A little-known congressional race is starting to attract some attention, with some charging that anti-Catholicism is rearing its ugly head.

Check out the Washington Post’s coverage:

Democrats seeking to take over a Republican-held congressional seat in Northern Virginia are hammering GOP candidate Keith S. Fimian for his ties to a conservative Catholic organization, but Fimian and some Catholic leaders say the attacks are nothing more than religious bigotry.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sent at least seven mailings into Virginia’s 11th Congressional District in the past three weeks, all with a virtually identical message: If voters get to know the real Keith Fimian, they will discover that he is a reactionary activist seeking to roll back the rights of women.

The strategy underscores how much Northern Virginia has shifted politically in recent years. Although Republican Tom Davis has represented the 11th District in the U.S. House for seven terms, he has done so with moderate social views and skilled advocacy of the region’s ample federal workforce and government contracting industry.

Now that Davis is retiring, most independent political observers are giving Democrats the advantage in the 11th District this fall.

“It’s a disturbing fact,” reads one of the mailings. “Congressional candidate Keith Fimian is a member of a little known organization that promotes other groups fighting for a radical-anti-woman agenda. One of the groups they promote, e5 Men, is so far out of the mainstream that they advocate for women to be more ‘submissive’ to their husbands.”

Fimian, 52, said the ads seek to distort his views and distract voters from issues such as the economy and the performance of his opponent, Democrat Gerald E. Connolly, as chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Fimian said he is not ashamed of his Catholic faith or his membership in Legatus, an organization of Catholic business leaders begun by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, who opposes the availability of contraception.

Fimian said he is not a reactionary. Although he is opposed to fetal stem cell research and to abortion unless the life of the mother is at risk, he is also opposed to the death penalty, he said. He is not, as some of the mailings have suggested, opposed to contraceptive use.

“They’re engaged in the politics of personal assassination,” Fimian said. “Legatus is entirely a social organization. It . . . takes no position politically. The members are concerned with serving the poor and with social justice and family issues. To somehow imply that I’m in favor of these things because there are links from the Web site to other organizations that Legatus says it doesn’t endorse is essentially lying about my position.”

The Catholic League has chimed in, as has state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli II (R-Fairfax), who is also Catholic. Both say Democrats are smearing Fimian.

“The DCCC is also guilty of lying,” Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a written statement. “To wit: It says Legatus ‘promotes groups supporting a radical agenda.’ In fact, Legatus doesn’t promote any group. Like many other organizations, it has a ‘links’ section on its Web site that lists other groups. What the DCCC doesn’t say is that Legatus explicitly states that it does ‘not necessarily endorse all of the content or the views contained in the sites.’ The DCCC knows this, but chose to lie anyway.”

A spokeswoman for the DCCC said the mailings are fair in an election in which Fimian has portrayed himself as being much like Connolly, who is known as a pro-business moderate with progressive social views.

There’s more background and detail at the link.