Sunday, September 03, 2006
Shuler’s Bid in North Carolina Hangs on Drawing in ‘Reagan Democrats’
Shuler’s Bid in North Carolina Hangs on Drawing in ‘Reagan Democrats’
By Jeffrey L. Austin 1:31 PM; Sep. 01, 2006 Email This Article
When Heath Shuler first came to Washington, D.C., to pursue a career, his arena was Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, where he played quarterback for the NFL’s Redskins from 1994 to 1996. If the resident of North Carolina’s 11th District relocates again to Washington next January, it will be about two miles up East Capitol Street — as a member of the U.S. Congress.
Shuler — a native of North Carolina’s mountainous west who was a football star at the University of Tennessee before a less-successful pro career — is staging a serious bid to unseat eight-term Republican Rep. Charles H. Taylor. Now a real estate executive, Shuler also is one of a very few strong Democratic takeover candidates in the South, a one-time party stronghold that has shifted strongly to the Republicans since the 1960s.
With just more than nine weeks to go before the Nov. 7 election, Taylor appears to be maintaining his traditional edge in the Republican-leaning 11th. The district gave 57 percent of its votes to President Bush in 2004, and it has given Taylor, a conservative Republican, at least 55 percent of the vote in all but his first congressional race in 1990.
Taylor’s biggest strength this year is the same one he has touted in fending off vigorous Democratic competition in his recent elections: a senior position on the House Appropriations Committee that helps him steer funds back home. He currently chairs the panel’s subcommittee on interior and environment.
Yet in Shuler, Taylor has drawn a vigorous and unusually well-financed challenger who offsets his lack of previous political experience with lingering name recognition from his gridiron exploits.
And Shuler has taken his well-known name into the district’s rural interior — a conservative-voting area that usually is Republican heartland — invoking his party’s promise of economic relief and trying to neutralize his opponent on social issues with frequent mention of his own “mountain family values.”
Shuler, who returned to his childhood home at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains in 2003, took to the stump last week in Henderson County with another North Carolina Democrat: John Edwards, the former senator (1999-2005) and 2004 vice presidential nominee who is considering a bid for president in 2008.
With his comments punctuated by Appalachian banjo music, Shuler told a crowd of about 300 of his proposed tax credit for homebuyers. Read Entire Article
By Jeffrey L. Austin 1:31 PM; Sep. 01, 2006 Email This Article
When Heath Shuler first came to Washington, D.C., to pursue a career, his arena was Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, where he played quarterback for the NFL’s Redskins from 1994 to 1996. If the resident of North Carolina’s 11th District relocates again to Washington next January, it will be about two miles up East Capitol Street — as a member of the U.S. Congress.
Shuler — a native of North Carolina’s mountainous west who was a football star at the University of Tennessee before a less-successful pro career — is staging a serious bid to unseat eight-term Republican Rep. Charles H. Taylor. Now a real estate executive, Shuler also is one of a very few strong Democratic takeover candidates in the South, a one-time party stronghold that has shifted strongly to the Republicans since the 1960s.
With just more than nine weeks to go before the Nov. 7 election, Taylor appears to be maintaining his traditional edge in the Republican-leaning 11th. The district gave 57 percent of its votes to President Bush in 2004, and it has given Taylor, a conservative Republican, at least 55 percent of the vote in all but his first congressional race in 1990.
Taylor’s biggest strength this year is the same one he has touted in fending off vigorous Democratic competition in his recent elections: a senior position on the House Appropriations Committee that helps him steer funds back home. He currently chairs the panel’s subcommittee on interior and environment.
Yet in Shuler, Taylor has drawn a vigorous and unusually well-financed challenger who offsets his lack of previous political experience with lingering name recognition from his gridiron exploits.
And Shuler has taken his well-known name into the district’s rural interior — a conservative-voting area that usually is Republican heartland — invoking his party’s promise of economic relief and trying to neutralize his opponent on social issues with frequent mention of his own “mountain family values.”
Shuler, who returned to his childhood home at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains in 2003, took to the stump last week in Henderson County with another North Carolina Democrat: John Edwards, the former senator (1999-2005) and 2004 vice presidential nominee who is considering a bid for president in 2008.
With his comments punctuated by Appalachian banjo music, Shuler told a crowd of about 300 of his proposed tax credit for homebuyers. Read Entire Article
