Within hours of House passage June 26 of sweeping energy legislation, the party fund-raising letters were already going out.

The Democratic message, delivered the day of the vote, said the bill to combat climate change would “create millions of new jobs” by investing in clean energy sources. Three days later, an appeal to Republican supporters took the opposite tack, calling it an “energy tax” measure that “will put millions of Americans out of work.”

The bill (HR 2454) squeaked through on a 219-212 vote, and many Democrats in vulnerable districts were reluctant to support it. Now, however, both parties are trying to use the landmark legislation to their political advantage.

“Nobody’s going to be running away from this vote,” said Chris Van Hollen , D-Md., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “People are going to be going and proudly talking about this.”

Key Democratic leaders, including Van Hollen, had initially worried about a vote that could increase energy prices in the middle of a recession. But reports from the EPA and the Congressional Budget Office helped soften these concerns by concluding the bill’s impact on consumers would be modest.

Republicans, meanwhile, view the bill as an unacceptable government intrusion into the economy. They see parallels with a narrow House vote in 1993 to tax energy sources based on their British thermal units (BTU), which may have been a factor in the GOP takeover a year later.

Whether the vote will have any effect on next year’s midterm election remains to be seen, particularly with a health care overhaul looming as an even more consequential vote. The complexity of the energy bill makes it difficult to explain to the public, except in districts with heavy coal, oil or gas production that could see a direct impact.

“The question is, between now and November of 2010, will this still be a big vote?” said Bruce Oppenheimer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. “It isn’t clear to me, other than in coal country, how to make a constituent linkage to this legislation.”

Democrat Vic Snyder of Arkansas, who voted for the bill, noted that everyone expects changes as it moves through the Senate and to conference.

“This is like the third or fourth inning of a nine-inning game,” he said. “I certainly reserve the right to vote against a final product.”

A more immediate consequence may be to galvanize core supporters in both parties. Some GOP activists are predicting a revolt against the three New Jersey Republicans who voted for the bill: Leonard Lance , Frank A. LoBiondo and Christopher H. Smith . In total, only eight Republicans voted in favor of it.

“These members are just acting like liberal Democrats and thinking they can get away with it,” said Steve Lonegan, a conservative Republican who lost the primary last month in the New Jersey governor’s race.

Rick Shaftan, a conservative strategist in New Jersey, called the vote “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” He expects a primary challenger against Smith to emerge within a week, followed by an announcement against Lance soon afterward.