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Republicans can take some comfort in the fact that one general rule about politics remains true, even in this difficult year: as mad as voters are at Washington in general, they are still pretty happy with the individual people who represent them. In the TIME poll, 63% of respondents said they approved of the job their local lawmaker was doing. That's one reason Republican strategists say they plan to battle the national tide by localizing individual races. Localizing suggests drawing voters' attention to the issues that most affect them at home. But in practice, to political operatives it means putting an opponent through the shredder. Republicans plan to go after Democratic challengers with every bit of ammunition they can find, from old tax liens to long-ago votes to raise local taxes.
Democrats say, Bring it on. "If they want to have a negative campaign not about the issues, they will be met on the campaign field," says Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel, the former Clinton White House aide who heads the Democrats' campaign committee for House races. Theirs has been a shifting line of attack. January's mantra about the G.O.P.'s "culture of corruption" became February's lament about the "rubber-stamp Congress." The latest slogan they are hurling against the Republicans is "dangerously incompetent." (That, however, can be a tricky visual, as Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow discovered when she stood next to a placard with those two words and gave a speech two weeks ago on the Senate floor.)
The most appealing argument the Democrats are offering may be their candidates, who were recruited more for how they fit the districts in which they are running than for how they match the party's national ideology. In Pennsylvania, which has an active bloc of Catholic voters, Casey is an opponent of abortion rights. That same position cost his father, then the Governor, a speaking spot at the 1992 Democratic Convention. For what could be two close races against female Republican incumbents--Heather Wilson in New Mexico and Deborah Pryce in Ohio--Emanuel found women challengers. Former NFL quarterback Heath Schuler has added star power to the race in a North Carolina district. Incumbent Charles Taylor is on the defense there with claims that an electronic glitch prevented him from casting his vote against the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which Bush had sought but is unpopular among Taylor's constituents, who believe it will cost the state jobs.
The most obvious line of defense for Republican candidates is to point out their differences with the President, as the party-wide revolt over the ports deal amply demonstrated. In the face of the Democrats' "rubber stamp" charges, G.O.P. lawmakers are distancing themselves on other issues as well. In Kentucky, Representative Anne Northup, generally a staunch Bush backer, notes that she strongly supports reimporting cheaper drugs from Canada. In Missouri, Senator Jim Talent emphasizes his successful push for an amendment to last year's energy bill that requires 7.5 billion gallons of renewable energy to be in the nation's fuel pipeline by 2012. Boasts Talent adviser Lloyd Smith: "He took on the Bush Administration and the oil companies."