Terry Cowgill

[Photo of Chris Murphy at an unnamed fair (it doesn't look like Goshen!) courtesy of the Murphy campaign.]

For Northwest Corner political watchers who are taking a strong interest in the 5th district Congressional race between incumbent Republican Nancy Johnson and state Sen. Christopher Murphy, there was an extensive analysis in Sunday’s Hartford Courant by Cornwall resident and Courant staff writer Rinker Buck.

And I use the word “analysis” advisedly, for the piece was anything but straight news. There was no indication in the headline or the slug that it was commentary or analysis, which it clearly was. Be that as it may, Buck is a terrific writer. He chose a Canton couple (who normally sit on opposite sides of the political fence) to illustrate a larger point. The man, a GOP stalwart, typically votes for Johnson, while the woman always casts her lot with Johnson’s opponent, whoever it is.

In the print edition of Sunday’s paper, the Courant helpfully lists Johnson’s opponents over the years. [Bonus points: Other than Charlotte Koskoff and Jim Maloney, can you name any of them? Hint: In 1982, Bill Curry was the first].

If the Smalls of Canton are typical of what’s going on in the Farmington Valley and the Northwest Corner, then Johnson has a battle on her hands. Last week the Murphy campaign released a poll (albeit commissioned by the campaign itself) that showed him pulling even with Johnson at 42-42 with 12% undecided and 3% saying “I don’t know.” It’s not clear to me from reading the polling memo what happened to the remaining 1%. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4.4% and it surveyed 500 likely voters.

Late in a campaign, conventional wisdom is that the undecideds usually break for the incumbent. But according to Westhill Consulting, the firm that conducted the poll, 31% of surveyed voters indentified as part of Johnson’s base indicated they might consider changing their minds before the election. Only 21% of Murphy’s base said the same about him.

Back to Buck’s piece. There is some mention in his story of the Iraq war, but not much. Johnson voted for it, for example, and continues to defend it, while Murphy “mostly hews to the ambivalent Democratic talking points on Iraq. (Murphy favors leaving Iraq ‘as soon as possible — but only when other nations agree to help stabilize a democratic Iraq.’)”

Given the fevered pitch of the Iraq war dialogue central to the Lamont-Lieberman senate race, I am surprised by how little play the war has received in media coverage of Johnson-Murphy. Could it be that in the case of House races, the issues tend to be more locally oriented?

But how would that explain Murphy’s emphasis on Johnson’s ties to the pharmacuetical industry and her support of the prescription drug bill that prohibits the feds from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices? Or maybe the House has a smaller role than the Senate in deciding matters of war and peace. Or perhaps, like lots of Dems nationwide, Murphy deplores the war but really doesn’t have a better plan for what to do now apart from Johnson’s stay-the-course strategy.

I am working on a story that will appear in next week’s LJ print edition on just this subject. Trying to find out where Johnson stands on the war is not easy. I could not find any mention of the subject on either her Congressional or campaign websites. A request to her campaign spokesman Brian Schubert for an interview on the war fell on deaf ears. All I got back via email was a one-and-a-half-paragraph statement attributed to the congresswoman.

I am scheduled to interview Murphy via telephone in a few minutes. Should be interesting.