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Despite Voter Concerns, Candidates Dodge War

By Jeremy Wallace
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Posted on Friday October 13, 2006

Polls and candidates’ forums show the Iraq war is a top issue on the minds of voters, but congressional candidates across Florida are veering away from details about troop deployments, withdrawal dates, diplomacy efforts and other specific strategies.

For Democrats, there is a fear that pushing too hard to withdraw troops—while appeasing the anti-war wing of the party—could make them look soft on defense.

For Republicans, the fear is appearing to give President Bush too much leeway in a war that has already gone on for 31/2 years and cost the lives of more than 2,500 American soldiers.

“It’s the 500-pound gorilla issue and they don’t know what to do with it,” said Darryl Paulson, a University of South Florida political science professor. “Nobody’s got a solution.”

Instead, Democrats and Republicans running for Congress are turning to far safer sound-bite material, declaring support for the troops and vowing to ask tough questions of military planners after the election.

“I want more information,” Democrat Christine Jennings said when pressed for her position on a set withdrawal date. “How can I say what to do, when I see the same information as everyone else?”

Jennings, who is running to replace Katherine Harris in the 13th Congressional District, said she needs to talk to more military experts to know what is really going on.

Her Republican opponent, Vern Buchanan, has almost the same approach, talking about needing more information before committing to when bringing the troops home would make sense.

“I’m going to do what I think is right for the country and the troops as I get more facts and more of an inside look,” Buchanan said.

The lack of specific answers comes as the president aggressively defends the war, preaching a “stay the course” patience. That defense comes amid criticism from Republicans like former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that a change in strategy may be needed if the situation doesn’t improve in Iraq soon.

Democrats like former presidential candidate John Kerry have called for setting a withdrawal date for next July. Others, like Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., have called for creating self-governing regions under a centrally controlled Iraq.

Few candidates for office are backing any of the ideas. It’s not just in Florida, either, said James Zogby, director of the Arab American Institute in Washington, D.C. He said that throughout the country, candidates are silent on what to do about Iraq.

“In not a single House or Senate race being contested this year will the candidates engage in a serious debate about the failed U.S. policy in the Middle East,” Zogby said.

In the U.S. Senate race, Iraq is relegated to a few sentences on Web sites for Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson and his Republican opponent Katherine Harris, although both voted for the war.

Both candidates say little beyond the fact that they support the troops and oppose setting a strict withdrawal date.

But avoiding specifics is going to become increasingly difficult for all candidates because the war is having more resonance with voters than even the Mark Foley scandal, said Charlie Cook, a Washington-based nonpartisan political analyst.

The GOP’s majorities on Capitol Hill are far more imperiled by the attention that voters are once again giving to the war in Iraq, he said.

Polling backs Cook.

In a Newsweek poll published this week, 33 percent of 1,004 respondents from around the nation said the Iraq War was the most important issue for their vote, 13 percentage points higher than the economy and 21 percentage points higher than health care or terrorism.

Buchanan is far from the only Republican for Congress limiting his comments on Iraq to the war on terrorism.

In the 9th Congressional District in northern Pinellas County and eastern Tampa, Republican Gus Bilirakis’ Web site includes statements supporting the war on terrorism, but offers no insight into how he proposes to deal with Iraq.

It’s similar in Fort Lauderdale, where U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw Jr. dedicates no space on his site to the war, besides stating his support for the troops and the global war on terrorism.

Even Democrats, who have more to gain by hammering the war as an issue, are shying away.

Democrat Tim Mahoney, running for the 16th Congressional District, which includes most of Charlotte County, has one sentence on his Web site about Iraq—“Win the Peace in Iraq”—and nothing in his television ads about it.

His Republican opponent, Joe Negron, on his site falls back on a familiar position: “We should listen to the commanders on the ground as to how to best approach the challenges in Iraq.”

One candidate for Congress who is willing to delve deeper into the topic is Phyllis Busansky, a Democrat running against Bilirakis in the 9th District.

Busansky has made Iraq the No. 1 topic in her campaign and lists it as such on her campaign Web site. She advocates the three-state solution promoted by Biden. That plan would create separate, self-governing regions for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, but keep a central government in place.

Busansky is running in a district that includes MacDill Air Force Base, home of U.S. Central Command, one of the five geographically defined unified commands within the Department of Defense. CentCom, as it is known, is responsible for planning and conducting military activity in Iraq.

Because of CentCom, Busansky’s campaign manager, Robert Becker, said it is imperative that she take a stand.

“It’s impossible for her to shy away from it,” he said.