Attack ads find favorite target in Pelosi

WASHINGTON — In one of the hundreds of campaign ads targeting the Speaker of the House, the candidate boasts, “I voted against Nancy Pelosi’s agenda 267 times.”

And that’s from a member of the California Democrat’s own party, which is at risk of losing its House majority on Nov. 2 and the powerful speaker post that goes with it.

Pelosi shrugs it off.

“I just want them to win their election,” she said of Democrats trying to keep a distance from their chosen leader.

While speakers from both parties have been vilified
in the past, Pelosi, who stands for many of the liberal themes under
attack in the midterm elections, appears to be taking an unusually high
number of strident campaign hits.

“Look, she is very partisan, doesn’t care much for Republicans, she comes from the left wing of her party and she comes from San Francisco,” said John Feehery, a former House GOP leadership aide. “That makes for a very inviting target.”

Pelosi has been featured in more than 400 attack
ads, mostly from Republicans, that have aired more than 130,000 times
coast to coast, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.

“He’s putting Nancy Pelosi’s liberal agenda ahead of our needs,” says a typical ad, this one targeting Democratic Rep. Scott Murphy in upstate New York.

Sacramento-area Republican Congressman Dan Lungren describes his Democratic opponent, physician Ami Bera, as “Nancy Pelosi’s choice for more spending and more taxes.”

“Had enough of Nancy Pelosi?” asks a Republican ad in Oregon.

Pelosi is fighting back by raising buckets of money — more than $50 million this cycle, party officials say — and showing up where she’s welcome and staying away where she isn’t.

If the 70-year-old lawmaker loses the majority, she
loses the speakership after just four years as the first woman to lead
the House, second in the line of succession to the presidency, after
the vice president.

Pelosi remains confident that Democrats will hold
onto the majority and that she will retain her post even though a
number of endangered Democrats on the campaign trail are pledging not
to vote for her as speaker.

“We’re in the game,” Pelosi said recently on “The
Charlie Rose Show.” “We don’t have any intention of losing. … We’re
not thinking in terms of what if.”

While Pelosi’s face or name is just about everywhere
— in TV ads attacking Democratic candidates for being Pelosi puppets
and on a GOP “Fire Pelosi” bus traveling around the country — the
speaker has been keeping a low public profile lately. This month, she
appeared before a friendly audience — the United Steelworkers Union’s
women’s conference in Pittsburgh, where some held up signs that said “Best Speaker Ever” — and held fundraisers in Boston and New York.

Although she has been the subject of Republican
campaign attacks before, this year the GOP has made her a favorite
target because of her high-profile role in promoting controversial
legislation, such as the health care overhaul. Some of her fellow
Democrats, especially in red territory, are also trying to steer clear.

In North Carolina, Democratic Congressman Mike McIntyre declares in an ad: “I don’t work for Nancy Pelosi.”

In Georgia, Rep. Jim Marshall, another Democrat in a tough race, is running an ad saying: “Georgia is a long way from San Francisco, and Jim Marshall is a long way from Nancy Pelosi.”

Although some question whether featuring an
unpopular speaker prominently in the campaign has any significant
effect, this year’s attempts to tie candidates to Pelosi appear to be
working, especially in conservative Southern districts, some Congress
watchers said.

Yet, Norman J. Ornstein, an expert
on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, said, “Is this going
to be an election where significant numbers of people vote in a
particular way because they want to vote against Nancy Pelosi? Nah.”

Pelosi is viewed favorably by 29 percent of
Americans, her lowest rating since she became speaker and only slightly
better than the lowest point for former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich, who in April 1997 was seen favorably by 24 percent of Americans, according to a Gallup poll.

“While President Obama may be of
some benefit on the campaign trail in terms of firing up the Democratic
base to turn out, Pelosi’s subdued favorability among Democrats and
highly negative image among independents suggest she is a far riskier
person for Democratic candidates to be associated with,” according to
Gallup.

“If she were not effective, I don’t think they’d be so anxious to try to take her out,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

If Democrats lose the majority, Pelosi could follow the lead of her predecessor, former Republican Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois,
who retired from Congress about a year after his party lost the
majority in 2006. She could also seek to return to the minority leader
position she once held, hoping Democrats would win back the majority in
2012.

But University of California-Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain said, “The Republicans have made such an issue of her that there will
almost certainly be people in the caucus and in the party who think
that having a leader … so heavily identified with Obama’s first
two-year agenda might not be the way to refashion themselves.”

On the other hand, Cain said, “You can’t imagine
somebody closer to the left who can still manage the party in a
practical, disciplined way the way Nancy Pelosi does,” noting that the election, ironically, could move the Democratic caucus to the left “and closer to her.”

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