Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, held a press teleconference today in response to the third straight special-election loss this year. Losing Roger Wicker's Mississippi seat stunned the House GOP caucus, which now has three more seats to recover in what looks like a very bad year for Republicans.
"My sense is--we had a leadership meeting this morning--the sense of the group was we need to pull together as a team. The message of a candidate being 'too liberal' or 'too out of sync' is not what voters want to hear...It just didn't work. But what does work, though, is a realization that the paradigm has been shifted. This country is tired of excuses and doesn't want to hear about 'too liberal' or 'too this' or 'too that.' What they want to hear is solutions."
House Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida agreed with [Deputy Whip] Cantor's analysis.
Holy crap, when was the last time top Republicans questioned the wisdom of using "too liberal" as a campaign tactic? The GOP have been rocked. There's rumours of firing the leadership. 3 more Democratic votes in the House (and 3 less Republicans).
Update 9--Childers Wins MS-01: The AP and MSNBC just called MS-01 for Childers. That's pretty cool. We are going to win everywhere in November. Landslide city.
Update 8--Very close in Mississippi: Republican Davis closes to only 700 votes, but most of the remaining counties are Democratic, especially the 85%+ Dem county of Prentiss.
Update 7--Narrow Growing Democratic lead in MS-01: Comparing the primary and general election results in the foursix ten multi-precinct counties where 90% or more precincts have returns, Democrat Childers is doing better in three of the fourfour of the sixseven of the nine seven of ten. That is a pretty good sign, though not enough to call the race yet. Almost, however.
Update 6--Kleebn wins Nebraska Senate primary: Even though only 5% is reporting, Scott Kleeb is ahead by an absurd amount in the Nebraska Senate primary. Pretty easy to call an election when someone is ahead by 50%. I won't update this one anymore.
Update 5--McCain still only at 76%: McCain is only at 76% in West Virginia, which is pretty much what he did in Indiana. Kind of funny that about one-quarter of the Republican electorate is still voting against McCain, more than three months after Super Tuesday. Pretty funny.
Update 4--Deceptive margin in MS-01: Childers is well ahead in MS-01 right now, but SSP reports that he is running about even with his results from the primary. So, it still looks like it will be a very close result in MS-01.
Update 3--Tee vee watching is painful: Election nights are the only nights I watch tee vee news. Its pretty painful, as TPM shows, but I did learn that Obama is wearing a flag pin now. I guess the key is just to attack him from the right.
Update 2--Other Dems Still on Ballot: The reason the numbers don't add up to 100% in West Virginia is because the other Democrats are still on the ballot. In particular, Edwards is probably getting a decent percent, and would have been strong here if he was still in the campaign.
Update--Clinton Wins West Virginia: Everyone calls West Virginia for Clinton. No surprise. Let's see what the various final margins will be. Exit poll can be found here. Quick extrapolation from the gender numbers indicates 65%--32%.
There is a closely contested special election for a Republican-vacated House seat in MS-01. The Democrat, Travis Childers, is slightly favored, since he narrowly outperformed the Republican nominee in the primary (49%-46% of the overall vote). One of the interesting aspects of the campaign is that Republicans, and their big, 527, TV-ad sugar daddy this year, Freedom Watch, have tried to nationalize the campaign by running ads that try to connect Childers to Obama and Rev. Wright. If this fails in such a conservative and Republican district, it is pretty fair to assume that the attacks will fail everywhere.
Here are some excerpts from the DCCC memo on the campaign, that I think explain the situation pretty well:
North Mississippians are going to the polls today for their fourth election in two months to fill the House seat of Roger Wicker who was appointed to replace former Senator Trent Lott.
Win or lose, there is no good news in today's election for House Republicans. According to the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, "This district shouldn't be in play for Democrats in federal races. George W. Bush won the district in 2000 (60%) and 2004 (63%)." The fact that MS-01 is a competitive race reflects the strength of Democratic candidate Travis Childers, the damage to the Republican brand, and the depth of the NRCC's problems this cycle.
After losing the last two competitive special elections for Republican seats (IL-14 and LA-06), the NRCC and its conservative allies have gone all out to try to hold MS-01. Republicans have had to spend nearly 20 percent of their cash on hand on a reliably Republican district. Democrats have spent only 4 percent of our cash on hand. The conservative group Freedom's Watch spent at least $460,000. In total, Republicans have spent at least $1.7 million on MS-01.
Vice President Dick Cheney, Governor Haley Barbour, former Governor Mike Huckabee, Senator Thad Cochran, former Senator Trent Lott, and Senator Roger Wicker have all campaigned on Republican Greg Davis' behalf in what Politico calls, "one of the safest Republican areas in the nation." Additionally, President Bush, Laura Bush, and Senator McCain recorded automated calls that were sent to voters throughout the district. (...)
Davis, the NRCC, and the conservative group Freedom's Watch all used Barack Obama in ads by all three and Davis even ran an ad trying to tie Childers to Reverend Wright.(...)
The Bottom Line The last time a party gained three seats in a special election was more than 30 years ago.
Win or lose today, the fact this race is competitive is bad news for the NRCC, and there are more than 40 Republican incumbent and Republican challenger districts with better Democratic performances than MS-01.
MS-01 is the third time this year that the NRCC has had to spend a significant percentage of their cash on hand to defend a reliably Republican district. The NRCC simply can't get off defense if Republican districts President Bush won easily by more than 60 percent are in play.
Republicans are testing out their national message and national infrastructure in this campaign. And yet, despite it being a heavily conservative district with a partisan voting index of about R +11 at the federal level, Democrats could still win. Travis Childrs won't be a progressive champion in the House, and if he wins we will probably have to spend a decent amount of money defending this seat in the future, but he will be another Democrat, and probably vote with Dems about 65% of the time or so. That will be better than the roughly 1% of the time we will get if Greg Davis wins.
A win tonight would give Democrats 236 seats in the House, and up our forecasted gains to a net of around 20 more seats in November. The possibility of a large Democratic trifecta continues to increase. More on that in the coming days as I roll out my Senate and House forecasts.
Over the last two months, there have have been 3 special elections in which Democrats have been fighting to take back seats from the Republican Party - IL-14, where Democrat Bill Foster was elected to Congress in what used to be Republican Speaker of the House Denny Hastert's seat; MS-01, where Democrat Travis Childers is seeking to take over Republican Roger Wicker's seat in a special election run-off to be held May 13th; and here in LA-06, we have Don Cazayoux, who is seeking to do what no Democrat has done here in 33 years ... represent the Capital area of Louisiana in Congress.
When I sat down to read what was being said in the world today, I came across Barack Obama's speech in Indiana the night of the Pennsylvania primary. It was the speech we haven't heard from Barack during this 14 month campaign ... as it was a call to action for Democrats.
The money quote, to me, in a speech full of them, was this:
We can seek to regain not just an office, but the trust of the American people, that their leaders in Washington will tell them the truth. That's the choice in this election.
That's what this election right here in Baton Rouge is about. Do we want to listen to the lies of man who knowingly did business with David Duke back in 1996? Or do we want our politicians to tell us the truth about our country, and the choices we will have to make over the next few years?
I'm voting to be told the truth, which is why I am voting for Don Cazayoux. Yeah, that's an endorsement, as Don will level with you on the issues. He'll tell you where he stands, and if he needs more time to look at the issue, he'll tell you that too. Isn't that we should expect from our leaders?
The most significant result of the night is in Mississippi's 1st district, not Pennsylvania (which Jonathan Singer live-blogged at MyDD). In MS-01, Democrats forced a run-off. Democrat Travis Childers took 49% of the vote against Republican Greg Davis, and if you combine the other Democrats in with Childers, Democrats took more than 50% of the vote. And this is an R+10 district.
Here are the results.
MS-01 (Wicker-Open)
Precincts Reporting - 99%
462 of 462
Greg Davis (R) - 46%
Votes: 31,066
Travis Childers (D) - 49%
Votes: 33,138
Non-Active Candidates:
Steve Holland (D) - 1%
Glenn McCullough (R) - 1%
The public hates Republicans, and larger macro factors are at play.
Don't get distracted by noise. It's fun to bite your nails and fret about how Democrats are tearing themselves apart, which of course I heard plenty of on the various cable shows. But whatever. Obama's probably going to take the nomination as Clinton doesn't have enough to win, and her annoyed supporters will move to Obama after she endorses him.
And then macro factors, the economy and Iraq, and McCain's general insanity and old crazy man persona is going to hurt him badly. No one likes Republicans, even in R+10 districts.
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