Ground Game '06

In 2002 Republican State Senator Jim Gerlach won election to the US Congress by a slim two percentage points in suburban Philadelphia's 6th District. Two years later his re-election race was so tight that his Democratic opponent, lawyer and party activist Lois Murphy, thought she'd won when she went to sleep on election night. Gerlach, though, hung on by 6,000 votes. Ever since Murphy announced she was running again, the race has been among the most competitive in the country. It's a classic matchup: a moderate Republican versus a moderate Democrat in a moderate district.

This year, however, Gerlach has the added problem of needing to distance himself from a scandal-plagued Republican Congress and an unpopular President Bush, whose approval rating in Pennsylvania is 34 percent. Gerlach is counting on the game plan developed by Karl Rove. Gerlach's chief strategist, Mark Campbell, was an original member of a task force Rove assembled after the 2000 elections to study how Democrats mobilized voters in the seventy-two hours before an election--and how Republicans could surpass them. Soon Rove & Co. were beating Democrats at their own game. "If it's been invented in modern politics, we're using it," says Campbell. Gerlach's race will test a key GOP strategy: Can Rovian turnout tactics protect the endangered Republicans who are needed to retain control of Congress?

An ability to better identify, energize and mobilize voters--combined with the message that Republicans can keep Americans safer--helped Bush's party win the past two elections. But the quagmire in Iraq has offset the GOP's traditional upper hand on national security. And the combination of an energized Democratic base and a sour national mood could neutralize the GOP's superior get-out-the-vote (GOTV) apparatus. A recent Pew Research poll found that 51 percent of Democrats are more excited to vote this year than usual, compared with a third of Republicans--a stark contrast to a four-point GOP advantage in '02. The Foley scandal has only further demoralized an already disaffected GOP base, leaving a wide enthusiasm gap favoring Democrats. Only 57 percent of white evangelicals are inclined to vote Republican this year, down twenty-one points from '04. Even a small decline could cost Republicans Congressional seats.

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