Dahlkemper Trails Butler Republican

In Pennsylvania’s largely rural 3rd Congressional District, stretching from the shores of Lake Erie through struggling mill towns such as Sharon, New Castle and Butler, and into Armstrong County, freshman U.S. Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper is waging an increasingly uphill fight to keep Butler auto dealer Mike Kelly from taking her seat.

Dahlkemper, 52, of Erie is among a group of freshmen and sophomore House Democrats losing ground to Republican challengers because voters object to Obama administration policies, polls show.

One of the most recent polls, by the daily congressional newspaper The Hill, showed Dahlkemper 13 points behind Kelly, with 15 percent of the electorate undecided. Dahlkemper won her seat by only 2 percentage points in 2008.

Kelly, who spent $300,000 of his own money to win a six-way primary election by a narrow margin, emerged as a GOP darling in recent weeks, pulling in campaign cash from the party and special issue groups.

The GM dealer said he probably spent about $200,000 since May. He chuckled at the party’s decision to name him one of its “Young Guns,” a group of challengers deemed most able to win seats Nov. 2.

His tale of getting into the race — after successfully fighting a post-bailout GM effort to strip him of his Cadillac dealership — resonates with voters who are angry with “big government.”

“We’ve overcomplicated it,” said Kelly, 62. “… It’s the spending. If we don’t get it under control, it’s a model that can’t sustain itself.” He wants to go to Washington to “fix it.”

Dahlkemper says she is proudest of her vote for the health care legislation — even though that vote may be the one to hurt her most in this conservative-leaning district. Kelly signed a pledge to repeal the bill, and an anti-abortion group spent tens of thousands of dollars for ads portraying Dahlkemper, who is against abortion, as funneling tax dollars to abortions.

“I ran on health care, and I delivered,” Dahlkemper said. “… But I think, truthfully, we did a terrible job of explaining that piece of legislation.”

Dahlkemper said that she authored an amendment that enables children to remain on their parents’ insurance policies until age 26 and fought to keep money for abortions out of the bill. “A lot of people didn’t understand the ins-and-outs of the health care bill.”

Kelly charges Americans simply cannot afford the bill.

“Accessibility and affordability were supposed to be the goal, and I think it’s been quite the contrary,” he said.

Mary Anderson, 55, a systems network operator from Erie and a registered Republican, agrees with Kelly. She’s voting for him. Anderson said she and her friends want Congress to repeal the health care legislation. That and “getting the little people back to work” should be Congress’ priority, she said.

Dahlkemper can take comfort from voters like Stella Deless, 84, a Democrat who lives in Butler. Deless said she and her husband bought all of their cars from Kelly, and although she likes the auto dealer, she intends to stick with “the Democrat” on election day.

Dahlkemper said she wouldn’t change how she voted, including her vote for the much-maligned, $814 billion stimulus program.

“We kept this country out of a depression,” Dahlkemper said. “I ran against debt. But when I went to Congress and we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, and all these economists from all sides of the aisle came and said, ‘You have to do something,’ we did it. It was the right thing to do.”

Last week, The New York Times reported the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee scaled back money committed to advertising for Dahlkemper because she lagged in polls. Dahlkemper’s campaign responded that the move showed the GOP cut spending in the district.

Her increasingly tough struggle to keep her seat doesn’t surprise political analysts.

Although Democrats hold a 30,000-registration edge, the district typically is a battleground for the parties, said Dan Shea, director of the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College in Meadville.

“There’s a lot of Reagan Democrats in the district,” Shea said. “It shades slightly red.”

Isaac Wood, a House race analyst with the University of Virginia, said the faltering economy remains a major hurdle for Dahlkemper and other incumbents.

“You always have a rebellion, to a certain degree, in a mid-term (election) year, but when you couple that with bad economic conditions, that’s when it gets really dangerous for the party in power,” Wood said. “And that’s what we’re seeing here.”

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