Fossella Challenger Will Run Two Races This November
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Stephen Harrison is bound to be a bit tired come Election Day, but the Democratic challenger to Rep. Vito Fossella won’t have a grueling campaign schedule to blame. He’s planning to run the New York City Marathon less than 48 hours before the polls open.
Political pundits aren’t giving Mr. Harrison much of a shot in either race. The 57-year-old trial lawyer and community activist has raised peanuts compared to Mr. Fossella, and he is banking on the long coattails of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Senator Clinton to help him defeat a four-term Republican incumbent.
The 13th District covers a slice of Brooklyn and all of Staten Island, which has long been known as the solitary splash of red in one of the country’s foremost liberal strongholds. Mr. Harrison isn’t buying that reputation.
“I don’t accept the premise that it’s a red district,” the candidate, a self-described centrist, said over coffee near Foley Square, where he attends court hearings a few times a month. In at least one respect, Mr. Harrison is right. While the 13th District has elected a GOP member to the House in every election since 1992, Democrats there outnumber Republicans by more than a 60-to-40 margin.
But Staten Island Democrats aren’t like those on the Upper West Side. In a borough heavily populated by military families, police officers, and firefighters, many are Reagan Democrats, a political consultant, Gerry O’Brien said, and they have voted conservatively for decades.
Mr. Fossella, first elected in 1997, enjoys two considerable advantages: He has raised more than 10 times as much money as Mr. Harrison, and he resides in Staten Island, home to a majority of district voters.
Mr. Harrison is a former chairman of Community Board 10 in Brooklyn and has practiced law in Bay Ridge for 20 years. He says he can “cross the bridge very well,” since his mother and sister live in Staten Island.
A lifelong runner, Mr. Harrison said he has been jogging nearly every day on his treadmill to prepare for the November 5 marathon, which begins on the island.
The Democrat’s criticisms of Mr. Fossella, who is the only GOP member of the city’s congressional delegation, are consistent with the party’s national strategy of linking Republican incumbents to Bush administration policies.
“I think he’s repeatedly voted far more closely with the people of Texas than he does with the people of Staten Island,” Mr. Harrison said.
For his part, Mr. Fossella, 41, seems to be distancing himself from the White House. His campaign slogan proclaims that he is “an independent fighter,” and as Mr. Harrison is quick to note, the word Republican does not appear in the biography on Mr. Fossella’s campaign Web site.
“I continue to represent the interests of Staten Island and Brooklyn,” the congressman said in an interview. “That means sometimes agreeing with the president, and sometimes that means disagreeing.”
Mr. Fossella cites his support of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program and his vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act as areas where he is aligned with Mr. Bush. He said he disagrees with the administration’s rubric for homeland security funding and favors a bipartisan approach to reforming Social Security.
The two candidates appear to differ most strongly on America’s strategy in the war on terrorism. Mr. Harrison opposes the Iraq war, and he criticized Mr. Fossella for voting in favor of Mr. Bush’s bill on terrorist detainees, which Mr. Harrison called “an attack on the Constitution.” Mr. Fossella, in turn, said Mr. Harrison’s opposition to the wiretap program, provisions of the Patriot Act, and the detainee bill amount to “weakness” on national security. “My opponent has adopted what is clearly a cut and run strategy when it comes to the war on terror,” Mr. Fossella said.
Mr. Fossella has agreed to debate Mr. Harrison four times, with the first scheduled for Monday.
Mr. Harrison’s campaign has been an uphill battle from the outset. Washington Democrats never warmed to him, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee even tried earlier this year to woo a City Council member from Brooklyn, Bill de Blasio, to run against Mr. Fossella.
Without help from Washington, Mr. Harrison has struggled to raise money; his campaign has a little more than $8,000 on hand.
Prominent Democrats like Senator Schumer and Rep. Anthony Weiner have stepped in to help of late, headlining a fund-raiser in Brooklyn last week that raised about $15,000. Mr. Weiner said he liked Mr. Harrison’s chances against Mr. Fossella but that the national party could come to regret its lack of support on November 8. “I just hope this isn’t one of those things where the day after we’re kicking ourselves that we didn’t do more to help him,” Mr. Weiner said.
For now, Mr. Harrison will scrounge for what he can get. Running for Congress by day and training for a fourth marathon by night, the Democrat vows he will complete both races. “I will finish the marathon, too,” he said. “I might limp across that line, but I will finish it.”