Carolyn McCarthy bent on re-election win

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy recalled how she began hearing talk last year that she was winding down her political career.

"That bothered me a lot," said McCarthy, 67, an eight-term Democrat from Mineola.

"There were so many rumors out there -- I was sick. Or I was retiring. And redistricting was coming up," she said.

But after defeating Republican Fran Becker on Nov. 2 with 54 percent of the vote in her toughest re-election race since 1998, McCarthy said she's determined to quash the rumors.

To make a point that she's serious about winning next year, McCarthy reported a week ago she had racked up what is for her a record haul in campaign funds since January: $538,000.

Now even some Republicans say she seems to have caught a second wind.

"There were certainly a lot of question marks on whether she would run again," said GOP pollster and strategist Michael Dawidziak of Bohemia. But, he said, "On election night, she really seemed rejuvenated."

When McCarthy first ran for Congress in 1996, she was a novice with a cause, aiming to curb the spread of gun violence after Colin Ferguson fatally shot her husband and wounded her son in the Long Island Rail Road massacre in 1993.

She has shown remarkable staying power after squeaking by in her first re-election bid, winning with more than 60 percent of the vote four times.

But recently, McCarthy has faced new difficulties.

In 2008, she began to feel sharp pain in her back that was treated with medication until she had back surgery a year later.

Meanwhile, national population shifts cost New York two congressional seats in the 2010 reapportionment. Dawidziak and Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf said one of the seats cut could be McCarthy's.

Her GOP opponents began talking about how McCarthy wasn't being seen around her southwest Nassau County district the way she had been.

One of those Republicans, Hempstead lawyer Frank Scaturro, filed to run against McCarthy in February. He still thinks she might retire.

"McCarthy is saying on the record she is running. I think that's still an open question," Scaturro said. "She hasn't been around the district."

Yet since last year's election, McCarthy had recharted her course.

In December, she replaced her chief of staff with Stuart Chapman, a Capitol Hill veteran and biographer of Civil War historian Shelby Foote.

In March, she hired political strategists who ran Eliot Spitzer's successful campaign for New York governor in 2006.

On July 12, McCarthy retained Albany lobbyist David Weinraub to protect her district as the State Legislature redraws boundaries, even though Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's resignation potentially put his Queens and Brooklyn district on the chopping block instead.

And then, she reported her best campaign fundraising ever by this time in the election cycle, the result of what she described as a strategic decision to boost her numbers with an aggressive direct mail campaign to small donors.

"Nobody works that hard to bring in money if they aren't running," said New York Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs. "She's running for re-election."

McCarthy has made national news with a bill to ban high-capacity gun clips after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), and legislation to ban texting while driving -- which Verizon, Ford and Chrysler have endorsed.

"I love my job," McCarthy said. "I'm still able to help people."

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy

HOME: Mineola

AGE: 67

BACKGROUND: McCarthy was a licensed practical nurse when a man shot and killed her husband and seriously wounded her son on a Long Island Rail Road train in 1993. McCarthy responded with an anti-gun campaign and was elected to Congress in 1996.

LEGISLATION: McCarthy introduced a bill to ban the sale of ammunition magazines that accept more than 10 rounds. She also is sponsoring a measure to make gun-show operations illegal for anyone under 21 or prohibited from shipping or receiving firearms.