On a recent Wednesday, Democrat Darcy Burner found herself in Tacoma, surrounded by business leaders sipping martinis and white wine at a Chamber of Commerce forum.

It was an unlikely place for Burner to be spending the evening. For one thing, Tacoma is not in the 8th Congressional District, the large stretch of suburban enclaves and rural farmland that Burner and an increasing number of prominent Democrats think can be snatched from Republican control as part of a national drive to take back the House of Representatives in November. For another thing, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of which the Tacoma chamber is a member, has endorsed Burner's opponent, freshman Republican Congressman Dave Reichert.

But as Burner worked the room, people kept congratulating her on the strong campaign she has been running against the well-known and well-funded Reichert. One woman came by to praise Burner on being in a race that has become "hot, hot, hot." A moment later, a man in a suit told her: "Let's take him out!"

Burner was beaming. Earlier in the day, she'd received word that a tracking poll conducted by a Seattle television station had found Reichert's 13-point lead from August gone, replaced by a statistical dead heat, her race now labeled "up for grabs." The poll was consistent with two other polls conducted in September that found Burner and Reichert neck and neck—a remarkable occurrence given that Burner, a former Microsoft manager, has never run for public office before and was virtually unknown in her district until this year. (Thanks in no small part to support from fellow Microsofties, Burner has out-fundraised Reichert in the last three reporting periods—and has done this despite Reichert's receiving fundraising help in the form of visits from Bush and Karl Rove).

"There's this wave," Burner told me in the hallway outside the chamber's meeting room, after she'd delivered a short speech. She was referring to the current upwelling of dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and Congress, a phenomenon that is putting Republican candidates around the country on the defensive. A September New York Times/CBS News poll found that only 25 percent of Americans support the job Congress is doing, only 37 percent approve of the job Bush is doing, and more Americans want to replace their current congressperson in November than want to keep him or her.

"It's clearly a wave," Burner continued. "The question is whether it's a tsunami."

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Burner may not need a "tsunami" to win.

Even if it's just a plain old "wave" of voter discontent that registers in November, the recent 8th District poll results and other indicators demonstrate that Burner is in a strong position to take a seat that has never once been in Democratic hands in its 24-year history. The 8th runs from Duvall in the north to Mount Rainier in the south, and includes Bellevue, Mercer Island, and Redmond, home to Microsoft.

In the September primary, with Burner running unopposed on the Democratic slate and Reichert running unopposed on the Republican slate, Burner gathered more total votes than Reichert—a sign that Democrats are active and agitated, while Republicans may not be hugely enthusiastic about voting for more of the same. A number of national surveys put Burner's race on the list of contests that could give the Democrats the 15 seats they need to win control of the House. And unlike last cycle, when Republicans outspent Democrats in the 8th District face-off between Reichert and talk-show host Dave Ross, this year Democrats plan to spend more than the Republicans—about $2 million on ads compared to the Republicans' $1.5 million.

Reichert's campaign won't discuss the recent polls. "The only poll that the Reichert campaign is focused on is the one on November 7," said Reichert spokeswoman Carol Beaudu. But Congressman Jay Inslee, who was swept out of Congress in the Republican tsunami of 1994 and then returned to the House in 1998 representing Washington's 1st District, sees victory as within Burner's reach.

"I'm optimistic for her chances," Inslee said last week. He pointed out that while a recent poll found Burner still significantly trailing Reichert in name recognition, that same poll found that voters in the 8th District, by a margin of more than 10 percentage points, would prefer to send a generic Democrat to Congress over a generic Republican.

"It shows you there is a wave out there, that people want a change even without knowing the agent of change yet," Inslee said. "There is just such a visceral anger against this administration and the things they have done."

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"Karl Rove is notoriously devious," said Burner, "and he's been in the district so we'll see what happens."

We are discussing the possibility of an "October surprise" orchestrated by the White House. Barring that, what's really going to determine the outcome, given the closeness of the race, is how the candidates conduct themselves in the final five weeks before November 7. Already, the gloves have come off. Burner's second commercial, which began airing on cable television at the end of September, accused Reichert of abandoning veterans and closed with a long shot of Reichert standing next to Bush—a strategy of damning by association that a lot of Democrats are using this season.

For their part, Reichert and the Republicans have so far focused their attacks on Burner's lack of political experience. As Burner's veterans commercial was hitting, the Republican National Congressional Committee was sending out an attack mailer dinging Burner for not voting in a number of local elections over the last seven years—although, as it turned out, she wasn't eligible to vote in some of the elections they accused her of skipping.

"If that's the best they can do in terms of attacks, I think we should be in pretty good shape," Burner said.

But it's improbable that the missed-votes mailer is the best the Republicans have. More likely, it's only the beginning. ("I'm not going to take a body blow without hitting back," Burner promised.) The question is whose attacks, responses, and positive messaging will do a better job of swaying undecideds, 13 percent of likely voters in this race, according to a recent EMILY's List poll. Conventional campaign wisdom is that the undecideds tend to break toward the challenger, since they're obviously not impressed by the incumbent. The Burner campaign is clearly banking on this scenario.

"These [undecideds] are people who know they don't want to vote for Dave Reichert and they just don't know who I am yet," Burner said.

Burner is also banking on a "southern strategy" to draw more swing voters from the southern third of the district—a trove of potential votes that the Ross campaign failed to capture. It was partly in pursuit of this southern strategy that she was in Tacoma, not far from the portion of her district that dips into Pierce County. A reporter from the Tacoma News Tribune was trailing Burner, perhaps a chance for a news story that might reach some of her southern constituents and increase her name recognition there. Also trailing Burner at the Chamber of Commerce event: a reporter from Britain, a reminder of how big the national and international stakes are in this race, particularly when it comes to the war in Iraq.

Burner's political consultant, Blair Butterworth, describes the war as the "elephant in the room" at this moment in the campaign. Neither candidate is currently trumpeting his or her position on the war (Reichert essentially supports the president, while Burner believes Congress has failed in its oversight role when it comes to Iraq), but that's likely to change as the election gets closer. "I think the war's going to be a big issue with voters," Butterworth said. "It is probably the main motivator behind people who think this country's going in the wrong direction."

So how will Burner engage this big, potentially defining issue as the campaign moves into its final stretch?

"Stay tuned," Butterworth said.