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Army Vet to Challenge House Defense Appropriations Chairman John Murtha

A career Army member left the service two years short of retirement to move here and try his hand at politics by challenging longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. John Murtha.

First-time candidate William T. Russell, 45, a Republican, acknowledged that taking on a popular, 18-term congressman in the 2008 election will be "an uphill battle."

"But it's one that must be fought," Russell told the Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown.

Russell plans to formally announce his candidacy within weeks. Murtha has declined comment on the challenge.

Murtha, 75, has served in the House since 1974 and is known for bringing money and jobs — especially in the defense industries — to his district in rural Pennsylvania. A decorated Vietnam veteran and Marine Reserves colonel who previously had been hawkish on war issues, Murtha has criticized the Iraq war and pushed for the troops to be brought home. He became chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee last year.

Washington County Commissioner Diana Irey ran against Murtha last year, trying to capitalize on the backlash against Murtha's views among conservatives. She was soundly beaten in the general election.

Russell, who moved from the Washington, D.C., area to Murtha's district specifically to take on the congressman, has a long Army and Army Reserve career that includes tours of duty in the Balkans and both Iraq wars. He and his wife, Kasia, were in the Pentagon when a hijacked airliner slammed into the building on Sept. 11, 2001. Both escaped unhurt.

Murtha's call for troop withdrawal from Iraq "is just flat-out wrong," Russell said. Like Irey, Russell also criticized Murtha's public allegations that unnamed U.S. soldiers committed "cold-blooded murder and war crimes" against innocent Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005.

A small-business owner, Russell said he wants a local economy dependent on the free market. But he acknowledges some jobs may be lost if government contracts disappear.

It is not known whether Russell will have GOP challengers in the primary. Irey said she is focused on seeking re-election as commissioner.

With what Murtha did to the Troops in the Haditha incident he doesn't belong in Congress let alone the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. A person with his stance and record needs to be replaced.

Ousting Jack


A JAW-dropping political miracle may be on the horizon. No, I'm not talking about the second coming of the Obamessiah. I'm talking about the long-deserved comeuppance of troop-smearing, pork-feasting, scandal-tainted Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania.

The 18-term congressman's challenger, staunch conservative Republican newcomer William Russell, raised nearly $670,000 in the second quarter. Earmark king Murtha scraped together a measly $119,000.

Russell's underdog campaign bested Murtha without the perks of incumbency, national name recognition, big PAC donations or mainstream media support.

Even more amazing: The challenger, a Desert Storm veteran and Army reservist who survived the 9/11 Pentagon attack, wasn't even publicly campaigning during the quarter. Russell, 45, is on active duty with the Army until after Aug. 1 and is barred from actively campaigning until then.

If all that didn't make this enough of an inspiring story: In February, a Pennsylvania judge ruled that Russell had failed to collect enough signatures to make the primary ballot. But he refused to give up on his goal of defeating Murtha. The GOP neophyte persevered on a shoestring budget and won more than 4,000 write-in votes in the spring to earn a spot on the general-election ballot. Russell's campaign manager, veteran GOP activist Peg Luksik, says most second-quarter donations were less than $50.

Russell's clear on where he stands. "I am a conservative," he says in his defining campaign statement. "I believe in the sovereignty and security of this one nation, under God. I believe the primary role of government is to provide for the common defense and a legal framework to protect families and individual liberty."

The excitement around Russell stands in stark contrast to grass-roots disgust on the right with Beltway Republicans who continue to push the party to the left in a brain-dead bid to "rebrand" the GOP. He has united pro-troops families, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, Reagan Democrats and independents fed up with Murtha's culture of corruption dating back to his Abscam days in the 1980s.

(Murtha wasn't indicted in the infamous bribery probe but he was videotaped entertaining a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents posing as emissaries for Arab sheiks trying to enter our country illegally.)

"The incredible story about Bill's campaign is that the $15 and $25 contributions are coming in from all over Pennsylvania and every corner of the country," Luksik noted on the Russell Brigade Web site. "This is K Street versus Main Street."

Russell decided to enter politics after hearing Murtha's slanderous 2006 accusations that Marines in Haditha "overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Seven Marines have been cleared or won case dismissals in the Iraq war incident Murtha recklessly adjudicated in the court of public opinion - with willing mainstream journalists swinging their nooses.

Perhaps that complicity explains the great media wall of silence around Russell's upstart campaign. Republican Bill Russell offers ethical, freedom-enhancing, pro-responsibility, anti-retreat, unapologetically conservative change they don't want to believe in.