The Byrd Dilemma
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

West Virginia’s senior senator, Robert Byrd, could be in trouble in his 2006 re-election battle, but how much trouble depends on whom one asks. Some Republicans outside the state are licking their chops, on the theory that West Virginia could become another Bush-supporting red state that ousts a liberal Democratic senator, like South Dakota did in 2004. But West Virginia insiders caution that this race is no cinch for the GOP. This emerging race highlights how local politics will complicate life for Republicans trying to consolidate the president’s victories.
Outsiders view the state’s pro-Bush votes (by a wider margin the second time) as a sign that the state is trending rightward and that Mr. Byrd is open to attack for his strident opposition to the president on the Iraq war and the judicial filibuster. Locals, however, question that assessment.
Take the senator’s war views. His position sounds risky in a state that has more Veterans of Foreign Wars halls than high schools. But Mr. Byrd has helped neutralize his anti-war stance by cultivating a reputation for solidity on veterans affairs’ and for supporting local National Guard units, according to Robert Rupp, a professor of political science at West Virginia Wesleyan College.
Republicans still think they can undercut Mr. Byrd on foreign policy and defense. Recently, the National Republican Senatorial Committee started airing ads in part of the state charging, among other things, that Mr. Byrd voted against supplying body armor to American troops in Iraq and that he opposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning. Out-of-staters also hammer him for accepting more than $800,000 in donations from the far-left, anti-war, anti-Bush MoveOn.org political action committee. But the local politicians and observers interviewed for this column question how much traction that will gain among voters who know Mr. Byrd much better than they know MoveOn.org.
And this strategy assumes that President Bush’s successes in the state will translate into a voters’ revolt against incumbents who challenge the president. Yet it’s unclear that those victories were truly a ringing endorsement of the president. Both Albert Gore and John Kerry were bad candidates for West Virginia, notes Allan Hammock, a professor of political science at West Virginia University. Both were too environmentalist for this industrial state, and both came across as liberal elitists. Republicans have been making gains in statewide races lately, but the state is still Democratic, albeit of the blue-dog variety.
Then there’s the question of who will run against Mr. Byrd. A handful of lower-profile Republicans have announced their candidacies, but all eyes are on the state’s lone Republican member of Congress, Shelley Moore Capito. Now in her third term in Washington, Ms. Capito is the star of West Virginia’s GOP. Her fans point to a poll conducted in May showing her in a dead heat in a hypothetical race against Mr. Byrd; he edged her out by just 3 percentage points, 46% to 43%.
But other polls conducted earlier in the spring showed Mr. Byrd winning by 10 percentage-point margins with better than 50% support. Considering what a fixture he is in West Virginia, he’d be hard to beat. His neighbors have been electing him to the Senate since 1958. He brings home prodigious amounts of pork – by one estimate, 1,200 “monuments” to Robert Byrd dot the state, from a statue in the state capitol to a passing lane on a highway.
As a result, “the normal laws of politics will not apply in the case of Mr. Byrd,” says Gary Abernathy, the former executive director of the state Republican Party. Although he would love to see Mr. Byrd voted down, Mr. Abernathy “can’t imagine a scenario where the people of West Virginia would kick Mr. Byrd out of office.”
That presents a dilemma for Ms. Capito and those who are encouraging her to run. She has a great shot at re-election to her House seat. If she entered the Senate race, she’d be risking political capital she could save up for a future Senate run. And Ms. Capito is advancing up the leadership ladder in the House, sitting on the powerful Rules Committee that sets the terms of legislative debates.
Mr. Byrd’s biggest weakness may be his age. He is 87 years old and potentially facing a hotly contested race, a rarity in his long career. Then again, West Virginia is one of the “grayest” states in the nation, with 15.3% of the population 65 years old or older, so age may not be a liability. Length of years aside, the seat is his to lose.
The race is technically not even on yet – Ms. Capito has said she’ll wait until the fall to disclose her plans, although she’s rumored to be leaning strongly against running, and Mr. Byrd recently announced that he won’t announce his intentions until September. But the evolving campaign in West Virginia shows that all politics is still local, even in states where electoral support for the president would appear to signal Republican progress.
Mr. Sternberg is an editorial writer of The New York Sun.