"As the UW's Jones observed, "He was able to distinguish himself from the Republicans on issues that mattered to that district" by voting for federal money for stem cell research, against Arctic oil drilling and against blocking the halting of life support for the terminally ill Terry Schiavo."Read that last clause again:
"against blocking the halting of life support for the terminally ill Terry Schiavo"There must be a better way to write this instead of the triple or quadruple negative (depending on whether you consider "terminally ill" to be a negative)! I'm not sure if it's even possible to parse that clause as written at normal reading speed, unless you already know what Reichert's position on the issue was -- in which case all you actually need to read is "Schiavo."
The issue itself is not what's complicated. After all, when this was a hot issue, most Americans had strong opinions about it. So no doubt, the issue is completely understandable. The problem is, it's far easier to understand than it is to write. We think about "halting of life support" as a single concept, but on the page, it's not so compact.
Complexity is fun to distill, sprawling phrases rewarding to contain. I'd suggest:
"..and opposing efforts by Republican leaders to keep terminally ill Terri Schiavo on life support, against the wishes of her husband."
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