam’s headquarters. Each one represents a phone call to a female
Republican or independent likely voter in this hard-fought suburban
Chicago district, where 31-year incumbent Henry Hyde is retiring in
a most difficult year for the GOP. Every vote will count, and the
motherly Biggert surely helps.
Polls put this exorbitant $4 million race at a dead heat — one
of the GOP’s few chances to install a freshman in 2007. A Roskam
victory would deprive the Democrats of the bragging rights for
capturing a longtime Republican seat. It would also keep them from
filling it with a symbol of the party’s renewed antiwar animus.
Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth, a double-amputee Army
helicopter pilot who nearly died in Iraq from injuries caused by a
rocket-propelled grenade, is by now a well-recognized figure. The
media coverage has been extensive, usually featuring her walking on
two prosthetic legs, or speaking on stage from a wheelchair, the
consummate “Fightin’ Dem” in this year’s security-themed
elections.
She has become one of the party’s most prized and strategically
managed House prospects — hand-picked by Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee Chair Rahm Emanuel, heavily backed by outsiders.
Party figures are apparently so confident in her that they have not
even bothered to require that she move into the district. (She
lives in nearby Hoffman Estates, and will not be able to vote for
herself on Tuesday.)
Duckworth’s use of her injuries in this campaign hasn’t been
subtle. GOP criticism of Duckworth’s foreign-policy positions
attracts torrents of anger from Democratic partisans, many of whom
are all too happy to impute Republican meanness toward their
obviously self-sacrificial nominee. So, it’s no surprise that the
Roskam campaign does not even touch a volatile subject like the
Democratic Party’s focus on her injuries. The fact that it’s a real
part of the Democrats’ strategy in this campaign doesn’t change
that at all.
Roskam endured the heaviest dose of anger a few weeks ago when,
in a radio debate, he objected to the candidate’s Iraq stance — in
the process saying that “the 6th Congressional District is not a
cut-and-run district.” The left went wild. This was interpreted to
mean that Roskam was calling Duckworth a cut-and-run candidate,
which, at least by inference, he was; this in turn was transformed
into Roskam smearing her patriotism, which he obviously was not. A
wave of media coverage followed. “I just could not believe he would
say that to me,” Duckworth told the Financial Times. “I
have risked my life to serve my country and you cannot question my
patriotism.” No, you can’t. Which is why no one did.
But within a few days, campaign flyers from Friends of Tammy
Duckworth showed up in mailboxes accusing Roskam of just that —
questioning Duckworth’s patriotism… and John McCain’s. (The
Arizona Republican did not authorize the move, and later protested
it. He has endorsed the Republican Roskam.)
“As a combat veteran,” the flyer quotes area veteran Tom Ford of
the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne as saying: “I will not stand for
Peter Roskam attacking John McCain and Tammy Duckworth on Social
Security and immigration — or questioning their patriotism on any
other issue.” Inside the flyer, side-by-side portraits of the
Duckworth and McCain sit on Mr. Ford’s desk.
The campaign must have been sitting on this obviously
pre-planned flyer, waiting for Roskam to impugn Duckworth’s
patriotism. When it never happened, the campaign used the next
closest occasion.
The image that Democratic strategists want is quite simple: a
Republican calling a double amputee, war-wounded Army Reservist
friend of John McCain unpatriotic. The fact that such a comment
never was uttered or even intimated didn’t matter. It didn’t keep
people like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann from nominating Roskam and his
spokesman Jason Roe on separate occasions for “Worst Person in the
World.”
In some respects this is an ingenious turn of the “swift
boating” tables. But it presupposes a certain stupidity among
voters, that they won’t know a political trick when they see
one.
THERE’S NOT MUCH TALK ABOUT all this on October 21, a clear-skied
Saturday when I visit the Roskam campaign housed in an old
Victorian located around the corner from downtown Wheaton, to meet
the candidate and staffers. Instead, the campaign’s attention is
focused on the “Tele-Town Hall” I’m here to watch, a “micro
targeting” improvement upon those annoying campaign-season
“robocalls.”
The improvement: a live, talk-radio-like program hosted by the
candidate, which interested answerers can join by dialing “1” and
then queuing up, if they so choose, to ask questions. Or they can
dial “2” for a home-delivered campaign yard sign. The whole thing
lasts about an hour. At any given moment, about 300 listeners are
plugged in.
“Hello, Mary from Grove Village: You’re on a Tele-Town Hall with
Congresswoman Judy Biggert and Republican House candidate Peter
Roskam. Hello, Mary?” About one in three Marys will actually turn
out be husband Michael or father Bob.
The callers query Roskam and Biggert on health care, Social
Security, education, border control, immigration, guns and
abortion. Strikingly, not a single question about terrorism or Iraq
is asked. What does that mean? I later ask Roskam. He says he
hadn’t noticed; he takes it as a positive.
One South Asian-accented caller begins ranting about Mexican
illegals stealing jobs; campaign staff, visibly embarrassed, cut
him off. The candidate explains his border-tightening policy and
moves on.
An elderly caller asks about Social Security. Roskam purrs: “I
can’t think of a more important government program.”
A teacher asks about No Child Left Behind. Roskam and Biggert
switch off with answers.
The hour-long “Tele-Town Hall” costs Roskam about $2,000 and, by
my calculation, reaches more than ten percent of total likely
voters in this district’s 2004 House race, albeit fleetingly. Not
bad in a $4 million race.
Tens of thousands of calls are placed in total. Precisely 7,650
callers joined for some portion of the hour. Another 29,942
answering-machine messages are left. This is sizable in a district
of approximately 654,000, where 2004 turnout was just under 40
percent. In that election, President Bush took 53 percent of the
two-party vote. Hyde’s vote take shrank progressively the last two
cycles; he got 65 percent in 2002, but just 56 percent in 2004
against Democrat Christine Cegelis, who was sacked in favor of
Duckworth earlier this year, and who barely lost the Dems’
primary.
The “turnout is crucial” line is often a canard that signals a
candidate’s doom. In this case, as in others around the country,
this year’s turnout actually could be decisive.
THERE IS A CERTAIN BRAVADO and haughtiness in the particulars of
the Duckworth campaign — the out-of-district residency, the
torrent of money from Emanuel and big-city Chicago, the shunting of
2004 nominee Cegelis to make room for a favorite of the party
elite.
But there is also an echo of Michael J. Fox — who, not
coincidentally, campaigned for Duckworth last week. Call it the
politics of suffering. The Democratic Party is using it this year
to grip voters emotionally, to help inoculate its candidates and
policies from any of a number of lines of Republican criticism. It
may be working. John Kerry “Reporting for Duty” didn’t wash because
it looked phony. But that’s the last thing anyone can say about the
suffering Tammy Duckworth’s military service brought her.
