GOP candidates distancing themselves from Bush

WASHINGTON — On Capitol Hill, Rep. Mark Kennedy of Minnesota and Sen. James M. Talent of Missouri are known as loyal Republican soldiers, reliable votes for President Bush on tax cuts and the Iraq war. In elections past, they have aired advertisements featuring the president and stumped with him at public rallies.

This year, both are running for Senate seats, but their television ads so far have made no mention of Bush — and are conspicuous in distancing the candidates from their partisan affiliation. "Most people don't care if you're red or blue, Republican or Democrat," Talent's ad states. A recent ad from Kennedy says: "He doesn't do what the party says to."

For months, political analysts have waited to see how GOP candidates would navigate the challenge of running in the face of what polls show are dismal approval ratings for Bush and the Republican-led Congress. The ads give an answer: Endangered candidates are presenting themselves as independent-minded problem solvers who are not part of Washington's partisan wars.

Even Rep. Thomas Reynolds of New York, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, has run TV ads in his Buffalo area district that do not identify his party affiliation.

These Republicans have hardly broken with Bush. Talent and Kennedy, after all, have invited him into their states this year to help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for their campaigns. But they are representative of the diverse ways, large and small, that Republican candidates are trying to put distance between themselves and the president and his most unpopular policies.

Last week, Maryland GOP Senate candidate Michael Steele caused a tempest with his comments knocking Bush for the Iraq war and the administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

The contrast could hardly be sharper from the past two election cycles, when most Republican candidates were happy to be identified with Bush, confident that his popularity with conservatives would boost their own prospects. This year more closely resembles 1994, the last time a party's president and congressional leadership were simultaneously held in such low regard. Voters that year evicted Democrats from their 40-year control of the House.

Steven S. Smith, a political scientist and congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis, said he believes the new Kennedy and Talent ads are a harbinger of what to expect from other GOP incumbents in tough races, such as Sens. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Conrad Burns of Montana. Their strategy, he said, is "to try to inoculate themselves against the inevitable series of ads from their opponent charging them with being Bushies."