Cantor hasn’t run a campaign like this for much of his 12-year career. Cantor campaigns -- for himself

MANAKIN SABOT, Va. — Something unusual is happening here.

Eric Cantor is mounting a serious and aggressive campaign for a congressional seat he has little chance of losing.


The state GOP has blanketed the district with mailings criticizing Wayne Powell — Cantor’s Democratic opponent — for supporting higher taxes.

Cantor, the House majority leader, has reserved nearly $200,000 in television advertisements. If his team airs spots in all the time they’ve reserved, the average Richmond area resident would see 30 Cantor for Congress spots in the run-up to Election Day. And Monday night, Cantor debated his Democratic opponent for the first time in a decade, squaring off against Powell, a wealthy attorney, at the CarMax headquarters on the outskirts of Richmond.

To say this level of engagement is rare would be an understatement.

Cantor hasn’t run a campaign like this for much of his 12-year career. He’s always campaigned, but stopped way short of engaging Democrats.

It’s also not typical for a House leader. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) staff says it’s been more than 20 years since she’s run a TV spot. Cantor’s friend Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) flew to Hong Kong over the weekend to raise money for Mitt Romney. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is in Florida on Tuesday shaking hands for the GOP’s presidential candidate.

But Cantor was here on this October night, in a gym debating a candidate whose name identification barely registers a blip.

An unpolished Powell jabbed at Cantor as a military dodging leader of an unpopular Congress unable to blunt mass defense cuts and unwilling to sit down with Democrats.

“Let’s be specific,” Powell said. “It’s about a Congress led by this man to my left who decided they would rather kick the can down the road” than sit down and hash out a deal. Powell said when he hears fiscal cliff — the mass of expiring tax provisions and spending cuts to Pentagon and domestic programs — he “hears a person who is dysfunctional, a person who did not cooperate, would not sit down with the opposing party and that’s what we need to do” — a direct shot at Cantor.

Cantor hit back hard, too, saying Powell supports higher taxes and President Barack Obama’s health care law — painting him as a lapdog of national Democrats who lies about the majority leader’s positions. Powell, Cantor said, has Obama’s “back.”

Cantor said the debate — which was rife with references to hedge funds (one employs his wife) and corporate donations to the Republican’s campaign — was “peppered unfortunately with what is wrong with politics today. And that is just a rash of personal attacks, indirect attacks on my family and, as we saw, repetitive disregard for honesty and truth. And the thing is none of these negative attacks do anything to create a job, do anything to educate a child or do anything to bring down the deficit.”

It was obvious that Cantor was the more polished pol.

Insurgent races against high-profile members of Congress are age-old political drama and usually fall flat. Leaders are rarely knocked off because they typically come from safe districts like this one. The most prominent example of a leader getting knocked off was when Washington State Republican George Nethercutt unseated House Speaker Tom Foley in the Gingrich Revolution of 1994.

No one, not even Powell’s team, is honestly saying Cantor can be beat. The district is strongly Republican and was strengthened by the once-a-decade redistricting process.

Plus, Cantor’s $6 million and backing from national Republicans gives him a likely insurmountable advantage over a candidate who has no backing from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by some here that Democrats use Cantor to fundraise but have not supported Powell.

Asked about his prospects for winning in an interview after the debate, Powell said he met his wife on an airplane, “So hey, if you can meet the love of your life on an airplane, anything can happen.”

But for Cantor, the political warfare he’s waging is a recognition that while he’s not weak, he certainly wants to avoid the appearance of vulnerability. There’s a list of potential troubles for him here that he wants to blunt: He’s a national politician with a massive national fundraising base anchored on Wall Street, a high-profile lawmaker in D.C. who has an outsize role in controversial policy debates, and the last thing he needs is to be tagged as the out-of-touch legislator who takes his district for granted. He’s worked hard to reverse shaky approval ratings.

“I think it’s a privilege to represent the voters of this district, and I actually enjoy going out and stating a position, engaging in the sparring that went on here tonight so that the public could understand these are the facts,” Cantor said in an interview after the debate. “And there’s a lot of mischaracterization that my opponent’s been about over the last several months, and it’s an opportunity frankly, I think, for voters to see us together and I think it was a worthwhile experience.”

While he was talking, Cantor’s top political adviser, Ray Allen, whispered to two press aides that they shouldn’t let Cantor talk to reporters for too long.

What Cantor is really trying to do here is run up the scoreboard — show Virginians that he’s not afraid to debate.

The on-the-record sniping, television advertising and outsize attention Cantor is paying to Powell can be looked at a few ways. Sources close to him say that he wants to pulverize Powell to send a message: Don’t think about mounting another challenge this decade. It’s a bid to flaunt his support in the Richmond area. One Virginia political hand said Cantor wants to “chew up and spit out” Powell, peeved at increasingly personal attacks in his home district.

“Eric Cantor is not going to be satisfied with [getting] 60 percent of the vote,” said Virginia Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who is close with Cantor’s political operation. “This is a group of people who don’t settle with 60 percent, they want to always increase that number.”

Former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said if Cantor can “come out of that new district with a good number and strength, it gives him strength in his party, confidence with his members and it gives people confidence within the leadership roles. You have to make some tough decisions sometimes and you don’t always have time to go back to your district and explain them and get some strong numbers; that’s important.”

Powell is trying to take a page out a well-worn playbook, trying to tag Cantor as someone who spends his time hobnobbing with the likes of Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson instead of folks in places like Goochland and Louisa counties. He says Cantor practices “pixie dust politics.”

This week, Powell launched a six-figure, two-week-long television campaign that portrays Cantor as someone who answers to wealthy donors and ignores calls from his constituents.

“Because Cantor’s received millions from big banks and investors, PhRMA and insurance, Big Oil and other vote buyers, he’s almost impossible to get through to. Cantor clearly works for them, not us,” the ad says.

Throughout the district, Powell’s team has posted signs saying Cantor is “for sale.”

It’s ticked Cantor’s team off, to say the least.

Right now, Cantor’s television advertising has been largely positive — a group of business owners staring into the camera, talking about how the majority leader is helping to foster job growth in Virginia’s 7th District. But sources indicate Cantor is willing to go negative. His aides declined to discuss future strategy.

Democrats say they have been taken aback by Cantor’s posture in the race. David “Mudcat” Saunders, Powell’s well-known and colorful campaign manager, said he had no idea why Cantor would engage a Democratic candidate in a district where Republicans should win by double digits.

“I’m totally befuddled — I don’t get it,” he said when asked why Cantor is tussling with Powell. “I don’t understand it. I think it’s ego, arrogance. I don’t think he can take a punch. He’s never been able to take a punch in D.C. He has his Eddie Haskell temper tantrums.”

Indeed, Cantor’s political persona has taken a hit. After the debt ceiling debate, his approval ratings were weak, sources close to him say. He took a step back from the national stage, ran a series of positive advertisements and concentrated on small-bore, middle-of-the-road measures like banning insider trading in Congress and a bundle of small-business tax provisions — they both garnered President Barack Obama’s signature. He’s now in a good spot, sources say, having reversed the troubling polling trends.

His national politicking hasn’t completely stopped. Next week, he’ll head to upstate New York to try to boost Matt Doheny, a former Wall Street figure who is running against Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.). He was in Oklahoma last week, and is planning to visit Georgia to try to unseat four-term Democratic Rep. John Barrow in the Savannah area.

But it’s that kind of schedule that Powell ripped Cantor on, saying he collects too much money from hedge funds and Wall Street, which dictates his voting record — a line of attack that Cantor vociferously denied.

None of it is likely to work. The district is far too strong for Cantor, far too red for a Democrat, but Powell — screaming, waving his arms — is trying.

“Twelve years is long enough and if you can’t think of what Mr. Cantor’s legislative accomplishments were in the last 12 years, then you’re not alone,” Powell said.