Democratic Victory May Be a Bellwether
GOP Loses House Seat in Mississippi
By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 14, 2008; Page A01
A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the once-dominant House Republicans reeling from their third special-election defeat of the spring.
Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat who serves as Prentiss County chancery clerk, defeated Southaven Mayor Greg Davis by 54 percent to 46 percent in the race to represent Mississippi's 1st Congressional District, which both parties considered a potential bellwether for the fall elections.
Democrats said the results prove that they are poised for another round of big gains in the November general elections, and they attacked the Republican strategy of tying Democrats to Sen. Barack Obama, the front-runner for the party's presidential nomination, saying it had failed for a second time in 10 days in the Deep South. Democrat Don Cazayoux won the special election for a GOP-held House seat in Louisiana on May 3. "No one could have imagined the tsunami that just crashed on Republicans in Mississippi," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview after the victory. "There is no district that is safe for Republican candidates."
House Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, sounded an alarm for all GOP candidates "to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall" while lashing themselves to the presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "The political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. . . . Time is short," Cole said in a statement.
Democrats begin the march into the fall elections with an enormous cash advantage: $44 million for the DCCC to $7 million for its GOP counterpart as of March 31. And 25 other Republican incumbents have decided against running for reelection, providing Democrats with more opportunities to make gains. Seven Democratic incumbents are not seeking reelection.
The Childers victory was the latest setback suffered by Republicans, who began the string of defeats in special elections when Democrat Bill Foster claimed the seat of former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in March....
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Faced with ads from Davis and the NRCC pointing out that he had endorsed Obama, Childers countered with his own ad that proclaimed he had never even met the senator from Illinois....
In Louisiana and Mississippi, the NRCC spent $1.8 million on ads focused largely on pinning Cazayoux and Childers to Obama. Van Hollen suggested the ads were "desperate tactics" and "did not gain traction." Independent analysts said that the anti-Obama campaign put Childers on the defensive but that it is too early to tell whether such a strategy will work in the fall. Nathan Gonzalez, political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, said polling data in key eastern portions of the district before the race showed that Childers's numbers "aren't getting any worse" because of the ads....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051303301.html 
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