The Ohio Free Press

By JAMES HOHMANN

LOGAN, Ohio–Democrats here are furious with Rep. Zack Space’s vote against the recent landmark health care legislation. His once-strong relationship with local labor chapters is strained. Past campaign supporters claim their congressman’s decision to flip from ‘yes’ on the bill in November to ‘no’ in March reinforced a deep sense of cynicism about politics.

And yet most of them plan to vote for his re-election.

As unhappy as they are about Space’s health care vote—and as distasteful as they found it—many local labor officials, party leaders and activists say the alternative is far worse. They recognize that their neighbors in the southeastern Ohio-based district Space represents tend to be conservative-minded, and are well-aware that a Republican represented the district for 12 long years until stepping down amid scandal in 2006.

It’s a familiar sentiment in the 34 House districts currently inhabited by Democrats like Space who bucked the party on the historic health care vote, with the initial rage and promises of ballot box retaliation giving way to a more measured calculus that accounts for the hard local political realities in many of those seats.

In one recent example, physician Kevin Weiland in South Dakota decided last Tuesday—hours before the state’s candidate filing deadline—not to mount a primary challenge to Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin after entreaties from top Democratic leaders concerned about the prospect of a messy primary endangering the party’s hold on the seat in the Republican-oriented state.

In Ohio, Linda Michaels, the chairwoman of the Knox County Democratic Women, acknowledged the local political landscape has colored her thinking about Space’s vote. Michaels, who hosted 88 people at her home last August for a mixer/fundraiser to benefit Space, said she “probably” would not have another fundraiser for Space because of his vote, but then added that it’s important to keep a Republican from winning the seat.

“I’m definitely not going to vote for his opponent, I can promise you that. So better to go with the snake that you know, or the devil that you know, than the devil that you don’t know,” she said. “Many of my friends are disappointed but will swallow it anyway because the alternatives are so terrible.”

Other local activists here desperately want to hold a competitive House seat in what they view as a year that holds promise for the Republican Party. That motivates even the most disappointed among them to at least acknowledge that Space had a difficult balancing act on the issue.

“Zack has just been the complete opposite of anyone we’ve had before,” said Jo Ann Murtha, his Hocking County campaign coordinator, who urged him to support the Senate bill but promised to back him regardless. “We had to start somewhere (on health care), but I think it was smart politically. His ‘no’ vote might bring in some independents.”

As pressure from national Democrats mounted the week of the vote—Space met with Obama in the Oval Office the Wednesday before the vote for nearly an hour and Speaker Pelosi cornered him on the House floor—Space held a conference call for his reelection campaign’s 16 county coordinators to gauge how switching his position from yes to no would play at home.

“You vote how you think you should vote, and I’ll support you,” Murtha recalls telling him, a sentiment she described as widespread on the call.

The congressman also had several conversations with Joe Rugola, Ohio’s AFL-CIO president.

Rugola told Space that he risked dispiriting labor volunteers and argued the bill wouldn’t be nearly as unpopular after it passed. But, most significantly, he says he made clear that the bulk of labor would stand with him either way. He told White House officials eager to have theAFL-CIO intensify pressure that it was more important to keep the seat than to get Space’s vote on health care.

“I told them I’m not going to send the signal that we’re going to walk away from Zack over this vote,” Rugola said. “No right thinking person would do anything to yield that seat to an anti-labor, anti-working family Republican in that district…It’s not an easy decision when you come from a district like Zack’s.”

Space has also relied on his own powers of persuasion to defuse some of the local tension. Lawrence “Bud” Myers, a 69-year-old retired Lutheran pastor and loyal Democrat, came to a “meet and greet” Monday afternoon on Logan’s Main Street in search of an explanation on why Space voted against the bill. Myers gets trapped in Medicare’s so-called “doughnut hole,” which forces him to give up injections for his rheumatoid arthritis.

When Space arrived at the event in this town of 6,700, about an hour’s drive southeast from Columbus, he grabbed a folding black chair and sat down knee to knee with Myers. He said to call him “Zack.” Then Myers talked about a form letter he got from his office.

“It sounded more like the Republican talking points, very vague and not with specifics,” Myers told him.

“I apologize for that,” said Space, 49, wearing a dark blue, pinstripe, power suit. “I’m not going to be in the position of bashing the bill.”

Then he leaned in and spent almost 15 minutes critiquing the Senate bill—mostly from the left.

Space explained his “fundamental disagreement” with the so-called Cadillac tax.

“That’s a door we should have never opened,” he said. “In essence what this represents is a tax on middle class families to provide for the working poor.”

“Another thing I don’t like about this bill is that the insurance companies now, boom, have 30 million new customers without any additional competition,” he said. “The House bill has a measured public option…I made sure we did it right.”

Myers wasn’t yet satisfied.

“My fear is that if this didn’t pass, it would be a long time before anything happened again,” he told the two-term congressman.

“I just don’t buy it,” Space said, nodding his head in disagreement. “I got the distinct impression where I felt we were passing legislation for the sake of passing legislation.”

That appeared to assuage Myers’ frustration.

“I will confess that I will forgive you for some of my ill thoughts about you,” he said.

For just over 90 minutes, Space held court with small groups of one, two or three constituents this way.

Across town at the county unemployment office, Jerri Goodlin, a self-described liberal who lost her job as a manager at a temporary services company in January, was another constituent whose anger has dissipated.

Though she has an epileptic 15-year-old daughter who requires medication she cannot afford and is part of the 13.3 percent unemployed in Hocking County, she isn’t willing to jettison Space over his vote.

“I’m thinking, ‘You dumb ass!’” she said, describing her initial reaction to Space’s switch. “But we don’t see everything so I don’t know…Everybody’s entitled to a mistake now and then. So far I haven’t seen anything different that would make me not support him.”

Since many Democrats in the district aren’t very liberal at all, some who attended Monday’s forum actually lauded Space’s vote. Registered Democrat Harry Sowers said he sent an email to Space through his web site noting that he’d definitely vote for the congressman precisely because of his vote. He said he had no idea that Space had backed the farther-reaching November health care bill, even after speaking with the congressman.

“We need to run our government for the people—not backroom politics,” said Sowers, who gives airplane tours for a living.

Some local Democrats, however, simply cannot bring themselves to cast another vote for Space. The local chapter of the Service Employees International Union has officially rescinded its endorsement of Space.

SEIU activist Betty Smith, 67, plans to withhold her vote.

“If I feel that somebody I don’t think is right, I’ll just skip over the block,” she said. “That would be the case for him.”

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which has threatened to withhold field support this fall, left the door open for Space.

Allison Petonic, the Local 1059 political director, said Space has been loyal to labor on other important issues, including card check and jobs bills.

“It’s the feeling of betrayal on the type of reform that people have been looking for. I don’t know how to quantify angry,” she said. “There’s seven months-plus until this election. There’s an opportunity for all elected officials running for reelection to reestablish their commitments to working families.”

Space downplays any talk of a fissure with the House of Labor.

“Most of my friends in labor are still my friends,” he told a supporter who asked about it Monday in Logan. “I don’t represent them. I represent the people here.”

For their part, local Republicans aren’t even convinced that health care will be Space’s undoing. They view Space as far more vulnerable on the issue of his support last June for the energy bill, also known as cap-and-trade, since more than 80 percent of Ohio coal gets produced in either Space’s 18th District or the neighboring 6th District.

After that vote, the Ohio Coal Association put billboards up around the district that read, “Like a puppet on a string, Congressman Space danced to Nancy Pelosi’s tune in voting for the National Energy tax,” the signs said.

Rod Carr, the chairman of the Hocking County Republicans, said that he thinks the ‘no’ vote on health care was a response to the peril Space finds himself in as a result of voting in favor of cap-and-trade.

“I think he must have thought he could weather one of those things but not both,” Carr said.

On Monday, Wendell Hull, a 76-year-old Republican with a cattle farm outside town, told Space that the cap-and-trade vote matters far more to him than health care.

Space stood by his vote, waxing on the need for energy independence. He said he helped win over $150 billion in offset credits in the bill– now pigeonholed in the Senate – to help the industry adjust.

That didn’t satisfy Hull, who complained that his taxes are already too high and keep going up.

“I hear you,” Space said. “That’s one of the reasons I voted against the health care bill!”