Rothfus looks for '06 redux against Altmire
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WASHINGTON -- When Keith Rothfus hits the campaign trail, the bespectacled Republican attorney from Edgeworth spends a lot of time talking about 2006.
That was the year when a political upstart overcame a big fundraising disadvantage to unseat Pennsylvania's 4th Congressional District incumbent, who was tied to an unpopular president during a wave year for the opposition party. And Mr. Rothfus is looking to replicate Rep. Jason Altmire's path in what is looking like a similar electoral tide -- though this time, it's the GOP advancing on the Democrats.
"One of the big issues people were confronting [in 2006] was the issue of broken government and frustration when you're looking at spending going through the roof, stalled progress in Iraq," said Mr. Rothfus, a 48-year-old father of six.
"People wanted good government. They didn't want broken government, and they certainly didn't want big government. And the Democrats have not delivered on that. Government just got bigger, and it's still broken."
Mr. Altmire, who unseated Melissa Hart in 2006 and went on to beat her in a rematch two years ago, is inclined to agree with the shortcomings of the Democratic Congress, and his message often can be boiled down to: Don't blame me.
His ads declare that he is not beholden to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama. He proved it, he said, by voting against some of their biggest priorities -- health care reform and a comprehensive climate bill, to name two.
Mr. Rothfus' assertion that Mr. Altmire votes the party line nearly 90 percent of the time is technically true, but because the House casts votes on so many noncontroversial issues -- naming post offices, congratulating championship sports teams and the like -- that number is misleading, Mr. Altmire says. He is consistently ranked near the bottom of the Democratic caucus in party loyalty.
"He's trying to tie me in with an unpopular leader, which we certainly talked about in 2006," Mr. Altmire, 42, of McCandless, said.
"The difference is my voting record is very different from [Ms. Hart's] voting record ... Rothfus is running the same ads against me that I was running against Melissa Hart in 2006, but they're not going to resonate."
First Published September 27, 2010 12:00 am
