October 16, 2010
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
PERRY, Ga. — As if embattled Congressional Democrats did not have enough on their hands, some are opening up a new front in their fight to save their seats — against Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House and a leader of their own party.
Representative Jim Marshall, a Democrat here in central Georgia, spent much of a debate on Thursday night renouncing Ms. Pelosi, whose liberal views and San Francisco district have always been anathema to this region.
“Pelosi was never my choice for speaker,” Mr. Marshall said, eliciting boos from a skeptical audience in an arena here at the Georgia National Fair. Mr. Marshall actually voted for Ms. Pelosi as speaker but said he had not wanted her for the job and would not vote for her again.
As the midterm campaign barrels through its final weeks, more Democrats — many but not all in conservative districts in the South — are backing away from Ms. Pelosi and declaring their independence.
The more outspoken, like Mr. Marshall, are also running television commercials to drive the point home. Mr. Marshall’s latest opens with a gaggle of hippies mugging for the camera.
“Georgia is a long way from San Francisco,” the narrator says.
At the same time, many of these Democrats have received financial aid from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose chief fund-raiser is Ms. Pelosi. In 2008, the committee spent hundreds of thousands to put Bobby Bright, an Alabama Democrat, in office, and it is spending money again this year despite his vote against the health care bill. Last week, he said he would not vote for Ms. Pelosi for speaker and began running a commercial saying so.
Biting the hand that feeds you is not always a successful strategy, but it underscores the stakes in the Nov. 2 elections. Many Democrats are doing whatever it takes to try to keep their majority.
And they apparently have Ms. Pelosi’s blessing.
“I just want them to win,” Ms. Pelosi said in a recent interview on “NewsHour” on PBS when asked about the defectors.
“They know their districts,” she added. “They are great communicators, very eloquent communicators to their own constituents.”
Other Democrats are swallowing hard, questioning the wisdom of helping out colleagues who, if re-elected, would only weaken their party leadership, particularly if the Democrats held the House by just a few seats.
Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist, said the approach carried risks. “We’ve found that too much attack on Democratic priorities and Democratic figures doesn’t necessarily bring a lot of benefit and can suppress the base,” he said.
“Could there be problems?” Mr. Mellman asked. “You bet. But more people are concerned about winning than about whatever post-election problems we might have.”
The number of defecting Democrats is hard to quantify since some, like Mr. Bright in Alabama and Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi, have said flat out that they would not vote for Ms. Pelosi while others have only signaled that they might not.
Representative Travis W. Childers of Mississippi said he would “like to see someone more moderate” as speaker. Representative John Adler, a Democrat of New Jersey, said Ms. Pelosi was dogmatic and divisive.
Still, in the debate here on Thursday, Mr. Marshall promised, “There will be enough conservative Democrats to assure that she will not be the speaker.”
His Republican challenger, Austin Scott, retorted that the only sure-fire way to guarantee that Ms. Pelosi would not be speaker would be to vote Mr. Marshall out.
Mr. Scott further told voters that because of Mr. Marshall’s stance, the Democratic leadership would surely strip him of his committee assignments and render him powerless to help the district, where Robins Air Force Base is the major employer. Mr. Marshall disagreed, saying, “I don’t expect that there will be retaliation against Democrats who take a principled position like this one.”
Some Democrats had already distanced themselves from Ms. Pelosi, especially after she pushed the health care bill through the House. But their overt declarations that they would not vote for her are relatively new and are intensifying.
Republicans say the emerging Democratic revolt against their own speaker is a sign of desperation. Of course, in many districts, the Republicans started the fight over Ms. Pelosi, forcing Democrats to respond and shift attention from defeating their Republican adversaries.
It is easy to see why they would drag Ms. Pelosi into the race.
A CBS News poll early this month showed that 44 percent of all registered voters viewed her unfavorably, while just 15 percent viewed her favorably. (A full 40 percent had no opinion.)
Among Republicans, 71 percent had an unfavorable view. But perhaps more alarming for Democrats, 46 percent of independents also viewed her negatively. Just 12 percent of them had a positive view.
Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, said the Democrats who were distancing themselves from Ms. Pelosi ran the risk of suppressing the Democratic vote. But he said they had no choice.
“They’re losing, and they’re losing because they’re tied to the Democratic Party in general and Nancy Pelosi in particular,” he said. He added that she was “downright toxic in many of these more conservative districts.”
These Democrats are trying to run as quasi-Republicans, he said, but voters will not support them when real Republicans are on the ballot.
Many Democrats are now boasting about how often they vote with the Republicans. When his Republican challenger said that Mr. Taylor “chooses Nancy Pelosi over Mississippi,” Mr. Taylor said that of the 1,466 votes he had cast since January 2009, “Nancy Pelosi agreed with my vote 34 times,” or 2 percent of the time.
Republicans are delighting in the chaos they have caused. In South Carolina, Representative Joe Wilson, the Republican who yelled “you lie” at President Obama during his health care speech to Congress last year, has linked his Democratic challenger, Rob Miller, with Ms. Pelosi, though Mr. Miller has never been in Congress.
In response, Mr. Miller has blamed Ms. Pelosi for Washington’s problems and said he would not vote to keep her as speaker. Still, he has received money from the Democrats, including a $2,000 donation several months ago from Ms. Pelosi.
“Pelosi should have signed a prenuptial agreement,” Wesley Donehue, a senior adviser to Mr. Wilson, told The Associated Press. “The man is trying to divorce her and take all of her money.”

