Jon Ralston on a poll that should worry Republicans

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006 | 7:29 a.m.

Republicans running for Congress this year are relying on the wisdom of an iconic Democrat to pull them through.

They need Tip O'Neill to be proven right when he created a campaign shibboleth - "all politics is local."

Democrats hoping to change the dynamic of the only branch of government they have a chance to control are banking on the most recognizable Republican to help them with their legislative coup. They need voters to see George W. Bush's name grafted onto the ballot, making ciphers out of the congressional and senatorial incumbents they hope to oust. They need, ironically, all politics to be national.

This strange dichotomy is borne out, three weeks before the election and only days before the abomination that is early voting commences, by a poll conducted for National Public Radio. The survey, jointly helmed by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and Republican pollster Glenn Bolger, surveyed 1,000 likely voters in four dozen competitive congressional districts - and Nevada was included.

The results - that by 51-40 voters would pick the Democratic candidate and that 56 percent disapprove of the job Bush is doing - are ominous for the GOP. As Bolger pointed out in an interview with NPR that aired Tuesday, Republican contenders have to localize the race and hope to obscure these disturbing (for them) national indicators, which Democratic hopefuls will emphasize.

An object lesson is occurring right here in Rep. Jon Porter's district, which is a bellwether in the Democrats' quest to find a minimum of 15 seats to take over the House. Bolger, who has done work in the 3rd Congressional District, told NPR that Republicans must employ one simple strategy to win: Make the Democratic candidate seem risky and thus sway independent voters now leaning away from the GOP.

You will notice that Porter has relied little on singing about any accomplishments or sounding the GOP trumpets - that band, unlike the one he plays in regularly, has been silent.

Instead, Porter has used two prongs to make his opponent, Tessa Hafen, seem unpalatable to swing voters in CD3, which is nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans and where independents make up 15 percent of the electorate.

The congressman has portrayed Hafen, a native Nevadan but unknown to many voters, as a carpetbagger just arrived from Capitol Hill, where she worked for Sen. Harry Reid. And he has used the GOP wedge campaign du jour - immigration - to make her seem like a weakling compared to him.

Thus, Hafen is too risky and too liberal for Nevada, as the campaign goes. As cynical - some might posit desperate - as that approach might be, it is all Porter can do to combat Hafen's one-note campaign.

And that note, borne out by the NPR poll, makes it hard to hear anything else: Porter is a GOP leadership puppet and is seen in every Hafen ad embracing the president. We haven't learned much from Hafen about what she will do.

We just know what she won't do - give the president a hug.

This crystallizes the campaign for the House across America. And the poll shows why it is - three weeks out - working for the Democrats, including Hafen, who is believed to be within striking distance of Porter: More voters (23 percent) cited the Iraq war than any other issue and by a wide margin.

I generally am an O'Neillist when it comes to these national polls. And Nevada has shown mixed results.

In 1994, the year of the Republican Revolution, a Democratic congressman named Jim Bilbray declared victory before he realized an unknown named John Ensign had overtaken him by 1,436 votes. (Is Jack Carter the John Ensign of 2006? Doubtful.) Also that year, though, a Democratic gubernatorial contender named Bob Miller held on against a little-known Republican legislator named Jim Gibbons, but only after the latter had a late-in-the-season campaign contribution brouhaha. (Is Dina Titus the Bob Miller or the Jim Gibbons of 2006? We'll see.)

What's clear is that CD3 is either going to be a microcosm of why the Democrats take the House on Nov. 7 or a perfect example of Tip O'Neill's enduring wisdom.