In Pennsylvania, it's the Admiral Vs. the Firefighter

By Joe Klein

The military is the institution in our society that best reflects the values of the Democratic Party," says retired Vice Admiral Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania's Seventh District. This is a wonderful, underutilized political technique, the "Huh? Tell me more!" statement. And the small gathering of neighbors in Barbara and Charles Blum's Hershey's Mill living room is all ears. Sestak explains that the military provides universal health-care coverage and substantial educational benefits--"I was able to get a Ph.D. from Harvard," he says--and it has also been a pioneer in providing equal opportunity for all, including women and minorities. "Every military officer is a Democrat because he or she believes in investing in people," he concludes with a flourish.

As he speaks, Sestak is serving as a jungle gym for his daughter Alexandra, 5, who is climbing all over him. And now Sestak starts telling a story about when Alex was in the hospital because she "had a little tree growing." Alex looks up at her father and interrupts: "Dad, it was a tumor." It was, in fact, a malignant brain tumor. After surgery and months of chemotherapy, the cancer is in remission. In the rush to define the 2006 campaign as a national political event that will send a crucial message--thumbs up or down on George W. Bush--it is easy to forget that there are 435 separate House races and 33 Senate contests, and they involve some very complicated human beings. There is a national component to the congressional campaign in Philadelphia's southern and western suburbs, of course, but it is dwarfed by the human drama. Sestak is a local boy made good, a graduate of Cardinal O'Hara High School in Springfield, Pa., who attended Annapolis and then spent 31 years in the Navy, including command of the U.S. naval battle group in the Persian Gulf during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003. His opponent, the Republican incumbent Curt Weldon, is also a local boy made good, a classic Reagan Republican. He's a working-class kid, former volunteer fire chief and local pol who has built a reputation as the firefighters' best friend in Congress, who proudly announces that he has "been to every major American disaster in the last 20 years." Weldon wears dungarees and pitches in when he visits disaster sites, digging through the rubble of the World Trade Center and helping rescue the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He is an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe and stands next in line to become chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

"Curt can be absolutely brilliant," says a House colleague. "But there's also a slightly unhinged quality to him." Weldon recently insisted, along with Pennsylvania's U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, that there were still weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He also claimed that a secret Pentagon unit called Able Danger had identified Mohamed Atta at the center of the 9/11 terrorist conspiracy a year before the attacks, a claim that has been dismissed by both the White House and the 9/11 commission. Weldon has been associated with some questionable lobbying schemes: both his daughter Karen and his real estate agent, a longtime friend named Cecelia Grimes, have set up lobbying firms representing defense contractors and East European companies that have received Weldon's support for their products. Sestak is 54 and looks younger; Weldon is 59 and seems older. There is a last-hurrah quality to his campaign: Weldon has held the congressional seat for 20 years and has never had a tough race, but the district has trended blue in the latest presidential elections; John Kerry beat George W. Bush 51% to 48% here in 2004. As he traveled from event to event on a recent Sunday, Weldon seemed nervous and slightly desperate. His most persistent line of attack against Sestak was quite silly: that the admiral is a carpetbagger. "He still lives in Washington," Weldon told me. "He drives around the district in a car with Virginia plates. He gets the names of towns wrong when he visits them." Last April, Weldon seemed to go off the deep end when he attacked Sestak for having his daughter's cancer treated in Washington and not in Philadelphia or Delaware. "He's like an out-of-shape boxer," says one of Weldon's friends. "His timing is off. I know he deeply regrets that comment about Sestak's daughter." But Weldon is not the sort to make public concessions.

Sestak is a surprising candidate in many ways. He is a passionate speaker--not your usual stoic military man--who can wax overly melodramatic at times. His Navy friends describe him as brilliant but impossibly demanding. He has a sophisticated grasp of national-security issues, which makes his closely argued support for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2007 quite compelling. But Sestak spends more time on the stump talking about domestic affairs than foreign policy. Asked about health insurance at a house party in Middletown, he said he was very interested in the universal plan recently passed in Massachusetts. "If everybody's covered, you'll find fewer people going to sick bay." He stopped, trying to renavigate into civilian lingo. "You don't call it sick bay, it's ..." The crowd shouted in unison, "The emergency room!" He began to laugh and said, "Well, it's been 31 years."