US Election – Showdown for Capitol Hill

Can science influence politics in the forthcoming US elections? Nature investigates how Democrats and Republicans are striving to win the hearts of voters.

Heather Wilson has something she wants the voters of New Mexico''s first congressional district to know about her: unlike President George W. Bush, she supports embryonic stem-cell research. In a local television advertisement last month, Wilson told viewers in Albuquerque and its environs: The president vetoed the stem-cell bill, and I voted to override his veto because it was the right thing to do.

It is not that surprising for a candidate to say an unpopular president is wrong, or that a popular biomedical cause is right. It is rather more surprising when the candidate and the president are members of the same party. But Wilson, the only woman in Congress who has served in the military, is a moderate Republican in a close fight to keep her seat. The stem-cell issue is one that she thinks may help her in the struggle to a fifth term in the House of Representatives, despite the fact that in other parts of the country some of her fellow Republicans are making opposition to the research a strong part of their campaign.