Blue Dog comeback?

Politics | More Democrats in the House means more conservative ones, too. They caved on spending bills last session but look poised to fight in 2009 | Emily Belz

Photo courtesy Office of Representative Heath Shuler

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The towering former football player lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, hunts, goes to a Baptist church, is fiscally conservative, pro-life—and serves in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat. Rep. Heath Shuler, 37, is entering his second term in Congress, representing a conservative district where he unseated a Republican who held the office for 16 years.

He is part of a faction of conservative Democrats in Congress who became thorns in the side of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the financial bailout votes. They drew the speaker's ire after the financial bailout initially failed in the House, and they have bucked the majority on some social issues. But they are not following the model of the powerful "Dixiecrats" of the 1950s and '60s, since on most spending bills they vote as liberally as the rest of the majority. And with lawmakers' constituents feeling the pinch in their pocketbooks, the speaker may woo some of these conservative Democrats into supporting the proposed $775 billion stimulus package.