ASHEVILLE, N.C. » After a junior year in which he almost won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s top player, Heath Shuler was picked in the first round of the 1994 National Football League draft by the Washington Redskins. In less than two seasons — and after a few too many interceptions — he was replaced as the team’s starting quarterback. ESPN described him as one of the all-time draft busts.

He might be expected to play down such a distinction. But Shuler, 38, who just won a third term as the congressman representing North Carolina’s 11th District, has turned it into metaphor.

"It’s no different than me as a quarterback," he said in an interview here Thursday. "I didn’t play very good. So what they’d do? They benched me."

The Redskins in this instance are the Democrats in Congress. The dismal season is the trouncing they received at the polls two weeks ago. And the quarterback is Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be former speaker of the House.

Since surviving that election, Shuler has emerged as one of most prominent voices in the debate about the Democratic Party’s immediate future. He was among the first to call for Pelosi to step down from her leadership role in the new Congress and said he would run for minority leader himself if no alternative emerged (although he admitted that he would be an underdog).

The Democrats’ achievements in the last Congress, Shuler said, are unpopular with the public because the party’s leadership has been too reflexively partisan. He says a more moderate approach is needed.

"It’s my guys that worked probably harder than any group in Washington, did all the right things, voted the right way and still got beat for the simple fact that you’ve got the far edges running the Congress," Shuler said.

His guys are the members of the Blue Dog coalition, a group of conservative Democrats who came together after the Republican sweep of 1994, and, boy, did they ever have a bad Election Day this year. Twenty-four of the bloc’s 58 members were defeated, including two of its four leaders (Shuler is the coalition’s whip). Four other Blue Dogs are retiring this year.

In 2008, 50 Democratic House members were elected in districts that President Barack Obama failed to carry. This month, voters in only 12 of those districts returned Democrats to Congress. Two of those districts are in North Carolina, including Shuler’s.

"North Carolina is just kind of a different place," said Jim Hunt, a Democrat who is the longest-serving governor — two tenures that totaled 16 years — in the state’s history. "It’s going to always be about the middle of the road."

The state has long nurtured a strand of progressivism, particularly on issues like education, and a Sunday school brand of social conservatism — sometimes in the same candidate. Its politically assorted lineup of senators has included Terry Sanford, John Edwards and Jesse Helms.

North Carolina’s curious politics are on full display in Shuler’s district, which is wedged into the state’s mountainous western corner. It includes the heavily Democratic city of Asheville, home to yoga studios and holistic medicine centers, as well as staunchly conservative hamlets scattered throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains.

This month, the district’s voters defeated two incumbent Democratic state senators but chose, by a nearly 9-point margin, to keep Shuler. Other congressional districts around North Carolina followed a similar pattern.

At the state level, however, it was a historic day for Republicans. Fueled by an anti-Democratic mood, a high unemployment rate, scandals involving Democrats in Raleigh and an increase in spending by interest groups — much of it from one North Carolina businessman — Republicans gained control of the Legislature for the first time since a brief period in the 1890s.

Republicans said their candidates, with the help of conservative groups, were finally able to compete financially with Democrats, who have long held the advantage.

"The biggest factor this year was money," said Chris McClure, a former executive director of the state Republican Party. "Republicans and conservative groups really organized well and were able to put more races in play."

It also means that Republicans will hold the pencil when districts are redrawn next year.

Gerrymandering, Republicans say, was the reason behind the defensive stand by North Carolina’s House Democrats, who were able to bear the national Republican tidal wave and keep seven of their eight seats and the majority among the state’s delegation.

(In the other chamber, Sen. Richard M. Burr, a Republican, easily won re-election.)

When the new district lines are drawn, said Larry Ford, chairman of the Republican Party in Rutherford County, "Heath Shuler is toast."

Echoing the debate among Democrats nationwide, some of the more liberal voters in North Carolina’s 11th District have been turned off by Shuler’s voting record, going so far as to support a primary challenger this year. Some local party officials said his vote against the health care overhaul dampened turnout, hurting other Democrats on the ballot.

"There were a lot of progressive Democrats who were so disgusted with Shuler that they said they were not voting," said Gina Williams, the treasurer for the Democratic Party in Transylvania County.

While he defends his votes, Shuler, a formidable fundraiser and campaigner, says a voting record is not as big a factor in elections as a strong presence in the district.

Donald Fowler, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, agreed. The Democratic leadership had done a terrible job in selling its policies, he said, but ideology was not the deciding factor in the election results, including those in Shuler’s district.

"It’s a combination of personality of the individuals involved as well as the population base," Fowler said. "I would say in the total picture, being a football star is better than not being one."