The differences between challenger Tessa Hafen and two-term incumbent Rep. Jon Porter in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District are easy to see, political watchers say, but what is not so clear is who will win.
The makeup of the congressional district encompasses one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. It ranges from the metropolitan areas of Las Vegas, to the suburbs of Henderson and to the idyllic Lake Mead and Red Rock Canyon areas. It is evenly divided between Democrat and Republican voters, making the outcome anything but easy to predict.
Republican Porter is a loyalist who has rarely departed from his party's agenda in the House. He's a veteran of political office, having served as Boulder City mayor and council member before being elected to Congress in 2002.
Hafen has never held office. She's a Harry Reid Democrat, both in her moderate Democratic politics and her roots. Her political experience consists of working eight years for Reid in Washington.
Political analysts in Nevada and Washington say Porter will be tough to beat, even with polls nationwide pointing to big Democratic gains in November congressional races - enough, perhaps, to give the Democrats control of one or both houses of Congress.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said last week his analysis shows that the election could produce one of the narrowest majorities ever in the House.
He also said the electorate seems more polarized than at any time since the turn of the 19th century. "It's a clear choice," he said. Voters will go to the polls with a simple question in mind: "Which side are you on?"
The Porter-Hafen race is drawing scrutiny and support from both national parties because the outcome is expected to be close. Porter won by 14 and 18 percentage point margins the first two times he ran. The outcome will be much tighter this year, said Republican consultant Pete Ernaut, but he expects Porter to win.
The campaigns kicked in last week as the two candidates faced off before a crowd of 300 at the Clark County Library. Hafen began in a shaky voice, her butterflies clearly rustling. She regained her footing in time to launch a rather polite attack.
Over the last week she has argued that Porter has been a trusty foot soldier in Washington as Republicans walked the country into problems - the war in Iraq, $3-a-gallon gas, tax cuts for the rich.
She said Porter supported the broad energy bill that gives huge tax breaks to the oil and nuclear industry to develop new power sources at a time when Nevadans are paying record high gasoline prices at the pump and fighting Yucca Mountain. He supported the Medicare prescription drug plan that has left middle-class seniors with a gaping hole in their coverage.
If she is elected, Hafen said, she would push for the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a strategy to bring the troops home from Iraq, development of alternative fuel sources to end the addiction to foreign oil and postponement of the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of Americans until the country has dealt with its record deficit.
"To go to Congress and just be a rubber stamp is not what people here want in a representative," she said in an interview last week over diet soda at the Gold Coast coffee shop. "I hope there will just be a wave across the country where voters say enough is enough."
At the library appearance, Porter took to the floor with the gravitas of an incumbent. His voice never shook as he talked about the "serious times" the country faces.
While many members of Congress are distancing themselves from Bush as the president's poll ratings hover in the mid- to high 30s, Porter stands by the Republican agenda. He says Hafen is from the party of "no" - no to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, no to the House immigration bill, no to staying the course in Iraq.
Two deviations he has made from the Bush administration are opposing Yucca Mountain, as every member of the Nevada delegation does, and supporting stem cell research, as most Americans do.
Porter defended himself against critics of the House immigration bill, which would make it a felony to help an illegal immigrant and toughen enforcement without providing a path to citizenship for immigrants who have lived and worked for years in the United States. That bill isn't perfect, he said, but it's a step in the right direction.
He said the same of the Medicare prescription drug bill. It has problems, but it is a step in the right direction - and 300,000 Nevada seniors now have coverage they didn't have before, he said.
During an interview while he toured Yucca Mountain last week, Porter said that Democrats "vote no and then they complain it's not perfect." His campaign is focused on bringing home money for a college nursing program, transportation projects and homeland security.
As the campaigns heat up, a number of leading lawmakers will come to Nevada to boost their party's candidate in the race.
Hafen's cause will be helped along, too, by the Democratic Party's decision to move the 2008 Nevada presidential caucuses to immediately after the Iowa caucuses - making it the second contest of the presidential primary season. The campaigns of as many as a half-dozen Democratic presidential aspirants are considering trips to Nevada after Labor Day to campaign for candidates here and begin assessing the landscape with an eye toward 2008.
Reid has raised substantial sums for his former press secretary and will continue on through the campaign. She has raised $800,000 for her campaign - enough to make a credible run but only a third as much as Porter has raised.
On the Republican side, New York Rep. Tom Reynolds, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told reporters that the party will do "whatever it takes" to support Porter's campaign against a "B-list" candidate.
House Majority Leader John Boehner and House Speaker Dennis Hastert are stopping in Nevada this month to raise money for Porter.
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