In a close race featuring millions of dollars in bruising television ads, Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated Republican Woody Jenkins on Saturday, winning another House seat for Democrats that had been long held by Republicans.
The National Republican Congressional Committee and several conservative groups poured nearly $1 million into the race in an effort to tie Cazayoux to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The ads called the state representative “too liberal” for the district, which had been held by Republicans since 1974. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and labor unions responded with their own million-dollar ad blitz bashing Jenkins, a former state representative.
So, this was a seat that went 59% for Bush in 2004. Let me show you some of the ads that outside groups ran in this race, the ones that are supposed to make us shiver and contemplate suicide because the mighty Republican attack machine will steamroll any Democrat.
The NRCC ran this trying to link Cazayoux to higher taxes:
Here's another, linking Cazayoux to the "Obama-Pelosi radical agenda":
Again, this is a seat that Republicans have held since 1974. If anyone would be receptive to these messages, it'd be here.
The dog clearly does not hunt anymore.
If the Mississippi seat comes through in a couple weeks, we will have virtually swept the contested seats in special elections leading up to November. Now, Cazayoux isn't going to be everybody's favorite Democrat on social issues (though he won with a populist message on economics), but the optics are absolutely terrible for Republicans. They may end up with less than 200 seats in the 110th Congress.
What an embarrassment George Bush and the Republicans are. And the most important lesson here is that they can't win seats by scaring people anymore, so worrying about "the Republican attack machine" is officially nonsense. I hope Democrats understand this. I hope the Chicken Littles who fret about "what they'll do to us in November" understand this.