Arizona special election: About Gabrielle Giffords or President Obama?

In a closely-watched race, Arizona voters on Tuesday will choose a candidate to complete the remainder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s term in Congress nearly 18 months after a gunshot wound to the head, which forced her to resign in January.

The names on the ballot will be Ron Barber as the Democrat and Jesse Kelly as the Republican. But perhaps the two more important names in the race are those of Giffords and President Obama – the former still invoking significant goodwill here, the latter far less so.
Mr. Barber is a former top aide of Ms. Giffords and is her hand-picked successor and was also injured in the January 2011 Tucson shooting that killed six people and injured 13 at the congresswoman’s meet-and-greet event outside a grocery store. In the final hours leading to the special election, Giffords, who rarely appears in public, stumped for Barber at a weekend get-out-the-vote concert in Tucson.
Mr. Kelly pushed Giffords to the brink in their 2010 election, losing by only 4,000 votes in the Eighth Congressional District – a swing district where Republicans hold a 26,000-voter advantage over Democrats. Criticized for using inflammatory campaign stunts in 2010, he has this time focused his fire on Mr. Obama.
The tactic is a good one, polling of the district suggests. According to Public Policy Polling of Raleigh, N.C., 44 percent of respondents approved of the president while 50 percent disapproved.

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