There are two 12th Congressional Districts, and at the moment each is a bit cross with John P. Murtha.

One is the old 12th, centered in Cambria and stretching into bituminous reaches of Somerset, Armstrong and Indiana counties. It's the place that sent Mr. Murtha, D-Johnstown, to Congress by a pencil-thin margin in a special election almost 35 years ago.

Enchanted by his youth, vigor and capacity to steer grants, plants and gifts to his hometown, they returned him to office in 17 subsequent elections.

The other is the new 12th -- an inheritance of reapportionment, stretching through a swatch of Westmoreland, a sliver of Allegheny, chunks of Washington and Fayette and all of Greene counties.

The farther west you go, the deeper the puzzlement at the congressman who called Western Pennsylvania "racist" in an interview with the Post-Gazette editorial board and then apologized by substituting "redneck" in a television interview.

Mr Murtha already had irked veterans and social conservatives in the area by calling for a U.S pullout from Iraq and accusing eight Marines of atrocities in the town of Haditha.

Back home, the "racist" remark is viewed as Mr. Murtha -- who is as famous for his plain speech as for his capacity for handing out federal moolah -- speaking more bluntly than clearly. Yet, in much of the new district, well to the west of Johnstown, there is puzzlement verging on anger.

In many ways, this congressional election is a referendum on Jack Murtha -- Prince of Pork or High Priest of Hubris depending on one's ideology or, more likely, familiarity.

Voters on the western fringes of the 12th know the name, but, until he kicked a late-starting campaign into gear, his only television presence was a "Saturday Night Live" skit mocking his gaffe about Western Pennsylvanians and race.

With polls showing a tightening race, Mr. Murtha's campaign has cashed in on some past favors. Tomorrow, for example, former President Bill Clinton is appearing on his behalf at a get-out-the-vote rally at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.

Mr. Murtha has survived bad spells in the past, always on the strength of his reputation as a Democratic hawk able to bring in federal dollars. In 1980 he was implicated in the Abscam bribery scandal and ended up testifying against two colleagues.

Often neglectful when it came to campaigning, he nearly lost a 1992 primary to a little known lawyer from Greensburg. This time, a newcomer to his district is poised to deliver an Election Day blow that could be cautionary or career ending.

Bill Russell, a retired career military officer, moved to Cambria County a year ago, set up a house in a Johnstown suburb, circulated petitions, got knocked off in a petition challenge, then won the GOP nomination in a write-in.

From those unlikely beginnings, he has mounted the biggest general election challenge Mr. Murtha has yet faced. Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has never intervened in the district, launched a series of television ads in the Pittsburgh market, targeting voters in the western half of the district, blasting Mr. Murtha's remarks.

The Democatic Congressional Campaign Committee has weighed in as well, with a late round of anti-Russell ads, essentially raising the once obscure Murtha-Russell race to the national level.

"In those outer areas voters seem to have come to the conclusion that John Murtha is out of touch," said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain.

Those outer districts are places like Waynesburg, Greene County, the westernmost city in the district, where Fred Walters, a Democrat, son of a coal miner, a Vietnam veteran, was sitting down to his lunch plate at the College Town Diner when asked about Mr. Murtha's chances.

"I don't talk to anybody about politics or anything," Mr. Walters said. "But I wouldn't vote for him."

Those comments on the war?

"That was hard on everybody, all the vets," he said. "It was just sort of a slap in the face."

And the remark about the region being racist? "I don't know about that," he said.

The apology, followed by the explanation that the place used to be redneck? "That don't bother me none."

Mr. Walters tucked into his lunch.

At the other end of the district, 75 miles to the east, Bert Hamrick was waiting for his table at Rizzo's Restaurant in the town of Windber. It's in the 12th and just across the county line from Mr. Hamrick's new home in Richland Township, Cambria County.

"I'm about 20 yards to the right of Barry Goldwater," said Mr. Hamrick, a Republican. He's voting for Murtha.

"I think that gentleman has brought people here, brought industry here," he said. In fact, Mr. Murtha may well have brought Mr. Hamrick here. He was a manager for Lockheed Corp., which set up two plants at the urging of Mr. Murtha, the ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee on defense. As such, Mr. Murtha controls billions in defense dollars and when he sets to put something in Pennsylvania, chances are it will be built.

Mr. Hamrick's wife, Waver, works at one of the two facilities Lockheed built in Johnstown in the past 20 years.

The 2008 election season began for John Murtha much the way others have. Big on constituent service and a legendary deliverer of earmark dollars, Mr. Murtha traditionally has coasted to reelection to the extent that he did little campaigning. Two years ago, he won by more than 20 percent. Two years earlier, the Republicans didn't field a candidate. Since going into office in 1974, he has never received less than 58 percent of the vote.

In November 2005, Mr. Murtha shocked colleagues and the folks back home by calling a press conference and urging U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The move stunned colleagues who had long known him as a pro-military, socially conservative Democrat. (His first speech on the floor of the House 34 years ago supported further appropriations for the South Vietnamese government.)

Mr. Murtha accused Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha of participating in a massacre of civilians. All but one of the Marines were later cleared of charges brought against them by a military court. The military is pursuing charges against the remaining member of that squad.

The call for a troop pullout, coupled with the Haditha remarks, set the stage for an increasingly angry congressional challenge.

The Russell camp -- which styles itself "The Russell Brigade" -- has activated dozens of military veterans and family members angry at Mr. Murtha's position on the war and especially his remarks about the Haditha Marines.

Mr. Murtha, who until recently had ignored Mr. Russell, declining to debate him, has begun to fight back with billboards touting the congressman as "a profile in courage" and radio spots accusing Mr. Russell of wanting to privatize Social Security -- a hot-button issue in the senior-heavy 12th.

At a labor-sponsored rally in Uniontown last week, Mr. Murtha hit hard on jobs and Social Security. In remarks afterward, he admitted he has work to do in the western end of the district, formerly represented by Democrat Frank Mascara, but drawn into the new 12th when the area lost a congressional seat after the 2000 census.

He hasn't represented those areas long enough to impress them with his budgetary prowess.

"It takes a long time. Sewage and water is what we started with first -- sewage and water is what you need to bring in business and that takes time," he said.

After five or six years, that infrastructure can then be built atop by pushing companies to open plants and offices. He noted that he'll be opening an armory in Greene County tomorrow.

Each side says the other is out of touch -- the Russell campaign saying Mr. Murtha is hardly recognizable as the steadfast pro-military man the district sent to Congress in 1974; the Murtha camp accusing Mr. Russell of residing in the district in name only, taking up a residence in the township of Upper Yoder simply to run for Congress.

The idea occurred to him to run for Congress, Mr. Russell said, after a group of wounded Iraq veterans visited his office at the Pentagon in March of 2007.

Mr. Russell had been at the Pentagon the day of the 9/11 attacks, as was his Polish-born wife, Kasia, who was then three months pregnant with their son. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, Mr. Russell was deployed for combat there.

Mr. Russell said he looked around for an Iraq War vet to run against Mr. Murtha after "seeing these young men and women with the wounds they had suffered and knowing that with his throwing the Haditha Marines under the bus and his call for withdrawal from Iraq that he was putting the United States Congress stamp of approval on enemy propaganda."

Those are stinging words, the kind Mr. Murtha, famously blunt, and unafraid to punctuate his remarks with "damns" and "hells," hands back with relish.

His campaign recently highlighted the fact that Mr. Russell flunked out of West Point in his junior year -- something Mr. Russell attributes to a combination of mononucleosis and the mysteries of a course called multi-variable calculus.

At each campaign stop, in almost every interview, Mr. Murtha has taken to reminding people "how proud I am to represent this patriotic, hard-working district."

He professes not to have seen the SNL skit in which comedian Darrell Hammond portrays him with a Brooklyn accent, not the slight Appalachian twang native to his home in Cambria, and has him apologizing for his "racist" gaffe by saying of his constituents, "It's more that they're ignorant."

The offense taken by some voters ranges from the slight to the deep. Charles Lemley, who was lunching at the same Waynesburg restaurant as Mr. Walters, was irked by the "redneck" reference and the undertones of class difference that inform it.

"Well, we're not rednecks but we don't live the way Pittsburgh people do, neither," he said. As it stands now, he would vote for Mr. Russell.

Two blocks up Main Street, Bill Baer, a retired elementary school principal from Fayette County was buying wax for his hunting bow. He, too, is undecided, but his offense is less at Mr. Murtha's remark than its poor timing.

"I know what he said about being racist in this area. Probably his comments were a lot more accurate than what people would like to believe," Mr. Baer said.

"You put yourself out there without any protection when you make a statement like that because people won't admit it, even if they feel that way."

Voters in the old part of the 12th District in many ways agree with the assessment of Mr. Murtha's remarks, but they are also accustomed to his generosity and fearful of seeing it vanish.

"I think he did put his foot in his mouth. He stepped on a lot of feet and the scuttlebutt is there are a lot of nice folks who aren't pleased with what he said," said Keith Saylor, who inherited both his hardware store and his lifelong Republican registration from his late father.

Mr. Saylor remembers campaigning for Barry Goldwater with his dad and his family shares the same last name -- though they're not sure of the relationship -- with the longtime Republican congressman who represented the district and whose death in 1974 opened the door for Mr. Murtha.

Like many other old-line Republicans in Cambria, Mr. Saylor disagrees with Mr. Murtha's call for a quick Iraq pullout and thinks the comments on race were foolish. And he's voting for Mr. Murtha, for the most basic of reasons: "We're one of the biggest recipients of pork. And pork is good."