Back in March, the GOP suffered a big loss in the first special election of the year, as Democrat Bill Foster was elected to the Illinois congressional seat vacated by Denny Hastert.
Yesterday, the Democrats picked up yet another seat left open by a Republican. In a special election in Louisiana's 6th Congressional District, Democratic candidate Don Cazayoux won with 49 percent of the vote. The seat was formely held by retired Rep. Richard Baker.
The pick-up is of special signifance because, during the campaign, the GOP attempted to tie Cazayoux to the "radical" Barack Obama -- a strategy the Republican leadership claimed to be road-testing for the fall. From The Washington Post:
So much for that idea ...Faced with the prospect of losing a seat that the GOP has held for the past 33 years and the further thinning of their ranks in Congress, Republican committees and their conservative allies have poured more than $1 million into an effort to turn the race for Louisiana's 6th Congressional District into a referendum on Obama, the Democratic front-runner for the White House.
And this Baton Rouge-based district's ad war, which is being fought largely on policy positions, is softball compared with the high and tight pitches Republicans are throwing in northern Mississippi. With a surprisingly competitive House special election there set for May 13, Republicans are running ads showing the Democratic candidate with Obama; his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.; and outtakes from Wright's controversial sermons. [...]
If their strategy succeeds here in the Deep South over the next 10 days, GOP strategists expect to take it nationwide. "We like the way that's unfolding," Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told reporters this week, adding that he would like to see races become debates about broad, "national" issues this year.
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