All Politics Is Disturbingly, Frustratingly Local

As the rest of the country votes on weighty topics like energy policy, stem-cell research and, say, “Bush’s failed war in Iraq,” the key issue in the 13th Congressional District turns out to be . . . a two-way toll:

Three words changed the face of this year’s congressional campaign on Staten Island: Two-way toll.

In August, Democrat Stephen Harrison floated the idea of eliminating the one-way toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge for residents of the 13th Congressional District, utilizing a high-speed toll collection system and spreading the levy to both sides of the span for everyone else.

His opponent, Republican Rep. Vito Fossella, pounced hard, deploring the two-way toll of yore that was scuttled through federal legislation in the 1980s to reduce traffic jams. The issue, he says, shows Harrison is out of touch with Island residents.

Harrison, an attorney from Brooklyn, refused to back off, insisting that new technology could cut traffic, pollution and freeloaders traveling in only one direction. He said that Fossella’s portrayal of his two-way toll plan without caveats — he wouldn’t do it without elimination of the toll for district residents, he says — is a distortion.