The lanky, big-boned, white-haired gentleman towering over most others at the recent Chet Edwards Boot Scoot & BBQ was there to back Edwards’ congressional re-election bid. But to those in the know, he also represented a possible harbinger of Edwards’ future.

Charlie Stenholm, 72, was a reliably conservative Democrat who represented a sprawling stretch of West Texas for more than a quarter-century. His long congressional career was focused on the needs of his district. He was known for reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans. George W. Bush even considered appointing him secretary of agriculture.

Instead, Republican leaders proved more interested in party labels than genuine conservatives. They redrew his district enough to ensure Stenholm’s defeat by Randy Neugebauer, whose claim to fame thus far has been hollering “baby killer” in the halls of power in Washington.

Now Edwards, 58, a Democrat who survived similar efforts at gerrymandering by Republicans in 2004, is in the fight of his political life, trying to avoid the fate of his onetime colleague, Charlie Stenholm.

At times Edwards seems almost stunned that tough votes alongside Republican conservatives against health care reform, cap-and-trade energy legislation and financial regulatory reform have gained him little traction among some voters back home.

He notes that his support of the much-vilified stimulus package in 2009 was partially driven by appeals from the arch-conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which in a Feb. 12, 2009, statement said the stimulus bill “would apply a defibrillator to our economy and shock it back to life.”

And he notes that his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2008 came at the plea of President George W. Bush, who sought Edwards’ vote aboard Air Force One. Many conservative economists now say this program saved the nation from another Great Depression.

When Edwards assured Bush — his most famous constituent because of Bush’s Crawford area ranch — that he would support TARP, Bush smiled, then said: “But let me tell you one thing, Chet. If we prevent a second Great Depression, don’t expect anyone to thank you for it.” 

Indeed, some voters in Central Texas refuse to consider Edwards’ 20-year record of service to the district (including helping save the Waco Veterans Affairs Medical Center from closure, then expanding its mission), votes against health care reform and cap-and-trade, and his helping Baylor University save the Big 12 from collapse.

Some voters have stronger motivations. They’re aimed at President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As one longtime Republican volunteer told me of intense efforts to unseat Edwards: “It’s the only way we can get back at Obama.”

Any other election, Edwards might be lucky in his opponent, retired businessman Bill Flores, 56, who appears to have flipflopped on Social Security privatization and just the other day backed away from his earlier approval of raising the retirement age, saying he misspoke because of a headache. That one earned the chiding of even a local conservative talk-show host.

And it hasn’t helped that, while decrying taxpayer bailouts, Flores engineered a bankruptcy that left taxpayers on the hook for $7.5 million — a revelation unearthed by the conservative Dallas Morning News.

But little of that matters. In this election, Edwards has less to fear from Flores than Obama and Pelosi, the latter a particularly divisive figure who now spells doom for her party and many in it. Nor did it help that Obama briefly considered Edwards as a vice presidential prospect in 2008.

Some local civic leaders and businessmen tell me they deeply fear Edwards’ defeat and its impact on the Waco area. “He may be a Democrat,” the saying usually goes, “but he’s our Democrat.”

But it may not be enough.

“It’s pretty extreme out there,” one of Waco’s foremost business leaders told me. “People are not so much against Chet as they are against Pelosi. Yet there’s not one thing you can find on the Internet that suggests she’ll be speaker after this election.”

Even so, Edwards may get thrown out with the bathwater, conservative record notwithstanding. It matters little that even conservative Republicans rally around him, including prominent Wacoan Jim Hawkins, who opened up his home to no less than Sarah Palin during her Sept. 14 visit, yet is Edwards’ local finance chairman. It may all be a barometer of just how poorly informed the public is — or just how angry they are with Democrats.

One small consolation: Stenholm just settled in the district. He and wife Cindy have already voted early for Chet Edwards.