Two years ago the singer-songwriter John Hall -- co-founding member of the '70s soft-rock band Orleans -- challenged George W. Bush directly, when the president used the Orleans hit "Still the One" as his reelection campaign theme without permission. "As a promoter of an 'ownership society,' the issue of intellectual property rights is something the president should respect," Hall chided. The musician won his point (the Bush campaign discontinued its use of the song), but, of course, the president won the election.
To quote another song, the times they are a changing. This year, Republicans are on the ropes nationwide and Representative Sue Kelly -- whose seat in New York's 19th Congressional District was considered safe only months ago -- is now scrambling to keep her job. Meanwhile her opponent -- the same John Hall -- is holding rallies supported by an ever-growing backup band of Democratic stars (Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as New York's shoo-in gubernatorial candidate Elliot Spitzer just in the past week). All to the strains of, you guessed it, "Still the One."
The national Democratic Party had ignored this race for much of the year. The sprawling 19th has traditionally been red, encompassing the well-heeled suburbs of northern Westchester County (once home to Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller), West Point, and the Hudson Valley farm country of Putnam, Rockland, Duchess, and Orange counties. During this fall's primary, old Democratic pols were rattled by Hall's calls for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and transfer of control to multinational forces, universal health care, and an Apollo-style program for conservation and alternative fuels. Seeing Sue Kelly as a "moderate" Republican who has bucked the Republican line on a few issues such as choice and (occasionally) the environment, many party leaders backed Judy Aydelott, a lawyer and recent Republican turned Democrat. "Traditional wisdom has it that a man can't beat a woman," explained Hall's press secretary Tom Staudter. But Hall's celebrity and activism helped put him over the top in the September 12 primary.
And indeed, traditional wisdom is being swamped this year by a perfect storm bringing together the Foley page scandal (Kelly was chairman of the House pages board), lingering economic jitters, a mounting national deficit, and above all, the Iraq War. Sue Kelly has repeatedly backed the Bush administration on the war -- in a recent interview, she said that Iraq was "mostly pacified." The war's impact on the race typifies the unusual degree to which national issues this year have shaped local elections throughout the country.
Other changes in New York's 19th District are helping to shift the terrain in Hall's favor. "The people living here are very different than the people who were living here in the last election," said John Moultrie, a long-term resident and morning talk show host for two local stations. An influx of people from New York City, he said, who have moved either in reaction to sky-high rents or 9-11, has changed the demographics of the river towns and farming villages of the region. While Republicans still have the edge over Democrats in terms of registration, 100,000 independents put this race very much into the "jump-ball" category.
"This is a late breaking race," said David Wasserman, House editor of political analyst Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball blog, adding that rankings of the race have shifted quickly, from "safe seat" to "likely Republican" to "leaning Republican." (Last month, Congressional Quarterly changed its categorization of the race from "Republican Favored" to "Leans Republican.") This, too, is reflective of the national mood. "Voters are angry at the administration, and are getting angrier. Last July there were 30 competitive races," noted Wasserman. "By August, the field had expanded to 40. Last week, there were 50. This week there are 60. It's an incredible fast-track change. And a nightmare for Republican party committees."
Kelly, who came to Congress as part of the Republican Revolution of 1994, hasn't helped her own campaign much. Newspapers howled at her recent comment about Iraq being mostly pacified. In attempting to explain her lack of knowledge of Foley's folly when she was chair of congressional pages from 1999 to 2000 -- during which time at least one page received highly explicit emails from Foley -- Ms. Kelly replied she didn't realize what was going on, and beyond that has merely stuck to the mantra, "I'm a mother, a former schoolteacher, and a grandmother." Kelly has spent much of the campaign avoiding debates with Hall. Local papers -- all four of which have now endorsed Hall, including the conservative Poughkeepsie Journal -- have highlighted the reticence. The League of Women's Voters and the local cable station were so offended at her refusal to "give the public a chance to decide" that they prominently placed a vacant chair opposite her competitor during one televised non-debate.
Her refusal to appear on cable's popular "The Colbert Report" may have also proven somewhat costly. In a segment that featured Hall in Kelly's absence, Colbert wickledly snapped that "Like Velveeta, [Kelly] melted at the first sign of a debate." By the end of the interview, the comedian and the rocker were making music together, singing duets of "Dance with Me" and "The Star-Spangled Banner."
"He was really good," Hall said later, laughing at the memory. "He was harmonizing on the tuba line." (That is, the Star-Spangled Banner's tuba line. Just listen.) Hall also credits his appearance on Colbert with bringing more young people to campaign. "Some even asked me for my autograph -- not because of my albums, but because of my appearance on Colbert."
For his part, Hall sees his bid for Congress as part of a progression. He has been an activist for three decades, starting in the 1960s when he "was playing music day and night" in Greenwich Village. On Orleans' third album he wrote about industry-fueled environmental degradation. "The song was 'Cold Spell'," he laughs. "I got it wrong. Poetic license." Orleans' 1978 album "Power Authority" featured the calypso-beat "Plutonium is Forever" and the folk song "Power," which became the anthem of the anti-nuclear movement. With eerie prescience, the album was released three weeks before the meltdown at Three Mile Island. "'Power' addressed the urgent need for renewable energy sources -- 27 years ago," noted his long-time friend, singer and activist Pete Seeger.
Hall helped put together Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), which staged five huge anti-Nuke concerts in New York, drawing some 300,000 people to hear Hall, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Carly Simon, James Taylor, and others denounce atomic reactors and demand a green future. His entry into politics came when he became a county legislator, successfully fighting for the first zoning law in Saugerties, New York, before serving two terms on the local school board.
Kelly has tried dismissing Hall as a fuzzy-headed musician and mocking his activism. But Hall, as many have come to realize, is a complex character, devoted to the idea of the citizen candidate: He'll riff on the music he's made, and then wonk out, somberly (sometimes pedantically) ticking off the faults of his opponent and the commander in chief and his detailed plans for, say, low-head hydroelectric sites. To his press secretary's dismay, it's almost impossible to get a sound bite from him. To address that and other new media issues, Joe Trippi signed on as a television and Internet media consultant for the homestretch of the race.
But from the beginning, the campaign has boasted a chummy, communal quality and deep roots. Singers who have known him since the early days, like Bonnie Raitt, have campaigned and performed on his behalf. Meanwhile, many of the local residents who fill his campaign offices, making calls and canvassing, have worked with him in the past on environmental campaigns or in efforts on behalf of the local schools. Campaign manager Amy Little first met Hall in the 1970s, when he was protesting the Seabrook nuclear power plant. "Many of the people in the campaign have known John for years -- through his advocacy, his activism, and his music," she says. 85 percent of his campaign contributions are donations of $200 and under. In fact, Hall has one of the nation's largest grass-roots operations relative to the district's size, which is at least one of the reasons that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently upgraded the campaign to "Red to Blue" status -- which is meant to single out the party's strongest candidates.
There's other out-of-town help: Jonathan Tasini, the antiwar activist who challenged Hilary Clinton in the Democratic Senate primary, has been chartering vans to transport volunteers from New York City to the district's leafy suburbs, while labor, environmental, and other groups have also mobilized. "My guess is that there's 700 to 800 [workers] from labor alone," said one union volunteer. "All the money in the world can't buy that: Kelly runs the air war and we run the ground. You can get hurt from the air, but you can't win" merely through ads.
Campaign manager Little predicts a large turnout for an off-year election. "In the primary, there was a 100 percent increase in voter turnout." Hall is banking on tapping into the national mood of dissatisfaction to defeat Kelly. But, ever the idealist, he thinks something more hopeful is also riding on this race. "I'm interested in the idea of a citizen candidate," Hall says. His thoughts turn to the future. "I hope I'll serve at least two terms -- there's a lot be done. But I think it is important to have other citizens waiting in the wings for their chance to serve, too."
Suzanne Charlé, who writes on culture and politics for The New York Times, The Nation, and other publications, is co-editor of Indonesia in the Soeharto Years: Issues, Incidents and Illustrations.
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