Shortly before the February 25 health-care summit, President Obama unveiled his proposal for comprehensive reform, which was broadly similar to the Senate legislation that won approval on Christmas Eve but also borrowed some ideas from the House bill that passed on November 7. “The administration’s package includes nearly every major [problem] that caused me to vote against the first piece of health-care legislation last fall,” grumbled one congressman, adding that “there is no chance I am voting for this bill, because it raises taxes on businesses, creates job-killing mandates, grows the government, and cuts services to seniors.”
Those sound like standard Republican talking points — but they came from Oklahoma Democrat Dan Boren, who has been a persistent critic of both Obamacare and his party’s cap-and-trade energy scheme. Indeed, the 36-year-old Boren, who refused to endorse Obama during the 2008 campaign, may well be the most conservative Democratic lawmaker on Capitol Hill.
Compared with other Democrats who represent districts that went for John McCain, Boren is also unusually popular back home. Consider a recent survey by Public Policy Polling (PPP), a Democratic outfit based in Raleigh. “Dan Boren is the first Democratic member of Congress Public Policy Polling has found with an approval rating over 50 percent since last October,” PPP reported last week, “and because of that he holds a solid lead over all of his potential Republican challengers for this fall’s election.” According to the poll, most Democrats (55 percent) and a plurality of Republicans (47 percent) in Oklahoma’s second district approve of Boren, as do 52 percent of Obama voters and an equal share of McCain voters. Boren leads his closest GOP rival by 16 points.
Moreover, the poll suggests that if his constituents were better informed about his position on Obamacare, Boren’s numbers would be even higher. Roughly a third (32 percent) of survey respondents incorrectly thought that Boren had supported the Democratic health-care bill last November, and another 38 percent weren’t sure how he had voted. Only 17 percent of Boren’s constituents favor the legislation; 61 percent oppose it, including a plurality (42 percent) of Democrats.
“They’ll have to walk across my dead body if they want my vote on this issue,” Boren told Fox News last week, referring to House Democratic leaders. “This is so galvanizing in my district. I think the votes are not there, and I don’t see where we get them.” According to the PPP survey, Obama’s approval rating in OK-2 is a dismal 27 percent, and 64 percent of Boren’s constituents feel that congressional Democrats are too liberal. “They can break my arms,” he told Fox. “They can do whatever they want to. They’ll never get my vote — ever.”
Boren’s largely rural district comprises a hefty chunk of eastern Oklahoma. Once solidly Democratic, it started becoming more Republican in the 1980s and has recently turned into a GOP stronghold at the presidential level. Yet even though the second district voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008, Boren has romped his way to three consecutive landslides. He won election to Congress by a 32-point margin in 2004, the same year Bush carried OK-2 by 18 points. Four years later, McCain took the district by 32 points while Boren coasted to reelection by 40 points. That 72-point gap was the biggest such differential in any congressional district.
“Dan Boren’s district contains 40 percent of all Democrats in the state,” says University of Oklahoma political scientist Keith Gaddie. “But they’re not your typical Democrats. They’re rural, old-school Democrats.” In cultural terms, southeast Oklahoma resembles east Texas, and Boren’s constituents include a sizable number of pro-life evangelical Christians. OK-2 is among the poorest rural districts in America, yet it boasts a high rate of homeownership, contains the 45,000-acre McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, and has weathered the economic slump better than many other impoverished areas. (To be sure, the local economy is hardly booming, but it has not experienced crushing job losses.)
Much of Boren’s popularity reflects the stature and legacy of his father, David Boren, a Yale-educated Rhodes Scholar who governed Oklahoma from 1975 to 1979 and then spent 15 years as a U.S. senator. Boren père, who has been president of the University of Oklahoma since 1994, remains the most popular and influential political figure in modern state history. During the 1980s, he stood out among Democrats as a relatively hawkish conservative; for example, Senator Boren championed the Reagan tax cuts, backed aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, and endorsed Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination.
His son has garnered a similar reputation in the House. While the younger Boren is no Jim DeMint, he has consistently bucked the Democratic leadership on a range of issues, including taxes, energy, guns, and abortion. His opposition to Obamacare is no surprise. “He knows where his constituency is on health care, and he’s not going to go against that,” says Gaddie.
For Boren, there is zero risk in attacking his party on health care — quite the opposite, given public opinion in OK-2. Other Blue Dog Democrats are in a much tougher position. Take Allen Boyd, a seven-term congressman who represents a district on the Florida panhandle. After supporting the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation in June, Boyd rejected Obamacare in November. Now he’s facing a primary challenge — from Al Lawson, the top Democrat in the Florida state senate — as is North Carolina’s Heath Shuler, the former NFL quarterback who joined Boyd in voting against the Democratic health-care bill last fall.
Michigan’s Bart Stupak voted for the health-care bill, but only after Democrats agreed to insert his anti-abortion provision. The Stupak Amendment is now complicating House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to pass the Senate bill. Earlier this week, the Detroit Free Press reported that Connie Saltonstall, a former Charlevoix County commissioner, would be seeking to oust Stupak in the Democratic primary. Saltonstall made clear that health care was the chief impetus for her campaign: In a statement, she declared that Stupak “has a right to his personal, religious views, but to deprive his constituents of needed health-care reform because of those views is reprehensible.”
Does Boren expect the health-care bill to win House approval? The odds of passage “are probably over 50 percent,” he says. “But it certainly is going to be a squeaker if it does pass.” Either way, he believes the issue has damaged his party’s electoral prospects. “Aside from the politics, it’s really bad public policy,” Boren adds, contending that the Democrats should have tried to enact health-care reform “on an incremental basis.”
As for the economy, he regrets that President Obama missed an opportunity to bring the two parties together on a recovery package in early 2009. “We could’ve very easily had a bipartisan stimulus,” Boren says. Instead, the stimulus, which Boren voted for but criticized, wound up fueling partisan acrimony. Obama campaigned as a unifier — but you can’t do that while governing from the left, Boren argues. After the 2010 midterm elections, whether or not the GOP retakes Congress, Obama “will have to come to the center.”
While polls indicate that it will be a strong Republican year nationwide, Boren must be considered the heavy favorite in OK-2. “Dan Boren represents pre-culture-war Democratic politics,” says Gaddie. “In his district, that still matters.”
– Duncan Currie is deputy managing editor of National Review Online.