Republican congressional candidate Karen Kwiatkowski has grown so frustrated with her failed attempts to confront her June opponent, incumbent U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, that she's scheduled a debate with Democrat Andy Schmookler in Harrisonburg.
Kwiatkowski is running against Goodlatte in the 6th District Republican primary on June 12, while Schmookler awaits the winner in the general election.
The fact that Kwiatkowski and Schmookler have scheduled the debate demonstrates the difficulty that both candidates have had in trying to directly engage Goodlatte, a 20-year incumbent from Roanoke County.
Goodlatte has run a re-election campaign that touts his work as a congressional Republican without ever acknowledging he even faces an opponent this year. He's declined to debate Kwiatkowski or answer questions about her.
"The Goodlatte for Congress campaign is focusing on reaching out to voters of the 6th Congressional District by direct voter contact, by door to door, phone banking and hosting events," said campaign manager Chris Leavitt. "We're going to continue to work hard throughout this election by doing those things."
Kwiatkowski, a Shenandoah County farmer and retired military officer, said that she doesn't mind Goodlatte bragging on his work in Congress.
"Mostly he's trying to run on his record," she said. "His record sucks. I'm running on his record, too."
Schmookler views this pre-primary debate as a way to get his message out before the general election.
"I understand that incumbents often avoid any kind of confrontation that gives their opponent a chance to be compared with them. They try to just coast into re-election," Schmookler said. "But the question then is, are these elections for people's career ambitions or are they to serve the voters of the district? I think it's to serve the voters."
Kwiatkowski is the first Republican to challenge Goodlatte since he first won election to Congress in 1992. That year Goodlatte faced a brief intraparty challenge but jumped ahead early and locked down the nomination well ahead of the convention.
Since then Goodlatte has enjoyed the closest thing to job security that one can find as a congressman. He's gone unchallenged many years and romped in the years he did face an opponent, never winning less than 60 percent of the vote. He enjoyed a newly elevated profile after Republicans reclaimed control of the House in 2010. His balanced budget amendment was a prominent part of last summer's negotiations to raise the debt ceiling, but ultimately failed to pass.
But he's also found that new attention to be a double-edged sword. Goodlatte's outspoken support and work on the Stop Online Piracy Act made him a primary target of widespread Internet-based protests in January.
Kwiatkowski used that bump to boost her campaign fundraising. As of Friday, Kwiatkowski's pre-primary report hadn't appeared on the Federal Election Commission's website, but she had raised $68,086 through March31. She still lags far behind Goodlatte, who through May 23 has raised nearly $1 million for the two-year election cycle.
To counter that, Kwiatkowski has focused her efforts on tea party groups, libertarians, independents and even Democrats.
"Yes, I'm coming at him from the right, but it's the constitutional right," Kwiatkowski said. "There's no doubt: I'm for small government, less spending. I'm to the right [of Goodlatte] on that; he votes for more spending. But on civil liberties, there's also a difference. That's the attraction. The other thing is, for Democrats, if you want to get rid of Bob, you have to do it in a primary. They've learned that."
Kwiatkowski received a warm reception at the 6th District Republican Convention earlier this year, while the response for Goodlatte was more mixed.
"It was not an establishment convention," Kwiatkowski said. "Had we chosen the convention method to choose the nominee, I'd be the nominee right now, and it would have been a 65-35 vote at worst. That's how the room was stacked."
Those are the people Kwiatkowski hopes will show up in force at the polls on June 12.
Longtime Republican political strategist and Hollins University professor Ed Lynch said he doesn't see Goodlatte having much trouble in the primary.
"If you limit the voting only to those who show up at the unit meetings in the 6th District, it might be close, but among the general population, I don't see Bob having any trouble at all," Lynch said.
But Gregory Honeycutt, the interim president of the Roanoke Tea Party, said the race may be closer than many may think. The Roanoke Tea Party hasn't endorsed in the race, he said, but Kwiatkowski has left a good impression on many of its members who have become disenchanted with Goodlatte, especially since his support of SOPA.
"I think the general feeling is you could do a whole lot worse that Goodlatte, but you could also do a whole lot better," Honeycutt said. "Goodlatte's heavily favored [but] it's going to be a lot closer than what the establishment folks will tell you. It's not even an anti-Goodlatte sentiment so much as it is anti-incumbent."
Kwiatkowski said she fully expects to win. But if she doesn't, she's already planning on running again in 2014. And she won't endorse Goodlatte in the meantime.
"If Bob wins in some way, we'll take the mandate that we have and that he didn't have, whatever percentage of the vote went to us, and we'll leverage that to force Bob into what we think he should be doing," Kwiatkowski said. "I'm going to stay in campaign mode and make Bob's life a living hell."
