Elections other than the primaries…
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Democrat Travis Childers (CHILL-ders), a court official in Prentiss county, beat Republican Greg Davis, mayor of Southaven, in a runoff election for House district MS-01 by a margin of 53% to 47% yesterday. The seat, which is R+10, became free when Gov. Haley Barbour appointed its occupant, Roger Wicker, to the Senate to fill the vacancy created when Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) resigned. This is the third stright loss for the GOP in a contested heavily Republican district this year. On March 8, scientist Bill Foster (D) defeated businessman Jim Oberweis (R) in IL-14 an R+5 district in the Chicago suburbs. On May 3, Louisian state legislator Don Cazayoux defeated former representative and newspaper publisher Woody Jenkin in R+7 LA-06. And now MS-01. All three races saw the national parties heavily involved. Both the NRCC and the DCCC spent upwards of $1 million on these races and outside groups, such as the conservative Freedom’s Watch, poured in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The MS-01 loss is especially painful to the GOP for three reasons. First, the Republicans tried very, very hard here, pouring in huge amounts of money and having Gov. Haley Barbour and Vice President Dick Cheney campaign for Davis. Second, in IL-14 and LA-06 they could argue they had flawed candidates. That doesn’t hold here. Greg Davis is a popular mayor who has done a good job and has never been involved in any scandals. Third, this election was the second field test of the Republicans’ November strategy, which they rolled out against Cazayoux and refined here. They ran ads bitterly attacking Childers as a close associate and fellow traveler of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. They called him a LIBERAL (them’s fightin’ words in Mississippi). They said he didn’t represent Mississippi values. They tried everything. It didn’t work.
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