Two of North Carolina’s leading Democratic congressmen have vowed to continue fighting for health care reform backed by their party in the U.S. House even though a special election in Massachusetts has dimmed the chances a compromise can be reached.

On Tuesday, voters in the Commonwealth elected Scott Brown, a three-term Republican state senator, to fill the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy since 1962.

Brown, elected with 52 percent to state Attorney General Martha Coakley’s 47 percent, has vowed to join Republicans in voting against a proposal pending in Congress that would expand the federal government’s role in providing health care insurance.

Many analysts see Brown’s victory as a referendum on the Obama administration’s handling of the delicate health care reform issue. Massachusetts is heavily Democratic and gave Barack Obama a 26-percent victory margin in the 2008 presidential election.

Brown’s win means that Senate Democrats won’t have the 60-vote supermajority necessary to invoke cloture and block further debate so that a final vote can be taken. But two top members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation say the results won’t stop their efforts to pass a health care overhaul.

“There are 535 members of the House and Senate, one of whom was elected yesterday,” said Rep. Brad Miller, D-13th, in a statement e-mailed to Carolina Journal Wednesday. “I plan to pay close attention to what the people I represent think, but I don’t plan to oppose health care reform just because Scott Brown did.”

Miller continued, “We’ve lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in North Carolina because health care costs are out of control, and millions of North Carolinians have no idea what their insurance will really pay for until they get sick or hurt. Something’s got to give.”

Miller was one of five Democrats in the North Carolina congressional delegation who voted Nov. 7 to approve a health care overhaul that included a controversial public option. The bill passed by a narrow 220-215 margin.

The Senate passed its own version of health care reform on a party-line vote Christmas Eve, but the legislation has significant differences from the House version. A final compromise has yet to be hammered out.

Rep. David Price, D-4th, who joined Miller in voting for the House version of the bill, admitted that the special election in Massachusetts “creates additional challenges, but we always knew reform would be tough.”

He added that President Obama and majorities in Congress “are committed to enacting fiscally responsible health reform that provides greater health care affordability, accessibility, and accountability to Americans.”

Recent polling shows the electorate is divided on the question of whether the federal government’s role in health care should be expanded. A Gallup Survey in mid-January showed that 49 percent of respondents supported health care reform legislation versus 46 percent who did not.

But a CBS News survey released Jan. 11 found a mere 36 percent of respondents approve of the president’s handling of health care reform; 54 percent oppose it.

Likewise, a Rasmussen survey released Wednesday shows that 47 percent of voters rank President Obama’s handling of the health care issue as poor, compared to 32 percent who say the president has done a good or excellent job.

Democratic Reps. G.K. Butterfield (1st District), Bob Etheridge (2nd District), and Mel Watt (12th District), also voted for the House health care bill. Butterfield and Etheridge did not respond to requests for comment, and Watt was not available to comment.

David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.