Tight Race for Congress Prompts Visit by Boehner

 

John A. Boehner, the House speaker, plans to visit upstate New York on Monday to support the struggling campaign of a Republican candidate who is running for a vacant seat in Congress.

Mr. Boehner’s appearance underscores the national stake in the race, and reflects the changing fortunes of the candidate, Jane L. Corwin, a popular state lawmaker who experts in both parties had once thought would win handily in the 26th Congressional District, which is heavily Republican.

In recent weeks, Ms. Corwin has watched her advantage in the race all but disappear as her Democratic rival, Kathy Hochul, seized upon public uneasiness over the House Republicans’ plan to overhaul Medicare, the federal health insurance program for retirees.

Ms. Hochul, the Erie County clerk, has repeatedly attacked the plan, introduced last month, as a threat to the elderly and has called on Ms. Corwin to reject it. Ms. Corwin has remained steadfast in her support of the Medicare plan.

Ms. Corwin’s position has placated conservatives, who stand to play an important role in the election, as both campaigns rely on their political bases to generate turnout in a special election that may not register with the larger electorate.

The personal interest shown in the race by Mr. Boehner — who will host a fund-raiser for Ms. Corwin and also make a public appearance with her — reflects the growing concern among Republicans about a race that they had not expected to be so competitive.

The visit also comes as national Democrats, who had all but written off the race a few weeks ago, now view an opportunity to turn it into a referendum on the House Republican agenda in advance of the battle for control of the House in the election next year.

With the Medicare debate clearly providing Ms. Hochul momentum, her campaign has signaled it has no intention to drop it. While Mr. Boehner meets with Ms. Corwin at Salvatore’s Italian Gardens restaurant in Depew, Ms. Hochul plans to hold a news conference nearby with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

The district includes the northeastern suburbs of Buffalo and the western suburbs of Rochester, as well as Albion, Batavia, Lockport and North Tonawanda. It has about 30,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats and is considered one of the state’s more conservative regions.

The election, on May 24, is to fill the seat of Christopher Lee, a Republican who resigned in February after he e-mailed a woman a shirtless photo of himself that appeared on the Web.

 

Guest List Prompts Talk of Royal Snubs

The have-nots include Britain’s last two prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, neither of whom found much favor with Buckingham Palace while they were in office.

With the hint of royal vengeance in the air, palace officials have been scrambling to preserve the mood of reconciliation the royal family has sought for the wedding. After 30 years of divorces and indiscretions in the House of Windsor, the event on Friday has been seen as an opportunity to reboot the monarchy, and Britain’s newspapers have been told that lack of space at Westminster Abbey, not an intent to snub, was behind the exclusions.

Those searching for a common theme among the names that did not make the cut fixed on the bitterness sown by the divorce and death of Princess Diana. But that assessment was quickly dismissed by palace officials.

“This is essentially a personal wedding, albeit with enormous public attention,” a spokeswoman for Prince Charles said, explaining the exclusion of the two prime ministers and several close friends of Princess Diana’s.

Still, there were plenty of newspaper pundits who suggested that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles’s longtime lover until their marriage in 2005, had, as one put it, “run the red pencil” over the list, striking off those she judged to have taken Diana’s side leading up to and after the divorce.

On its editorial page, the tabloid Daily Mail said, “These exclusions just look like a petty snub.”

Those on this list, these critics suggested, included Lady Annabel Goldsmith and Rosa Monckton, friends of Diana’s — and at one time, of Camilla’s — who offered their homes as sanctuaries where Diana and her two sons, William and Harry, could spend time out of the public eye after her divorce.

Several papers said the two women were dismayed at their exclusion.

But the missing names that attracted most attention were those of the former prime ministers. When Prince Charles married Diana in 1981, five former prime ministers attended, from both the Labour and the Conservative parties. This time, the only guests to have attained the office will be Conservatives. They include David Cameron, the current prime minister, and John Major, who held the post in the 1990s. Margaret Thatcher, another former Conservative prime minister, declined her invitation on the grounds of ill health.

Prince Charles’s spokesmen gave as an explanation the fact that neither Mr. Blair nor Mr. Brown was a member of the Order of the Garter, a royal honor dating to the 14th century that is traditionally bestowed on distinguished individuals for their service to the nation or the crown. But that rationale cut little ice with those who saw a deliberate slight to Labour: two of the five prime ministers at the 1981 wedding were not members of the order at the time.

To critics, the exclusions seemed all the more stark when set against the list of some of those who made the list. They include David Beckham, the soccer player, and his wife, Victoria; Guy Ritchie, the film director formerly married to Madonna; Elton John, the pop star, and his partner, David Furnish; and the butcher, mailman, innkeeper and cocktail lounge barman from the Berkshire County village where Ms. Middleton’s parents live.

A royal animus for Mr. Blair, whose decade as prime minister began shortly before the national convulsion over Princess Diana’s death, was the explanation offered by many for his exclusion. Accounts leaked by 10 Downing Street at the time — confirmed in part by Mr. Blair in his 2010 autobiography, “A Journey” — had the prime minister saving the day for the royals by persuading Queen Elizabeth to abandon her initial standoffishness and fly to London from Scotland to join in the national mourning.

Other possible explanations cited by the newspapers for Mr. Blair’s exclusion included a strong royal distaste for Mr. Blair’s wife, Cherie, who made little secret of her republican leanings and who refused to curtsy to the queen and others in the royal family.

Mr. Brown’s case is less clear. Though not a committed monarchist, he is said by former aides to have been “meticulous” in his meetings with the queen. But his case may have been damaged by his rejection last May of palace pleas to remain in his post until Mr. Cameron could conclude negotiations for the incoming coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

Mr. Brown’s patience snapped, and he walked out of Downing Street after giving palace officials less than an hour’s notice that he was on his way to tender his resignation to the queen.

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.