This year’s 32^nd congressional district campaign likely won’t reach the cost or national attention of the Pete Sessions-Martin Frost contest in 2004, but Republican Sessions nonetheless could have a fight with Will Pryor as the Democratic candidate. Pryor doesn’t have Frost’s negatives and given this year’s political climate, voters might take a serious look at the newcomer, a mediation lawyer. Given a stroke of luck – or maybe a stroke of lightning – Pryor has a shot.

Pryor’s campaign recently announced that he raised $69,000 in less than three weeks before the end of the year. That’s chicken feed compared to the more than $4 million each candidate spent two years ago in the third most expensive House race in the country, but enough to show that Pryor has some support.

Still, it’s obviously an uphill battle. Sessions got 54 percent against Frost’s 44 percent with the rest going to the Libertarian two years ago – a wider margin than Frost and his Demo supporters expected in the matchup between the two congressmen. It was also the first test in the new 32^nd District, after the re-redistricting. But, compared to Frost, and in a different political year, Pryor has the advantage of being a fresh face and someone without the political liabilities of an entrenched Washingtonian.

In his announcement speech in January, Pryor asked the rhetorical question: “So how are we going to win this race? Ann Richards used to say, ‘don’t tell me why you want to run, tell me how you’re going to win.’”

Then, answering his own question, he said: “We have to be smart. We have to spend our money wisely. And most importantly, we must work very, very hard. No one will work harder than I will.”

OK. So we know you’re a smart guy, Pryor. You’re a well-known, high-powered lawyer. You served as a judge, and you come from a famous Arkansas political family. But, now, tell me again: How are you going to win?

To win, Pryor would have to pick up at least six percent more of the vote. In 2004, he would have needed 20,000 more votes against Frost. If it’s doable, it will be because of the different political climate and because he’s not Frost, who was around long enough to have as many detractors as supporters.

As for the climate, various polls show the disapproval rate for incumbents in Congress at a high, and particularly for the Republican leadership. (Tom DeLay has a negative rating in his own district of 60 percent.) People see the country as going more in the wrong direction than right. The generic ballots – unnamed Republican vs. unnamed Democrat -- favor the Democrats, and the Jack Abramoff lobbyist scandal has increased voter fatigue with corruption in Washington.

These are all the reasons that Democrats hope to make gains in the mid-term elections. But what about the 32^nd District, a solid Republican district?

Pryor will have to make a case that Sessions is part of the “culture of corruption” by being close to DeLay and Abramoff. The case he’s expected to make is that he has made a career of bringing people together to solve issues – that the problem of undue influence in Congress will not go away until legislation is passed to correct it, and that he can help repair a broken system. He hopes to distinguish himself on issues such as the environment, health care and fiscal restraint.

Pryor has had his sights on a political career since boyhood. He grew up in Dallas, although his uncle, David Pryor, was governor and U.S. senator from Arkansas.

He spent his last two years of high school as a congressional page during the Watergate years, including serving as personal page to the House Speaker. His undergraduate degree is from Yale, his law degree from Harvard.

His resume is impressive. He served as an appointed state district judge before barely losing a race for re-election, and later was first assistant attorney general in Texas. While in practice in Dallas, Pryor was cited three times as a Texas SuperLawyer by Texas Monthly, twice listed as one of the Best Lawyers in Dallas by D Magazine, and he’s been recognized for pro bono work. (He met his wife, Ellen – now an SMU law professor – while doing volunteer legal services for the indigent.)

There’s no question that Pryor is a quality candidate. The question is whether Sessions is ripe for the plucking and whether enough swing and new voters can be persuaded to take a chance on a newcomer to turn out a deep-rooted Republican in what was crafted by the Legislature to be a reliably Republican district.

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