Let us review the most recent occasion an insurgent won the Democratic nomination against bitter and organized establishment opposition. It was 1972 and George McGovern, caretaker of the Kennedy delegates after California in 1968, had been given the party rules committee slot that would have gone to RFK and, failing that, should have gone to Gene McCarthy. In the 1972 primaries McGovern used his knowledge of the rules to defeat the presumptive nominee, Hubert Humphrey, with an outbreak of enthusiasm Humphrey could hardly understand, much less emulate.

But then at the convention he tried to reach out to the establishment wing of the party by nominating a labor hack, Tom Eagleton of Missouri, as his running mate. It was a sickening blow that the old politics delivered straight to the reform breadbasket. It also showed that McGovern did not have the strategic cunning or the tactical brass to dance with who brung him.

A terrific way to close out the evening:

LANHAM, Md. (AP) — Democratic lawyer and nonprofit executive Donna Edwards won a special election Tuesday to become Maryland's first black woman elected to Congress.

Edwards beat Republican Peter James in the race to serve the remainder of former U.S. Rep. Albert Wynn's term in Maryland's 4th District. Wynn left office May 31 to take a lobbying job after losing to Edwards in February's Democratic primary by 22 percentage points.

Edwards, 49, will hold the seat for the rest of the year. James also won his party's primary in February, meaning he and Edwards will face each other again in November's general election.

Race tracker wiki: MD-04

The Republicans lost another crucial election last night. It was their third special election loss in a row. All three were deeply Republican districts in the past. This one was in the heart of Mississippi and was in a district that George Bush won with 62% of the vote in 2004.

The Republicans are in deep, deep trouble. If they lose in these districts (the other two were a Louisiana seat they had kept for three decades and Dennis Hastert's former seat in Illinois), they can literally lose anywhere. The whole electoral map can be redrawn.

So, what's their new plan? Go further to the right! No, you schmucks, that's what got you in trouble in the first place. The problem is the Republican Party has become so extreme there are no moderates left to tell them they should head in the opposite direction.

I confess, I didn't even watch one second of cable news on Tuesday.  I played poker.  I got a friend on the phone nearly 3 hours after the polls closed, and he gave me a hilarious, gorgeously profane encapsulation of the massive insipidry of Greater Pundolia.

Right as we were winding up our conversation, he mentions, reading off TV:

"Breaking: Democrat wins special election in Mississippi."

I started laughing.  All that effort in punditry.  So pointless.  All the exit poll wankery, so much drilling down, so little feel for the spirit at loose in the land.

You're mighty talkative tonight. Move all that chatter to this thread.

Race tracker wiki: MS-01 NE-Sen

Results for the Mississippi First District special election, filling the seat of Senator Roger Wicker.

79% of Precincts Reporting

Travis W. Childers (D):        51% (42029)
Greg Davis (R):                    49% (40275)

We're near 60% in now. DeSoto (aka DavisLand) keeps trickling in, 21 of 38 precincts now, and still no word from Childers' base of Prentiss (where he got 85% last time). Childers continues to overperform his previous performance in most counties, including DeSoto, which bodes well.

Update #1: 27 of 38 DeSoto precincts in. Childers leads by about 1,800 votes. Still nothing from Prentiss, where he won by 3500 votes last time.

Update #2: 72% of the results are now in; there are 11 DeSoto precincts left, and all 15 of Prentiss' precints. Can Davis' base close a near 3500-vote gap, and cancel out Childers' base?

Update #3 36 of 38 DeSoto precincts are in...and Childers is still up by 700 votes. Better yet, Prentiss County has yet to report at all.

I'd wager a bottle of Hendrick's gin that we've won.

Update #4: New thread! New thread!

Race tracker wiki: MS-01

Results for the Mississippi First District special election, filling the seat of Senator Roger Wicker.

51% of Precincts Reporting

Travis W. Childers (D):        54% (25591)
Greg Davis (R):                    46% (21974)

According to Will Bardwell, turnout is high across the district, but it is exceptionally high in Davis' base of DeSoto County, where they have had to order additional ballots. This is a good sign for the Davis campaign.

Update: So far, so good. With just about 8.5% in, Childers is up over a thousand votes. No results in from DeSoto yet, though, so don't get too excited too fast.

Update #2: Replaced the link with a better one.

Update #3: DeSoto is starting to report, and the gap is naturally closing. Prentiss County (Childers' base, where he got 85% last time) hasn't started to come in yet.

Update #4: Childers is doing quite a bit better IN DeSoto County so far, picking up 28%. That may help offset the greater turnout there. He's still up 10 points, with 32% in now, and Prentiss County still hasn't reported.

Update #5: New thread posted. Migrate over there!

Race tracker wiki: MS-01

I don't understand why there is no mention of this on the front page at dKos.  This is the most important election going on today!  If we win this seat, not only with the NRCC be on its heels, but it will show that Obama has positive coattails in even the reddest of districts.  Remember that the Republicans are tying Childers to Obama!  Do it now!

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.  

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

I voted today for a candidate with a D behind there name, not the candidate I would have liked to have cast my vote but I did my duty as a citizen. My first choice in my district of course didn't qualify, but why should this election be any different. Seems that we lefties rarely enjoy the opportunity of having our candidate available when it comes time to make a statement, or express our true natures yet we still do what has to be done and show up to be counted. I voted for Dan Cazayoux in LA-06, he who was endorsed by the DCCC. The same DCCC which unltimately take the easiest route in their support, never taking a chance on truly progressive candidates like "Gilda Reed. Now Gilda was the candidte who I would liked to vote for today, alas I live approximately three miles as the crow flies in the neighboring district.

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

Coming off the heartbreakingly close April 22 special election in Mississippi's First District, where Democrat Travis Childers came painfully close (within 400 votes) of winning outright, the DCCC has dropped an enormous financial bomb in the district.

Yesterday, the DCCC made an independent expenditure to the tune of $700,000 in the district, with roughly half of that going to ads in support of Childers and the other half into ads attacking his Republican opponent, Greg Davis.

This brings total DCCC spending in the district to roughly $1.1 million, with the bulk of that having come since the special election, after which we were already in a strong position.

Ordinarily, we wouldn't have this kind of money to spend in a district like MS-01. It is an R+10 district, in which Bush received 60% of the vote in 2004, and while there are many Democrats elected locally throughout the district, Republican Roger Wicker held it essentially unchallenged at the federal level since 1994.

This year, though, the DCCC is positively flush with cash, while their downtrodden counterparts at the NRCC are scrambling to make ends meet. The $700,000 expenditure is just 2% of what the DCCC had on hand at the beginning of April. Should the NRCC choose to match it, they would be spending fully 10% of their treasury.

That's a tall order, spending 10% of your savings to hold a district that should, by all rights, be completely safe.

But the alternative, of course, is even worse for the NRCC.

Race tracker wiki: MS-01

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

I should be sleeping, but sometimes you are just restless, you know?  So tonight llbear e-mailed me with an idea for the Gilda Reed campaign in LA-01 that set off an e-mail exchange culminating in a "reply all" answer from Gilda herself to the effect that she needs every warm body she can get her hands on.

More juicy details below the fold.

Results for the Mississippi First District special election, filling the seat of Senator Roger Wicker.

100% of Precincts Reporting

Travis W. Childers (D):        49% (33138)
Greg Davis (R):                    47% (31066)
Steve Holland (D):               1% (782)
Glenn R. McCullough (R):     1% (957)

Childers needed 50% to avoid a runoff, and came tantalizingly close to doing it. We were probably about 400 votes away from winning a special election in a crimson R+10 district in Mississippi.

There are two ways to look at this election. First, we failed to win tonight, and that's a great disappointment considering how close we came. I didn't expect to win this election, and I'm impressed that we almost did.

The DCCC spent just south of $150,000 in this race, which is quite a bit, but it was half of what the NRCC spent. It's very possible that a greater investment in this district would have yielded a win tonight (and the DCCC certainly could have afforded to have spent more, given their tremendous cash advantage), but that's spilled milk. They did take this race seriously, and they did spend here, so it's hard to fault them too much. Still (and hindsight is 20/20, I know), they certainly had the money to at least match the NRCC investment.

I'm sure we can expect much more activity from the DCCC over the next two weeks, given tonight's results.

While we didn't win tonight, I certainly consider this a successful result. Childers beat Davis tonight, and the total Democratic vote topped 50%, so we stand a good chance in the runoff.

We also made the NRCC spend nearly $300,000, which they can't afford to do, in a race they didn't win. They will have to spend even more-significantly more, in fact-over the next two weeks in order to win this election, and that is to hold on to a dark-red Republican stronghold. The NRCC must be terrified with the LA-06 special election coming up around the corner.  

This kind of performance, in such strongly Republican territory, really is indicative of the Democratic wave coming. When we run a candidate who supports withdrawal from Iraq and SCHIP expansion, and he comes through with a performance like this in Roger Wicker's old district, there's no telling what might be in store for us in November.

Race tracker wiki: MS-01

Results for the Mississippi First District special election, filling the seat of Senator Roger Wicker.

99% of Precincts Reporting

Travis W. Childers (D):        49% (32376)
Greg Davis (R):                    47% (30923)
Steve Holland (D):               1% (772)
Glenn R. McCullough (R):     1% (948)

Democrat Travis Childers and Republican Greg Davis have already won the nominations for the November election for next term, but they will share ballot space for this special election with two candidates from the same party.

There are six candidates currently on the ballot-two Democrats, two Republicans, an independent and a Green. If any candidate manages to get 50%, they will go on to Congress immediately. If not, there will be a subsequent runoff election on May 13. Steve Holland and Glenn McCullough, the losers of the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively, have not campaigned since the primary (in fact, both asked to be removed from the ballot), but it is still possible, even likely, that they will siphon off enough votes to force the runoff.  

Update: With 12% in, Childers still has a substantial lead. We may be poised for a terrific upset in an R+10 district...but we'll see, there's 88% of votes to be counted...

Update #2: Did I speak too soon? The lead has narrowed significantly with Childers up 51-44. Remember, if no candidate gets 50%, it will go to a runoff election.

Update #3: With 40% now in, Childers still leads by 10 points, 53-43. This is looking quite good. It's looking especially difficult for Davis to win 50% outright.

Update #4: Never mind, the Davis strongholds are coming in. He's now up 50-46 with 46% in.

Update #5: Davis has an eight-point lead with 61% in. It's not looking good for Childers tonight, though it's still possible that he could force a runoff.

Update #6: Davis has dropped to 50%. It's still very possible he will not win outright. Childers is up to 46%, so this is not yet over.

Update #7: And Davis drops below 50%! Meanwhile, Childers has pulled towithin two points.

Update #8: Childers is back in the lead, although it'll be tough for him to clear 50%. There are still a few precincts in Childers' home of Prentiss County to report.

Update #9: Per Swing State Project, the AP has called this as going to a runoff.

Race tracker wiki: MS-01