Luring Lapsed Democrats in Kentucky
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: November 2, 2006
BARDSTOWN, Ky., Oct. 27 — When Ron Lewis, a Republican, won an upset in a special election here in the spring of 1994, he replaced a Democrat who had represented the district in Congress for four decades before he died. Mr. Lewis’s victory in an overwhelmingly Democratic area came to be seen as a harbinger of the Republican sweep that followed that fall.
Now, Democrats are hoping that Mr. Lewis’s first tight race in a decade could be a bellwether of a Democratic tide this year.
His opponent, Mike Weaver, has come increasingly close to Mr. Lewis in the polls by running as a conservative Democrat on a slogan of “Faith, Family, Freedom.” He has emphasized his military background in signs urging people to vote for “Colonel Mike Weaver.” And if the Democrats win a majority, he says he will not vote for Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader whom Republicans have caricatured as the symbol of all things California and liberal, for House speaker.
With widespread unease about the war in Iraq, even in a region that includes the Fort Knox Army base, many Democrats who have supported Mr. Lewis are now saying that Mr. Weaver seems like the kind of Democrat who could bring them back to the party.
“What I hear when I go out in the district is, ‘Thank goodness we have a Democrat we can vote for,’ ” Mr. Weaver said....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/us/politics/02kentucky.html
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