Howard Dean's "Register for Change" bus tour hit New Orleans at noon today (sadly for the chairman, sans air conditioning on the bus) and You Are There!

GF and I showed up about 11:45 and waited with the growing crowd at the Victory '08 HQ for the bus to arrive.

Democratic State Rep. Michael Jackson, who lost the Democratic special-election primary in Louisiana's 6th District to now-Rep Don Cazayoux, says it's "very likely" that he'll challenge Cazayoux as an independent this year.

He's not planning on challenging in the Democratic primary. He is waging an independent, spoiler campaign against a Democratic incumbent.

This is not insignificant. Cazayoux won election by just three points over Republican Woody Jenkins in April. He did so largely based on heavy black turnout in East Baton Rouge. The district as a whole is 33% African-American, and it's very possible that Jackson, who is African-American himself, will peel off enough votes from Cazayoux to swing the election to Republican Bill Cassidy.

But then, Jackson appears not to be overly concerned about the good of the party:

Jackson, the vice chairman of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, said he’s fully aware that some Republicans want him in the race and that Democratic leaders want him on the sidelines.

"Both sides have shown an interest in whether or not I’m in this race," he said. "Republicans feel it might help their position and Democrats feel like it may hurt their position."

However, Jackson said, "my goal would be to run to win and to maximize the opportunity and to maximize my chances. and it appears that the best way to do that right now is to do it as an Independent."

So, he's running as an independent, then, because it maximizes his chances. It may hand the seat to a Republican, but what the hell...

But he added that although he would be on the ballot as an Independent, he intends to preach a Democratic message during his campaign.

"It’s not that I’m disassociating myself [from] the Democrats ... my banner will be an Independent-Democrat, I’ll stay connected to the philosophy that way."

An "Independent-Democrat", yet. Sounds familiar, for some reason.

Anyway, I should think that a vanity campaign as an independent, against a Democratic incumbent backed by the entire party establishment, with no obvious purpose other than to torpedo the Democrat, does enough on its own to "disassociate oneself from the Democrats".

If Jackson were running in the primary, that would be fine. If the jungle primary still existed, that too would be OK. But an independent run of this nature is truly bad form.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

You may consider this a manifesto of sorts.

The chaos that has erupted over the FISA bill is threatening to go too far.  The comments that I have read on the subject, threatening primary challengers for everyone voting for it, withholding support for Democrats based on this one singular issue, are out of line.  Some have threatened to withhold their support for Barack Obama because he did not inject himself into this particular vote.  This is insanely stupid.  Let us not forget a major reason why we won back control of Congress: the conservatives decided to overreach.  The Club for Growth decided it would apply litmus tests to Republicans and fund primary challengers because they weren't "pure" enough, in their eyes.  Do not forget the story of Icarus - he tried to fly too high, too close to the sun, and his wings melted.  The moral of the story is, DO NOT OVERREACH.

By all accounts, Don Cazayoux owes his seat in Congress to the fact that the Repubs picked the wrong candidate in the primary--nutburger ex-state rep Woody Jenkins.

Well, per a report from Baton Rouge's newspaper, The Advocate, Jenkins appears to be a glutton for punishment.

"I am close to making a decision, and that decision will probably be to run," Jenkins said in an e-mail Tuesday.

Jenkins said that since the May election, he has been contacted by hundreds of supporters, volunteers and contributors urging him to run again. He said his campaign team is still intact and ready for another race.

"Their feeling is that the results on May 3 were primarily the product of low voter turnout, and that a high turnout and the dynamics of the presidential election on Nov. 4 would lead to a different result," Jenkins said in his e-mail.

One problem--this isn't the same district that elected Repubs for 33 years.  And another problem--the national party wasn't exactly enthused about him (the NRCC reportedly refused to put in a dime unless he met certain financial benchmarks).

He is either lying, or out of touch with reality

The Republicans have accepted that Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President, even if the Clintonistas have not.  They've used the last two special elections for House seats to test aggressive ad campaigns attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee.  The approach has primarily been guilt by association.  Including linking the local candidate to Rev. Jeremiah Wright via Obama.

The voters in these two hard-core Republican House seats have rejected that entire approach.  It could be that the association with Obama might even have helped the Democrats Don Cazayoux (LA-06) and Travis Childers (MS-01).  There's been a lot of fearmongering from the Clinton camp that Obama won't hold up in a general election where everyone is voting, and the Republican attack machine is up an running.  That Obama will not be an asset for down-ticket races.

These results (plus in IL-14, where Obama deployed volunteers to help Bill Foster's win) show that there is zero merit to that argument.  Check out some of the failed advertising below the fold.

Congratulations to Congressman-elect Don Cazayoux, new Representative of Louisiana's 6th District, and to all who had a hand in his election. The Sixth District, which voted for Bush 55-43 in 2000 and 59-40 in 2004, will be represented by a Democrat for the first time since the Dixiecrat era.

This was a terrific win for the party, for a number of reasons. First, it is always exciting and inspiring to win an election in such strongly Republican territory. Only 15 Democratic Representatives out of 235 hail from more GOP-friendly districts than Louisiana's 6th, and taking another seat on such red turf is yet another indicator that Democrats are in the catbird seat heading into November. This is the second special-election victory in a former Republican stronghold within the span of three months, and it was nearly accompanied by another victory in the crimson First District of Mississippi (and may yet be, come the May 13 runoff).

We had no real business winning this district, but we managed to do so anyway, by running a candidate who was a good fit for the district, by wisely allocating national party resources to help that candidate compete, and by simply being lucky enough to face a genuine nutcase on the Republican side.

Needless to say, this is a major feather in the cap of the DCCC, and a terrific blow to our Republican counterparts. NRCC chairman Tom Cole must be losing his breakfast, especially on the heels of the loss in IL-14, and facing another possible loss in an even redder district (MS-01). On our side, the DCCC did a fine job; they fended off the combined forces of the NRCC, Freedom's Watch, and the Club for Growth, and came out on top.

The Club for Growth has been backing losing candidates for some time-they're far more interested, it seems, in having doctrinaire nutters on the Republican ticket than in actually winning a majority-but this is a particularly bad black eye for Freedom's Watch, a group which has already taken a lot of hits. Having targeted LA-06 as their first big experiment-apparently, backing Woody Jenkins was the first thing their leadership could agree on as a priority for this cycle-Freedom's Watch looks positively impotent. They were supposed to be the scary new kid on the block, the shadowy Republican hit squad doing all the GOP's dirty work this election cycle. But if they can't swing a special election in an R+6.5 district, they're going to have the devil's own time swinging the presidential election.

As reported, the GOP's strategy in this election was to tie Cazayoux to national Democrats like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. I should think that the results speak for themselves, and that they indicate that this strategy has failed. From the Wall Street Journal:

Don Cazayoux's victory against Woody Jenkins to represent Louisiana's Sixth District, a seat held by Republicans for decades, has further boosted Democrats' optimism heading in to the fall elections.

Not only were Democrats able to increase their majority in the House, but Mr. Cazayoux emerged the winner despite a multimillion-dollar national and local effort to nationalize the race by defining him as a liberal Democrat in lockstep with Mr. Obama.

At the very least, their efforts to demonize Cazayoux by linking him to Obama proved a double-edged sword. Although Woody Jenkins did outperform expectations in several areas of the district, and it's possible that that was due to the NRCC's attempts to link Cazayoux to Obama, it was certainly negated by increased black turnout in East Baton Rouge, which appears to have ultimately provided Cazayoux with his margin of victory. In other words, the GOP lost at least as much by alienating black voters as they may or may not have gained with these attacks.

DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen had a nice comment on these tired old Republican tactics:

"For the second time this cycle, Republicans were reminded that ‘all politics is local,’" said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen , the DCCC chairman. Saying that "House Republicans tried to nationalize this election," Van Hollen stated that the GOP "used false and deceptive special interest smears and funneled nearly a million dollars into a district that Republicans held for more than three decades."

Van Hollen claimed that Cazayoux "won by focusing on the concerns of LA-06 voters — good paying jobs, affordable health care, and better education."

Demonizing the national Democrats is in no way going to be enough to win them this election. They went hard after Obama and Pelosi, as they have gone after Bill Clinton and Al Gore and Howard Dean and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton in the past. And they have nothing to show for it, except a humiliating loss in a former Republican stronghold.

If running against national Dems in a district where Kerry got 40% of the vote in 2004 isn't enough to save their crappy candidates, it won't be enough to save them anywhere. The GOP had better come up with something new if they want to start turning things around.

Unfortunately, according to Minority Leader John Boehner, they are counting on us to do their jobs for them. Essentially, the GOP is relying on the Democratic presidential battle to drive voters away from the party; they know very well they're cooked in downballot races if it does not. Their last hope for this cycle is that they can use national Democrats to sink the local candidates on the ballot, and the LA-06 results are a strong indicator that that won't work very well.

One final irony from this election is that the GOP loss can, in a sense, be thrown at the feet of one of the party's rising stars, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. For it was Jindal who backed Republican Jim Tucker to serve as Speaker of the Louisiana House, a decision which essentially gave Tucker the speakership despite a 53-50 advantage for Democrats in the House.

The Democratic candidate whom Jindal passed over was Don Cazayoux. It is likely that if Jindal had selected Cazayoux to serve as speaker, he would not have elected to run for the U.S. House, and Republicans might well still hold this seat.

Be careful what you wish for, Governor Jindal.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

Just before 10PM last night I was standing in a crowd of people at the Women’s Club in downtown Baton Rouge, Don Cazayoux’s election headquarters, anxiously watching election returns from the Louisiana Secretary of State’s web site being projected onto a screen.  The print was hard to read but a friend standing next to me confirmed that arch-conservative Woody Jenkins was holding on to a slim lead with only 25 of 314 precincts in East Baton Rouge Parish left to report.  On a day where turnout was an anemic 23%, Jenkins had built his lead early on the strength of hardcore support in his base in rural Livingston Parish and held on even as results from Baton Rouge slowly came in.  

Another election, another dirty trick by the Repugnant aka Republican Party.

Last night, State Rep. Don Cazayoux of New Roads polled 49,702 votes to defeat the right wing loon Republican Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge, who got 46,741 votes, for the District 6 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. This after Cazayoux defeated State Rep. Michael Jackson, an African-American, in the Democratic primary runoff last month.

Today we learn that yesterday, on election day, a number of homes in Baton Rouge’s predominantly black neighborhoods were phoned with a tape-recorded message asking black voters to teach white Democrats a lesson by staying home and not casting ballots. The ad signed off as "Friends of Michael Jackson."

I know, I know... what an ass Jackson is! But not so fast my friends!

"Don" Cazayoux win in LA 06 shows that Obama will have coattail come November..  Hillary. McCain, Superdelegate and the GOP take note because a new Teflon candidate has been born. And this is why.....

In the run-up to Saturday's special election, the state representative's image popped up time and again in local television ads, paired with that of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

One spot had side-by-side photos of Cazayoux and Obama with the words "big government scheme" describing the local candidate's stance on health care. Another showed Cazayoux with Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and charged that Cazayoux supports a "radical liberal agenda." Another spot mocked him as "Don Tax You."

Louisiana special election results:

Sixth District

99% of Precincts Reporting

Don Cazayoux (D):          49% (49312)
Woody Jenkins (R):         46% (46282)

Update: Jenkins has regained the lead in East Baton Rouge, which is where almost all of the outstanding precincts are.

Update #2: We're ahead! We're ahead! With 79% of the vote in, Cazayoux is leading by over two thousand votes.

Update #3: It's over! We win! 99% in, Cazayoux appears to have won by 3,000 votes. Congratulations, Rep.-elect Cazayoux!

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

Louisiana special election results:

Sixth District

61% of Precincts Reporting

Don Cazayoux (D):          47% (28672)
Woody Jenkins (R):         49% (30039)

First District

55% of Precincts Reporting

Gilda Reed (D):                25% (5804)
Steve Scalise (R):            73% (17072)

As you probably know, the Sixth District race is expected to be close, and a possible Democratic pickup; the race has received a good deal of national attention over the past few weeks. The First District, on the other hand, is about as red as they come.

Update by kos: SSP has a handy results chart of the LA-06 April 5th runoff election, so you can get a good idea in which parishes Cazayoux should perform well:

Ascension and Livingston parishes are the GOP strongholds here. Iberville, St. Helena, and Pointe Coupee (where Cazayoux's home is located) are strong Democratic parishes in local and federal elections and Cazayoux should perform well here tonight. East and West Feliciana are historically Democratic, but have trended GOP in federal elections in recent years. Between the runoff performance and Cazayoux's small town profile, I feel optimistic about the Democratic chances in Feliciana tonight.

Update: With 6% in, there's been a break for Jenkins, as he has opened a nine-point lead (mostly from votes coming in from his stronghold in Livingston Parish). It's still very, very early.

Update #3: Nearly 30% of results in, and while it's early, things look good so far for the GOP. Jenkins has a six-point lead, and LA-01 is the GOP blowout everyone expected.

Update #4: 45% in in LA-06, and Jenkins leads by nine. Cazayoux is getting beaten badly in East Baton Rouge. He needs roughly 54% of the remaining vote to win, and that looks like a tall order.

Update #5: It ain't over! 60% in, Cazayoux is back to within 1500 votes.

Update #6: Cazayoux continues to inch upward. This is looking like a nailbiter again. We're going to start a new thread shortly.

Race tracker wiki: LA-01 LA-06

Hey, y'all.

I didn't see an open thread discussing the outcomes of the two special elections in Louisiana today, so I started one.

In case you've been living in a bubble, today LA-06 and LA-01 votes, with a very great shot at winning in LA-06.

For me, politics is football, and election day is game day. Well, in the LA-06, it's game day, and according to  Talking Points Memo, the red team is just about ready to concede defeat in a plce they would have won easily in another time.

The ideologues of the ultra-right want to hold on to the Louisiana Sixth congressional District seat in the worst possible way.  The GOP, through the extremist group Freedom's Watch, is explicitly connecting Don Cazayoux's bid to fill the congressional seat vacated by Richard Baker with Barack Obama's run for the Presidency.  A New York Times article  states that if Don loses, Barack will get blamed for hurting his effort.

Cross-posted over at Daily Kingfish.

So, tomorrow is the special general election for LA-06 between Republican Woody Jenkins and Democrat Don Cazayoux.  

Apparently robocalls are being made to registered African-American voters here in LA-06 tonight, with the script roughly along these lines:

"The Democratic Party has never funded any African-American candidate in this district, and Don Cazayoux has no endorsements from any African-American leaders in the community"

Tomorrow is special-election day in Louisiana's 1st and 6th Districts, and with a red-hot race in the 6th District favoring Democrat Don Cazayoux, the GOP is putting everything they can into avoiding an embarrassing loss in bright-red territory.

Republican Woody Jenkins has proven to be a drain on party resources; he's been a lousy fundraiser, and his controversial, David Duke-tinged past has forced outside groups-the NRCC, the Club for Growth, and the shadowy Freedom's Watch-to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into a race in which they still trail by a large margin. In that sense, his candidacy is somewhat reminiscent of that of Jim Oberweis, another widely disliked perennial candidate who most recently lost election in Illinois' 14th District to Democrat Bill Foster.

Meanwhile, one seeming advantage for Republican Jenkins at the campaign’s outset — the fact that he was much better-known than Cazayoux — is a two-edged sword. Over the course of a 28-year tenure as Louisiana state legislator (1972-2000), Jenkins lost four statewide campaigns. Three of those bids were for the U.S. Senate, including a very close loss to Democrat Mary L. Landrieu in the 1996 general election, and one was for state elections commissioner. So while Jenkins can claim extensive political experience, it is difficult for him to portray himself as a political outsider at a time when many voters think that Congress and the Bush administration haven’t come close to solving the nation’s problems.

In fact, Jenkins has drawn comparisons to Oberweis, the dairy executive and frequent candidate who lost that Illinois special election in March. Oberweis had high negative ratings in part because he had waged three losing campaigns for statewide office, and it was hard for him to rehabilitate his image as a flawed candidate.

"Probably an additional factor in Louisiana is Woody Jenkins has been around a long time. This is the same thing we had to some degree with Oberweis," NRCC chief Cole admitted. "You get some scar tissue if you’re in politics and you make tough calls and tough decisions."

Unfortunately, Jenkins' proxies are running into their own troubles: a CBS affiliate in Baton Rouge pulled the Freedom's Watch ad from the air after the Cazayoux campaign correctly argued that it was false. Nicely done, watchers of freedom.

As Republicans always do, they have tried to divert attention from Jenkins (who is disliked) and Cazayoux (who is liked) by using Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi as their big bad liberal scarecrows. The new scarecrows are in wonderful company, of course, following in the proud footsteps of every prominent national Democrat before them. We'll see how well it works for them; the last poll showed Cazayoux leading by fully nine points, so it sure doesn't look like a world-beating issue.

We'll be covering the election results tomorrow evening. James L. at Swing State Project reports that yesterday the DCCC put an additional $267,000 into the race, bringing their total expenditures in the race to just under $1.2 million.

Their commitment to this race indicates that they're perfectly prepared to go toe-to-toe not only with the NRCC, but with their shadowy surrogates like Freedom's Watch and the Club for Growth. If we win, it will not only be a blow to the NRCC, but to the credibility of these groups as well. Freedom's Watch will have a hell of a time trying to swing the presidential election if they can't swing this one.

Let's hope that Sunday finds a punch-drunk Freedom's Watch licking their wounds and ruminating on how they can find a way to escape their irrelevance.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

Going into the special election on Saturday (yes, this Saturday), Democratic candidate Don Cazayoux enjoys a nine-point lead over Republican Woody Jenkins, according to the most recent independent poll.

SurveyUSA. 4/24-4/28. Likely voters. MoE 4.5%.

Just a few days before the special election, these are remarkable numbers for Cazayoux in a strongly Republican (R+6.5) district, one which the Republican Party has dominated since the 1970s.

Although the district is Republican turf, their brand name is hurting right now and their candidate is exceptionally bad. Jenkins is one of the most controversial politicians in Louisiana, and currently enjoys a 36/49 favorable/unfavorable rating in the district. Cazayoux's, by comparison, is a robust 43/28.

Aware of the potential embarrassment they'd face at losing this district, however, the Republicans have been throwing everything up to and including the kitchen sink into this district lately:

Despite an initial hesitancy over whether to even play in the race because of the baggage Jenkins brought to his campaign (in his March primary race, one of Jenkins’ challengers accused him of buying a mailing list from former Ku Klux Klan leader and political candidate David Duke during Jenkins’ unsuccessful 1996 Senate campaign), the NRCC has committed significant resources to the contest. According to Federal Election Commission filings, the committee has dropped more than $325,000 in independent expenditures on the race in just the past two weeks.

Meanwhile the independent political group Freedom’s Watch has spent about half a million dollars on TV ads in the 6th district. More than one of the ads produced by Freedom’s Watch has brought complaints from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has asked the FEC to open investigations into two of those ads. The DCCC is also asking the Internal Revenue Service to strip Freedom’s Watch of its tax-exempt status. On Wednesday, one of the group’s ads was pulled from the air by a CBS affiliate in Baton Rouge

Other anti-Cazayoux independent expenditures have come from the anti-tax group the Club for Growth — which has spent more than $110,000 on the contest — and Lane Grigsby, a wealthy construction company owner, who has a history of getting involved in Bayou State campaigns. Grigsby had dropped more than $100,000 in independent expenditures on the race since April 17.

The DCCC meanwhile has spent more than $600,000 on ads and other independent expenditures in just the last two weeks. Cazayoux received additional support this week when the Service Employees International Union decided to buy air time in the race.

Hm, the NRCC, Freedom's Watch, and the Club for Growth? That's quite a Murderer's Row of lunacy. And still, Cazayoux enjoys a nine-point lead.

It's still a red district, and in a low-turnout special election anything can happen, but these are excellent numbers with just two days until the election.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06