Mideast Conflict Comes To 'Bama

Elizabeth Fulk of the CBS News Political Unit takes a look at an unusual and hotly contested congressional race deep in Dixie.

But on Tuesday, Tuscaloosa will rival Tel Aviv as a hotbed of debate over Middle East policy as voters go to the polls in the Democratic primary runoff between the incumbent, Rep. Earl Hilliard, 60, and his 34-year-old challenger, attorney Artur Davis.

The Mideast crisis has contributed to a red-hot contest in which issues of race and generational conflict have taken center stage.

Although both candidates are black attorneys from Birmingham, they are on different sides of the Middle East debate, as well as the generational divide.

Hilliard, who made an unauthorized trip to Libya back in 1997, is one of roughly a dozen congressmen who have refused to back resolutions supporting Israel and condemning the Palestinian suicide bombings. Hilliard has been endorsed by the Palestinian Media Watch. Davis claims that his rival is "out of step" with the mainstream on the Middle East.

Hilliard's stance has allowed Davis to garner support and money from pro-Israeli groups across the country, and he pushed his case at the American Israel Political Action Committee meeting in Washington this spring. He's raised over a million dollars, virtually unprecedented for a House challenger, and has spent most of it on TV ads.

Dr. James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, says that if Hilliard is defeated, pro-Israeli groups around the U.S. "will be able to claim that they defeated a supporter of Palestinian rights."

International affairs aren't the only issues in the race. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday's runoff, the campaign got down and dirty.

Hilliard said in a televised interview that his opponent had been charged with date-rape and forced to give up his job in the U.S. Attorney's office. Davis hotly denied the charge, and Hilliard admitted it was an unconfirmed rumor and retracted his statement.

The race ended with a barrage of negative ads in which Davis accused Hilliard of doing nothing to end unemployment and stop hospitals from closing. Hilliard, meanwhile, accused Davis of being bought by out of state contributors.

Last week, the Rev. Al Sharpton hit the campaign trail for Hilliard. He was accompanied by other high-profile political activists such as Danny Glover, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King III.

The message of the three-day celebrity tour was that Hilliard lived the civil rights movement and Davis did not.

"Everybody that is our color is not our kind," Sharpton said. He suggested that the people supporting Davis have an agenda unrelated to the needs of Alabama. Sharpton claimed that this race was not a "black-Jewish" thing, citing that during the civil-rights era northern Jews died alongside Southern blacks.

This is not the first time that Davis has challenged Hilliard. The two met two years ago in a primary in which Hilliard defeated Davis 58 percent to 34 percent.

In this year's Democratic primary on June 4, Hilliard beat Davis by just 47-43 percent, forcing a runoff election.

Davis' strength this time comes from his heavy financial advantage and the make-up of the new district that includes two of the counties in which he performed strongly in 2000, Jefferson and Tuscaloosa. These two now make up around 60 percent of the redrawn district.

A Davis victory would be a warning to other entrenched African American incumbents that a new generation of black leaders are coming of age. In Detroit last year, 31-year-old Kwame Kilpatrick defeated the 70-year-old president of the City Council, Gil Hill. In May, Newark Mayor Sharpe James, 66, eked out a close victory over a 33-year-old Rhodes Scholar, Cory Booker. The results of Tuesday's run-off in Alabama 7 will send a number of messages both here and abroad.