Democrat in House Race to Skip Clinton Event

Although Democrats are rallying to President Clinton’s defense, a Democratic candidate in one of this year’s toughest U.S. House races said Friday he would not attend a party fund-raiser with the president.

“I want to move on. I want to talk about the issues,” said Joseph Hoeffel, who is challenging Republican Rep. Jon D. Fox in a closely watched race for Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District.

A seasoned political campaigner from Montgomery County, Hoeffel ran against Fox in 1996 and lost by only 84 votes in what was that year’s closest election for the U.S. House of Representatives.

He is in a dead heat again this year for a largely suburban area in which Republicans outnumber Democrats 2 to 1. He fears that appearing alongside Clinton at a Philadelphia fund-raiser would attract fallout from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

“I want to focus my campaign on the differences between Jon Fox and me,” the Democrat said, adding that Clinton’s woes only posed a “distraction” for his campaign.

Clinton was scheduled to be feted by local party luminaries including Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell on Friday evening at a $1,000-per-ticket cocktail party and a $10,000-per-couple dinner benefiting the Democratic National Committee.

Instead of joining party leaders, Hoeffel planned to attend his own $250-a-head fund-raiser in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood.

“I’ve taken a stand. I’ve made a decision. I’m going to stick to it,” he explained, after deciding two months ago not to ask Clinton to help him campaign in a district that stretches from Philadelphia’s old-money Main Line suburbs to the conservative farmlands of eastern Pennsylvania.

House Democrats were uneasy about campaigning with Clinton soon after the president admitted in August to lying about his affair with Lewinsky, a former White House intern. But when his popularity later rose, Democrats closed ranks in his defense and have since embraced him at campaign stops in several states, including California and Texas.

Hoeffel said he supports the president’s polices on education, the economy and the budget, and vowed to vote against impeachment if he’s elected in November.

But in the meantime, he would prefer to have First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Al Gore campaigning on his behalf, as they did in 1996.

“I would love to have Hillary back,” Hoeffel told an interviewer. “I would love to have Al Gore.”

Fox was not available for comment.