Republican candidates hoping to unseat vulnerable House Democrats by and large are sticking by their party’s line in opposition to the children’s healthcare bill President Bush vetoed earlier this month.

Democrats fervently believe the debate over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) will benefit them at the polls. But GOP candidates vying to replace Democrats in swing districts, for the most part, aren’t looking to mimic the incumbents.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted vulnerable Republican lawmakers with an ad campaign and other efforts calling them out for opposing the SCHIP bill.

Although SCHIP is a popular program and the bill garnered many Republican votes, the decisions by Democrats representing relatively conservative districts to vote with their party carried risks.

Republican-leaning voters prize fiscal discipline, and the SCHIP bill would add $35 billion in new spending to the program. In addition, the expansion is financed by a 61-cent per pack increase in the tax on cigarettes. Not only are tax increases anathema to conservatives, tobacco-state lawmakers who voted for the SCHIP bill opened themselves up to criticism that they went against the interests of their constituents.

Like the major Republican presidential candidates, if GOP congressional hopefuls are fearful that backing Bush and the House Republican leadership against the SCHIP bill will hurt their campaigns, they aren’t showing it in their public statements.

In Pennsylvania, businessman Chris Hackett, one of two top Republican contenders running against Rep. Chris Carney (D), cited Carney’s vote for SCHIP as one of several that “don’t reflect the values of the district in any way, shape or form.”

Asked if the president was right to veto the bill, Hackett said, “Absolutely, yes.”

Another Pennsylvania Republican expressed her disapproval of the bill, according to the website Human Events Online. Former Rep. Melissa Hart, trying win back the seat she lost last year to Rep. Jason Altmire (D), criticized an earlier version of the SCHIP bill that would have cut Medicare spending to offset new SCHIP expenditures. Requests for comment from Hart on the current bill, made through a spokesman, were not answered by press time.

Likewise, the Republican vying to face Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) rejected the SCHIP bill. “It’s a hard call. It’s a good question. Based on what I know now, I would vote to sustain the veto,” state Sen. Nick Jordan told the Kansas City (Mo.) Star earlier this month. Jordan did not respond by press time to a message left at his home.

Elsewhere in Kansas, former Rep. Jim Ryun (R), angling for a rematch with Rep. Nancy Boyda (D), who defeated him last year, opposes the bill. Ryun’s campaign manager, Kyle Robertson, told the Lawrence, Kan., Journal-World that “We need to find a responsible way to fund the program without raising taxes or making it easier for illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded healthcare.” The bill’s sponsors deny it would allow such immigrants to get benefits. Calls to Ryun’s campaign were not returned.

State Sen. David Cappiello, a top National Republican Congressional Committee recruit running against Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), said last week that he wasn’t as familiar with the legislation as he would like to be and wouldn’t weigh in on the veto.

“If this is a backdoor way into a government-run healthcare system, then I oppose [the bill],” he said, also expressing concerns about how the program is funded.

A spokesman for former California Assemblyman Dean Andal (R), who is seeking Rep. Jerry McNerney’s (D) seat, made a similar remark. “He’s looking at it, like all of us reading a paper,” Richard Temple said. “Until he has all the information, I don’t think he can [definitively] say whether the president is doing the right thing,” Temple said.

However, Andal does have some issues with the bill, Temple emphasized. “It’s absolutely a huge expansion,” he said, and Andal is concerned that the bill would allow middle-income children to get benefits and would encourage people to get rid of private health insurance in favor of SCHIP.

In contrast to other GOP candidates, businessman and minor-league hockey player Steve Greenberg, running against Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.), endorsed the SCHIP bill. “As a nation, we must ensure that all American children have access to high-quality healthcare,” he said in an e-mail. “I support H.R. 976, the CHIP Reauthorization Act, because it moves our nation closer to achieving this goal.”

Greenberg, however, faulted Bean and the Democratic leadership for the standoff between Congress and the White House.

“Democrats in Congress, including my opponent Melissa Bean, have done a great disservice to our nation’s impoverished children and taxpayers by irresponsibly politicizing children’s healthcare and refusing to negotiate across the aisle in good faith,” he said.

The campaign of former Rep. Mike Sodrel (R-Ind.), who’s headed toward a rematch against Rep. Baron Hill (D), would not comment on the SCHIP bill. A spokesman criticized Hill, however, for opposing the bill but promising to vote to override Bush’s veto. Hill is one of five House Democrats who didn’t vote for the bill but plan to vote for the override.

Calls to the campaigns of former Rep. Jeb Bradley (R-N.H.), former Wisconsin Assembly Speaker John Gard (R), retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Rick Goddard (R-Ga.), businessman Andrew Saul (R-N.Y.) and former New York Secretary of State Sandy Treadwell (R) were not returned. Those candidates, respectively, hope to face Democratic Reps. Carol Shea-Porter, Steve Kagen, Jim Marshall, John Hall and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Although Republicans eyeing Democratic seats don’t seem to be climbing aboard the SCHIP bandwagon, Democrats challenging incumbents in primary campaigns can be expected to hammer lawmakers who voted against the SCHIP bill. In Georgia, two of Marshall’s primary opponents, Macon Mayor Jack Ellis and schoolteacher Robert Nowak, criticized Marshall for opposing the measure, according to reports by the Macon Telegraph and The Associated Press.

Aaron Blake and Nathaniel Weixel contributed to this report.

 Vulnerable House Dems Votes on SCHIP Bill Chart (.PDF)