WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Howard Coble piles into the members-only subway car in a tunnel of the U.S. Capitol, all grins and how-are-ya's with Republicans and Democrats, chatting up a storm on the way to cast a vote on the House floor.

Coble, North Carolina's longest-serving member of Congress, has all kinds of friends. But Coble has little real power in Washington.

Really, no one in North Carolina's House delegation does. None of the state's 13 members can march into the House and make things happen on a broad, national scale.

By an imprecise and anecdotal gauge, North Carolina is a lightweight in Congress. The Tar Heel delegation boasts no full committee chairmen, no one in top party leadership, no one willing to play the national fundraising game. The state's members haven't been the architects of sweeping national policy changes of late, and, collectively, they aren't funneling tax dollars back home the way other delegations have.

"I think we're sort of out of the loop," said Andrew Taylor, a political scientist at N.C. State University. "And I think it hurts the state a little bit."

On Nov. 7, voters will express their opinion on the effectiveness of their U.S. House members, and whether Democrats or Republicans should run the House. Polls indicate that this year's midterm elections could put the Democrats in power for the first time since 1995.

Six of the state's members are Democrats; seven, Republican. Each is seeking re-election. Their roles in next year's Congress will be defined largely by which party is in control.

For now, North Carolina's one powerhouse is GOP Rep. Charles Taylor, who controls billions as the man in charge of appropriations for the U.S. Department of the Interior. But Taylor, of Brevard, is believed to face more trouble in his re-election bid than anyone in the delegation.

Such lack of heft recently led a Washington consulting firm called Knowlegis to rank North Carolina 44th nationally in a congressional "power rank" survey.

The survey ranked individual members' power based on factors such as seniority, leadership positions, committee assignments and successful legislation, then averaged those scores for a state rank.

By another measure, North Carolina ranks 25th since 2000 in bringing home earmarks, the specific projects tucked inside spending bills, according to Citizens Against Congressional Waste, a Washington interest group.

What is power?

Of nearly two dozen full committees in the House, North Carolina has no GOP chairmen or top-ranked Democrats. Only three members sit on the four most powerful committees -- Appropriations, Ways and Means, Rules, and Energy and Commerce.

That's for a state with the 11th largest population in the country.

What gives?

First off, power is difficult to define. The House is Congress' lower branch, considered by the founding fathers to be the chamber of the common people. Today there are 435 representatives, each carrying a healthy ego and up for re-election every two years.

"People are not powerful in the same way," said Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat. "Everybody thinks they're a leader, but not everybody can be a leader here."

In the House, seniority means nearly everything, and it can take years to acquire power. Even within committees and subcommitteees, members sit according to status. The highest-ranked members get the choicest offices, the best committee assignments, the chance to push their legislation.

There are other paths: Members gain influence by developing reputations as experts, by forging compromises, by taking principled stands, or, in the case of some, by spreading plenty of fundraising help to peers.

With influence, members can shape national policy or bring home money through earmarks.

A statewide delegation can have influence when its members cooperate. The 2004 tobacco buyout came about, at least in part, because of North Carolina members' support across partisan lines. The same held true in the latest round of military base closings, when a unified delegation helped North Carolina emerge almost unscathed.

To get some understanding of how North Carolina's members seek power, consider a few recent scenes from Congress.

There was Republican Rep. Walter Jones, quoting Rudyard Kipling's anti-war poetry as he shared a dais with Senate Democrats opposing the Iraq war.

There was Democratic Rep. Mel Watt, greeted with a kiss on the cheek by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

And there stood Coble, a Greensboro Republican, on a balcony of the Capitol, puffing a cigar on a warm September night, the glow of Washington spread below him and a gaggle of other congressmen.

Jones wants to affect how the United States conducts the war in Iraq. Watt is trying to influence President Bush's work in Darfur.

And Coble -- well, let's take him as an example of how North Carolina does power.

Seniority

Coble, 75, has served in Congress for two decades. In that time, he has become a go-to guy on intellectual property matters -- a category that includes patents, copyrights and trademarks. He is the former chairman of a subcommittee on the issue inside the larger Judiciary Committee.

He has reaped the benefits, becoming friends with country and bluegrass stars who needed help.

Now he heads a subcommittee on crime and terrorism, where he has had legislative coups on other matters. Just last month he pushed through a gun-law reform that broadens sanctions on gun dealers caught selling weapons illegally.

Coble did it by building trust.

"If you mislead or are deceptive one time, the person you mislead will never forget it," he said.

Coble has the seniority to lead the full Judiciary committee should Republicans stay in control after November. That would make him among the most powerful members of Congress.

But there's more to a chairmanship than seniority.

Coble has to play the money game, spreading campaign bucks to other GOP members as proof of his party loyalty. This past spring, Coble formed a special "leadership" political action committee to do just that, and he has passed out more than $80,000 to campaign committees around the country.

His opponent for the chairmanship, Lamar Smith of Texas, has given out much more. "I've never believed that I am a power broker," Coble said. "You see folks cutting deals. I've never cut deals, and I guess power brokers do."

Members' role in shaping national priorities can determine how much say North Carolinians have in policy, be it tax cuts or a war in the Middle East.

And more crudely, the more powerful a member, the more money that person can funnel home for projects such as roads and university experiments.

"People at home think power means how much you can do for the home folks," said Tim Valentine, a former Democratic congressman from Nash County. "But I think the unmistakable quality of power is to lead controversial and lasting legislation through the Congress."

'Power is perception'

In partisan Washington, nearly any Republican has more power than any Democrat.

But North Carolina's lack of influence also can be seen through its individual members. The GOP's Patrick McHenry and Virginia Foxx, for example, are freshmen. Jones gained bipartisan respect but may have lost party status with his stance against the war. Coble has raised doubts about the war, too.

On the Democratic side, Brad Miller and G.K. Butterfield are just sophomores. Mike McIntyre is seen by some Democrats as too conservative, though he also is a senior whip.

In the past decade, Price has been steadily accruing knowledge about Middle Eastern affairs. On a recent afternoon, he sat in a Republican leader's private office, his gravelly voice guiding a deal on South America.

Should the Democrats take over the House, Price is poised to acquire his own gavel as chairman of an appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.

Watt, of Charlotte, steps down this fall after two years at the helm of the Congressional Black Caucus, a national stage from which he has championed the Voting Rights Act and denounced the genocide in Darfur.

But when a constituent wrote Watt recently to ask how he had been helping people in his district, Watt thought hard about his answer. He hopes his national platform is making a difference to his hometown constituents.

"Power is perception, I think," Watt said.

At the same time, political scientist Taylor adds, "If nobody notices what you're doing in Congress, you haven't got power."

Take as an example McHenry, a conservative freshman and, at 30, Congress' youngest member, who is trying to gain attention from voters and party leaders. He is an assistant whip for the GOP and issues news releases in support of every major piece of legislation.

There he was recently after a vote on the House floor, the same one that Coble tumbled into with all of his friends. McHenry threaded his way through reporters interviewing other House members.

"It's something I've been thinking for a while," McHenry said, "that our delegation should have more influence."