Morella

GAITHERSBURG - It's hard to miss Terry Lierman at the county fair. He's standing across from the candy apple cart with a big "Lierman for Congress" banner. He's smiling, waving at the crowd, handing out as many stickers and buttons as he can. Even though he's a Democrat in heavily Democratic Montgomery County, even though he's a tireless campaigner with money and connections, folks keep walking past him to greet their Republican congresswoman. "Hi, Connie. Love your Web site," cries firefighter Kathee Henning as she rushes up to hug Rep. Constance A. Morella.

WASHINGTON - Last month, President Bush helped raise $400,000 for Rep. Constance A. Morella's re-election campaign and praised the Maryland Republican as "an independent soul" who is "gracious enough to explain to you when she thinks you're wrong." Living up to her presidential billing - and, as always, unhesitant to buck her own party - Morella is trying to block Bush from setting up a new homeland security agency the way he wants to. Like many in Congress, most of them Democrats, she is concerned that Bush's plan would threaten civil service workers' rights, including their freedom to belong to unions, if they are placed in the new agency.

BETHESDA - Rep. Constance A. Morella had managed to stay composed in public, even as election results served notice that her eight-term congressional career would soon come to an end. The maverick Republican, 71, whose campaign signs in the suburban Washington district read simply "Connie," had calmly stood up on election night and expressed her gratitude to supporters by quoting from Shakespeare: "For your great graces heaped upon me ... I can nothing...

WASHINGTON -- Civil rights activist Ralph Neas has raised nearly a quarter-million dollars in his bid to unseat Rep. Constance A. Morella, a Montgomery County Republican, according to records prepared by the Democratic challenger for the Federal Elections Commission."

WASHINGTON -- In an effort to help battered women who assault or kill their abusing husbands or boyfriends defend themselves in court, a Maryland congresswoman yesterday proposed that Congress encourage state courts to admit expert testimony about the nature and effects of domestic violence.Rep. Constance A. Morella, R-Md.-8th, said her legislation is similar to a law enacted by Maryland's General Assembly in 1991, which permits evidence of "battered spouse syndrome" to be introduced in Maryland criminal trials.

CABIN JOHN -- Ralph G. Neas, a longtime civil rights activist, announced yesterday that he would seek to represent Montgomery County in Congress, acknowledging that it would be difficult to wrest the district from the popular Rep. Constance A. Morella in the 1998 election.Speaking before about 150 supporters, Neas, a newly registered Democrat, delivered a well-crafted speech in which he made his case for voters in the heavily Democratic district to oust a liberal Republican whom they have re-elected to Congress five times ** by significant margins.

GLEN ECHO - Rep. Constance A. Morella, one of Maryland's most popular Republicans, launched her campaign yesterday for a ninth term representing a district that Democrats have made a prime target in their quest to retake the House. The Montgomery County congresswoman struck a defiant tone as she formally announced that she will seek re-election to the 8th District seat despite Democratic efforts to make the redrawn district virtually Republican-proof. "I suspect there might be a few political partisans in Annapolis who hoped this day would never come," said Morella, charging that Democratic leaders tried to "gerrymander me into retirement."

WASHINGTON -- As far back as 1996, still something of the Dark Ages for Y2K awareness, Congress had a scold when it came to "the millennium bug": Maryland Rep. Constance A. Morella.An "impending crisis," the Montgomery County Republican said in 1996. "The deadline we face is unforgiving, and time is running out," Morella said in 1997. "The mother of all computer glitches," she proclaimed in a 1998 radio address.More than three years and $106 billion later, things are looking rosy enough that public fears of terrorist strikes appear to outweigh doomsday scenarios of crippling computer failures.

REPUBLICAN Rep. Constance A. Morella, the five-term congresswoman from Montgomery County, may have a fight, or two, on her hands next year.Though the 64-year-old Ms. Morella has been more in step with her liberal county than conservative followers of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Democrats apparently are serious about making a run in November to take back her 8th District seat.And she probably will have a primary race March 5, with an attack from the right launched by a candidate such as first-time Del. Barrie S. Ciliberti or Ruthann Aron, who lost the GOP primary for U.S. Senate last year.

DAMASCUS -- She's been a card-carrying Republican for more than three decades, represented Montgomery County's 8th District for five terms as a GOP member of Congress and has the backing of the state party's hierarchy for re-election.There's only one problem.Rep. Constance A. Morella is not a real Republican, say her three primary challengers, standing to her political right."I don't believe by her actions she's comfortable with the Republican Party," Barrie S. Ciliberti, a first-term member of the House of Delegates from Gaithersburg, tells the Damascus Republican Women's Club in a staccato burst.