BOSTON (AP) — Congressman Barney Frank spends more time these days working on the nation's financial crisis than running for re-election.
That's illustrative of the challenge — or lack thereof — the state's congressional delegation faces next week.
Of the 11 members up for re-election, only five have opponents: Sen. John Kerry, as well as Frank and fellow Congressmen John Olver, John Tierney and Edward Markey.
The remainder have a free ride to another two-year term or, in the case of the 12th member, Sen. Edward Kennedy, aren't on the ballot this year. His term doesn't expire until 2012.
Even those with opponents aren't facing competition from any political brand names.
Kerry is being challenged by Harwich businessman Jeff Beatty, an Army veteran whose company was located in Virginia until August.
Olver is running against Republican Nathan Bech, an Iraqi war veteran from West Springfield. Frank's opponents are Earl Sholley, a fatherhood rights activist from Norfolk, and Susan Allen, a Democrat-turned-independent and legal analyst from Brookline. Tierney is being challenged by inventor Richard Baker of West Newbury, while Markey's opponent is John Cunningham, a computer programmer who works from his home in Revere.
"Obviously, I face a huge uphill battle, but in a sense, Markey makes it easy because he's on the wrong side of these issues," Cunningham said.
A self-professed libertarian despite running under the Republican banner, Cunningham says he would have opposed the Iraq war, the Patriot Act and the $700 billion Wall Street bailout — all supported by his party leader, President Bush. Markey voted against the war but for the Patriot Act and the bailout.
"When I go to Washington, I'm not going there to make friends. The first thing I'll do when a bill comes up, I'll make sure it's constitutional," Cunningham said.
The hurdles facing all the challengers are multiple.
Congress as a whole has a re-election rate of more than 90 percent. Republicans also have to acknowledge that Massachusetts tilts heavily Democratic; all 10 House members and two senators are Democrats.
The GOP's last, best hope — the governor's office — fell to the Democrats in 2006 after 16 years of Republican rule.
National Republican political committees are reluctant to invest in the state, and the Massachusetts Republican Party can best be described as anemic.
It spends most of its days taunting the Democrats while developing few challengers of its own for state or federal office. The GOP did not field candidates in 118 of the 200 legislative seats up for election next week.
In western Massachusetts, Bech is a fresh political face with an All-American resume. He's a military linguist who graduated from Colgate under the GI Bill and now runs a property management company. In his spare time, he counsels prison inmates in Ludlow.
He believes he has a shot at unseating Olver because he has a ground organization that matches former acting Gov. Jane Swift. She nearly unseated the incumbent in 1996.
"It's hard in the sense that I don't have as much money as he does, but fundraising isn't everything," said Bech, 34.
While that may be, it is something, and the numbers also underscore perhaps the greatest single challenge facing upstarts like himself.
According to campaign finance reports released at mid-month, Bech had raised $59,000 for his campaign and still had $5,000 cash on hand.
Olver, by contrast, doles out federal money from his perch on the House Appropriations Committee. He had raised $780,000 for his campaign and still had $158,000 on hand.
The numbers are even more staggering for other incumbents and highlight the advantage they have heading into Election Day.
Tierney had raised $605,000 as of the middle of the month but had $1.4 million cash on hand — a sum rolled over from prior re-election campaigns.
Markey, meanwhile, had raised $1.04 million. He had $2.7 million cash on hand.
Those stockpiles have fueled speculation that many of the state's congressmen are not worried so much about re-election this fall, but the prospect of a future race.
The state faces the specter of not one but two Senate openings if Barack Obama wins the presidency and taps Kerry for his administration, and if Kennedy cannot complete his term because of his brain cancer.
