Kanjorski faces tough path to re-election

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden, former President Bill Clinton and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton all made sure to endorse Kanjorski when they appeared together in Scranton last Sunday.

“Folks, Paul Kanjorski’s … got a tough race because some people in his district believe that illegal immigration is a bigger cause of their economic problems than President Bush’s economic policies,” Bill Clinton said. “I got news for them and I’ve got news for you: you need to help him get re-elected.”

Biden said it would “say a lot about this region” if Kanjorski is re-elected.

In case it still isn’t clear, Kanjorski, 71, a Nanticoke Democrat, is in a tough race against anti-illegal immigration crusader and Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, whom he soundly defeated the last time he had a major challenge, in 2002.

It really shouldn’t be much of a rematch.

Everything about the political climate favors Democrats: an unpopular Republican president, a tanking economy, steep job losses, a Wall Street financial crisis that threatens people’s retirement plans, and on and on.

Despite all that, Kanjorski is one of the most threatened incumbent Democratic congressmen in the nation, according to political analysts who consider the race one of the GOP’s best shots at picking up a seat.

Consecutive independent polls by Franklin & Marshall College — one released Wednesday — showed Barletta ahead. Only slightly more than a third of those polled think Kanjorski deserves re-election and more than half say it’s time for a new congressman.

Supporters and/or Kanjorski say he’s in a tough contest for several reasons.

First, Barletta’s fight against illegal immigration gained him a lot of nationwide publicity and immensely raised his profile.

Second, voters are generally upset with incumbent Washington.

Finally, Kanjorski, they say, has been politically damaged by the controversy over his earmarking of millions in federal dollars to a now-defunct mineral-pulverizing water-jet technology company owned and operated by his nephews and daughter.

Kanjorski can sound especially bitter about the episode. He blames the media for failing to report as vigorously the FBI investigation that found no wrongdoing as they did the initial charges. His television commercials now blame Barletta for smearing him.

“Do you think if a Democratic congressman from northeastern Pennsylvania in the most corrupt Bush administration in history had committed anything wrong that I wouldn’t have been taken to the woodshed and shot?” he asks. “You bet your life.”

Kanjorski probably didn’t make it easier on himself by voting for an enormously unpopular bailout of Wall Street earlier this month.

West Pittston attorney Michael Cefalo, a longtime supporter, wanted him to let the free market work, but the congressman told him what he said over and over publicly: “Mike, we are close to total meltdown in this country.”

No retirement for him

Coming off triple bypass surgery last year, Kanjorski’s retirement after his current, 12th term, seemed a real possibility. But Kanjorski has argued for the last year that his next term is potentially prime time for him.

He is already the second highest-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee and chairman of its Capital Markets, Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee. As evidence of the position’s power, he had a high profile on the bailout, speaking publicly to major media in its defense.

If Democrat Barack Obama wins the White House and the party majorities in the House and Senate expand, veteran Democrats like him stand to gain serious clout, he says. Add to that the presence of Biden, a Scranton native, next to Obama.

“We can really get things done. And we’ve been dreaming of … getting to a progressive era,” he said. “We’ll be able to correct all the horrible things that have been done for the last eight years.”

Barletta, he says, would be in the minority party and too green to accomplish much, he says. Barletta’s flip-flops on Social Security privatization — he’s now completely opposed — and Iraq — he won’t say if he would have voted for the war he once supported — showed his unworthiness.

“I think that he has proven a number of times with positions that he’s taken that he’s either not ready, hasn’t thought about or he takes advantage of sometimes people’s misunderstandings of what can and can’t be done,” Kanjorski says. That Kanjorski isn’t facing an easy re-election after 24 years in office says something.

By the time they ran for their 13th terms, former area U.S. Reps. Joseph McDade and Dan Flood were cruising through easy re-elections on their way to becoming local political legends.

By Kanjorski’s own admission, he isn’t a “back-slapper,” and he has occasionally clashed with the area’s top politicians. “He’s a policy guy,” said former Luzerne County Commissioner Todd Vonderheid, once an intern, then an aide to Kanjorski. “And that may be to his detriment sometimes because he’s not a gregarious political person.”

When he thinks he’s right, Kanjorski can be stubborn, with some privately calling him arrogant. It’s not arrogance, Cefalo said.

“He’s really bright, that’s the thing,” he said. “He kind of follows his conscience. He’s not easily swayed.”

For more than a decade, Kanjorski unsuccessfully pushed an inflatable dam for the Susquehanna River, a proposal that ran into opposition among top Luzerne County leaders even in his own party.

Now, as Lackawanna County leaders struggle to build a passenger railroad to metropolitan New York City, he’s convinced it should be a high-speed train.

Loss fallout?

If he loses, his supporters say, woe to the 11th district, which has benefitted from his ability to bring home federal money. The list of federal money is long and varied. In Wilkes-Barre, it’s a riverfront project with a new levee system for which

Kanjorski produced funding after years of delay.

“If we get flooded, that’s 14,000 people who may be out of a job,” Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton said.

Kanjorski has represented Scranton for only six years, but $2.6 million he obtained will help build a landscaped island in the middle of the 500 block of Lackawanna Avenue. There’s also a bridge in Nay Aug Park and other money, Mayor Chris Doherty said.

“He’s done, by any objective standard, excellent or very good work in bringing to the district federal funds,” said Thomas J. Baldino, Ph.D., a political science professor at Wilkes University. ““He’s been kind of like a model congressman.” Despite the polls, don’t write him off, say Baldino and attorney Harry McGrath, the chairman of the Lackawanna County Democratic Party.

With Obama’s rise in polls in Pennsylvania, he could take Kanjorski along with him, they say. Last week’s F&M poll seemed to bear this out. Barletta’s 9-percentage-point lead had shrunk to 5 points as Obama’s climbed from 3 to 9 points in the district.

“Three weeks ago, I thought he had a really big problem. But right now, I think the shift is moving toward a strong (Democratic) political party vote,” McGrath said. Kanjorski expects to win and if he doesn’t he’ll be satisfied with his accomplishments.

“No one can take away from me by victory, defeat or death the pleasure of having represented the 11th Congressional District for 24 years,” he says.