Even more curious, perhaps, is that his audience didn't mind.

Bright, a dry-witted former mayor of Montgomery, looks on paper like one of the most vulnerable Democrats in Congress, with a winning margin in 2008 of just 1,700 ballots, a district that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took in that year's presidential election with 63 percent of the vote, and a constituency deeply unhappy with President Obama and Democrats in Congress.

But Bright, 57, is well liked in southeastern Alabama's 2nd Congressional District. In the most recent polls, he has a double-digit lead over the Republicans vying to face him in the fall.

And he's running ahead without riding the anti-government wave sweeping the nation. In some ways, he's practicing the opposite: rattling off the schools, bridges, unpaved roads and sewer systems that need funding; celebrating the jobs that two big local military installations bring; promoting earmarks for agricultural research. It's a reminder that in some places, even among conservative voters, "government" and "spending" are not necessarily dirty words.

"Keep in mind, Alabama is a poor state," Bright told a noontime crowd last week at Wetumpka City Hall, about half an hour north of Montgomery. "I will never turn my back on resources communities need just because a political party has asked me to do so for political reasons."

Elsewhere in the nation, similarly conservative but struggling areas offer parallel political dynamics. In western Pennsylvania, for instance, Democrat Mark Critz overcame a powerful anti-Washington tide in May to win a special House election to replace the lateJohn P. Murtha, whose prowess in securing earmarks had been widely hailed across the economically depressed region.

The test is yet to come in Kentucky, where Republican Senate candidate and "tea party" favorite Rand Paul has talked of weaning the grindingly poor eastern off its dependence on government. His Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Jack Conway, has said that Paul's rejection of earmarks would hurt Kentucky.

National Republicans seem to recognize the peril of such contrasts. Their chosen candidate to challenge Bright, Montgomery City Council member Martha Roby, has avoided direct critiques of him and has framed her campaign almost entirely against the policies of Washington. Roby, 33, will face tea party candidate Rick Barber in a runoff Tuesday.

Barber, 35, who gained national attention for a TV ad in which Abraham Lincoln compares federal spending policies to slavery, has gone after Bright more directly for not supporting a repeal of the health-care overhaul and for being part of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's majority. If he scores an upset Tuesday, the fall race will shape up more clearly as a referendum on Bright.

Litmus tests

Bright's popularity among conservatives is about more than earmarks. A member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats, Bright passes many of the right's litmus tests, opposing new taxes and spending, and voting against the stimulus package, the budget, the health-care bill and even the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, whose namesake is an Alabaman.

"My values are your values," Bright told the Kiwanis breakfast crowd at the Eastside Grille on the eastern edge of Montgomery. "I'm pro-life. I'm pro-gun. I'm pro-military. I'm pro-family. I'm a Christian and proud of it, and I won't ever change."

The reaction from the right is positive. "Bobby, I'm a Barry Goldwater right-wing conservative," Kiwanis old-timer and retired Air Force officer Doug Speight said at the breakfast.

He is also deeply critical of the Republican Party, saying the no-earmark promise that all five of Alabama's GOP congressmen signed onto this year is little more than an election-year gimmick that amounts to a pledge against the state. "That's what really makes me mad about my colleagues," he said. "They put their own partisan needs ahead of their constituents."

Impoverished region

If the 2nd District is ripe for Bright's mixture of conservatism and fiscal advocacy, it is largely because of the region's poverty. The district includes not only many of Montgomery's impoverished blacks but also the rural, struggling stretch of southeastern Alabama known as the Wiregrass Region, where Bright was born. The district is also home to Maxwell Air Force Base and the Army's Fort Rucker, making military spending a priority.

Bright's brand of populism helps him with both ends of the district's political spectrum. The 13th of 14 children born to a sharecropper, Bright climbed his way out of poverty by working through college and law school. He likes to tell the story of how his father once used wire to hold his shoes together.

"I remember kicking my sister in the shin, and it got infected, and she had to go to the hospital," he told an audience at a social services center in Montgomery. "My daddy didn't like that too much."

Still, Bright faces challenges on the left. As mayor, he earned deep loyalty in Montgomery's black community with a commitment to bringing the racially divided city together and with heavy attention to redeveloping the downtrodden downtown. But today, his votes against the stimulus package and the budget and his opposition to new taxes and spending make the questions tougher at the city social services center than at the suburban breakfast.

"How can you cut Trio?" asked Charles Jackson, a junior at Robert E. Lee High School, referring to a federal program that helps disadvantaged students finish high school and enter college.

"I'm not cutting anything," Bright responded quickly. But he added: "We can't continue the expenditures that we've become accustomed to. We can't raise taxes. We can't continue to borrow. We've got to look at cutting wasteful spending."