By JIM BARON

It’s déjà vu all over again for voters in Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District.
In a rematch of the 2006 race, Democratic incumbent Patrick Kennedy is facing Republican Jon Scott and independent Ken Capalbo. Two years ago, Kennedy won with 69 percent of the vote to Scott’s 23 percent and Capalbo’s 8 percent.

Kennedy, 41, has declined to meet his opponents in debates or other public forums, which seems to have derailed their campaigns by draining media interest in the contest. That results in an under-the-radar race conducted with one-on-one handshakes and perfunctory visits to senior citizen centers.
Asked 10 days before the election about debating his opponents, Kennedy said, “I haven’t decided on that.” Prompted that there was little more than a week before Election Day, he added, “At this stage, people know my record through and through and the way these campaigns are at the very end, the last thing…are these gotcha kind of things and I’m not going to subject myself to that.
“Obviously I think, always, a healthy debate and discussion is good and I, as people know, have never shied away from taking on issues I feel passionately about and are not always the safest issues to espouse and fight for,” the seven-term incumbent said.
“I do believe everyone deserves to have a challenger,” Scott, 41, said this week, adding, “Patrick Kennedy, especially deserves to have his record challenged. He has been in Congress 16 years (actually 14, he was first elected in 1994) and nothing has changed. He has represented the Kennedys, he has represented his friends.
“I still believe that if I didn’t (oppose Kennedy) nobody else was going to do it.”
Scott’s attitude in the home stretch of the campaign, on the other hand, betrays some of the battle-weariness of the little-known, underfunded underdog.
“To be honest with you, I haven’t been as happy with this campaign as I was with our ’06 campaign,” Scott said. “I found out that everything I learned in ’06 was probably wrong and I’ve had to re-learn a lot. I thought a grass-roots campaign in Rhode Island would be more possible than what it is. Having set out two years ago to show that “a regular guy” could run for Congress “because I believe that’s what the Founding Fathers intended,” Scott said. “I’m not sure if I proved that it can be done or if I proved that it can’t be done.”
“I thought people were fed up with the system,” Scott said, “but they weren’t fed up enough to necessarily go out and do something about it. Rhode Islanders believe the lies politicians tell them more than I thought they would. People have bought into a system that isn’t what it should be and they are somewhat comfortable with that.
“Even as angry as they are, people have become complacent about what is going on, particularly at the federal level,” he said.
At the federal level, much if not all of the talk has been about the country’s crumbling economy and the $700 billion bailout package passed by Congress several weeks ago.
“When people see their savings evaporate and they are insecure about the value of their home or whether they will be able to make payments on their credit cards or their health care bills or what lies around the corner for their children, whether their kids are going to be able to go to school because they can’t get student loans, this all hits home,” Kennedy told The Times. “It’s the basics – retirement, health care, education and housing.
“The record foreclosure rate for Providence was last month,” he added.
Kennedy says it was the swing of the pendulum from the sub-prime loan frenzy to the near-total freeze-up of all lending that made the “rescue package” passed by Congress necessary.
“We need banks to be extending credit and for them to be reacting so sharply the way they were was not in the interest of us anyway. When they were foreclosing, it’s affecting everyone else’s property in the neighborhood, it draws everyone else’s property values down.”
But Scott blasts Kennedy as part of the problem that Washington helped Wall Street create.
“He will lie to the people and tell them he has represented them and that he has fought for them, but when he votes for a $700 billion bailout package that favors people who donate in huge sums to his fellow Congressmen and himself, I don’t think that’s serving the people of Rhode Island very well.”
As he does frequently, Kennedy boasted that he uses his coveted seat on the House Appropriations Committee to bring federal money and jobs back to Rhode Island, noting that has been a focus of some of his campaign ads.
“These ads tell people that I am creating jobs here in Rhode Island. The money I am bringing back to Rhode Island is money that is leveraging private sector dollars to help create jobs. We have the highest unemployment rate in the country, but here is what I am doing.
He cited TPI, a manufacturer of composites in Warren that he helped get money for a Defense Department project and Aspen Aerogels in East Providence “they are creating this insulation technology that is helping not only with the military but it’s got a commercial application as well, they are going to grow, they are siting themselves specifically in Rhode Island because I am on appropriations. You ask the CEO and he says that he wouldn’t be in Rhode Island if it wasn’t for me on appropriations, period.”
Scott scoffs at the notion that Kennedy’s spot on the appropriations committee helps Rhode Island.
“That’s his answer for everything; that he is on the appropriations committee. You know what? If I beat a Kennedy, the Republicans would put me on the appropriations committee, too. The reality of it is, outside of military spending, he really brings very little back. And the military spending is because we have some great defense contractors in Rhode Island. Raytheon and Electric Boat and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center are great military contracting companies. Those contracts are awarded on a best bid basis for the Pentagon. He merely gets a call from the Secretary of the Navy saying, would you like to announce this? That military spending would come in no matter who the congressman is.”
Capalbo, 65, said his campaign is primarily based on foreign policy.
“I am opposed to the Iraq war,” he said. “I am opposed to our foreign policy and I am opposed to Israel’s control over our foreign policy. The minute you say that they shut you right off.”
While he says, “We neither deserved to be attacked,” on Sept. 11, 2001, “nor was there justification for the attack, our one-sided support for Israel, and our military presence on  the soil of Muslim countries guaranteed that there would be a response. That response took place in the form of the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.”
The $700 billion bailout bill, Capalbo says, “may help to solve the present problems, but it will also bring with it a return of high inflation. Congress can solve the mortgage crisis. Congress can solve the credit problem. Congress can prevent worldwide inflation. Does Congress have the backbone to stand up to Wall Street?”