Don Cazayoux's victory in Louisiana's 6th Congressional District should send a message to national Democrats that Louisiana is officially in play in this year's elections.

The DCCC spent significant dollars in the race and Cazayoux had decent fund-raising efforts on his own. As a result of those efforts — and a rising tide of disgust with the impact of national Republican policies and the Bush administration — a Democrat took this seat for the first time since the 1970s.

These developments and others point to the real possibility of Louisiana's nine electoral votes going into the Democratic column in this fall's election. But it's not all good news.

14% undecided for the McCain-Obama match up.

McCain-50 Clinton-42 in the same poll.

I knew I should have gone to the Vitter town hall when I got that card last week!  See what I missed, below the fold:

I hope all within the online blogging and dailykos community have come through for Mary Landrieu's reelection effort in 2008. Democrats in Louisiana have been struggling in recent years but Mary still has what it takes to come through in the general election. Also, there are recent house seats that could come into play and Democrats are bound to take at least one of those. Please contribute to Mary's campaign as well as the Louisiana Democratic Party so that we can keep Mary in the Senate and rebuild the Democratic party in Louisiana.

P.S. George W. Bush has already came to Louisiana to fundraise for state treasurer John N. Kennedy another "Democrat" turncoat oppurtunist. Help raise money for Mary so that we don't have to put up with another GOP lap dog in the Senate

So with eight months to go, I figure it’s time for an updated look at all the 2008 Senate races.  There are 35 seats up for election because of a scenario in Wyoming and Mississippi where both seats are up, due to the passing of Craig Thomas and the resignation of Trent Lott, respectively.  Now obviously, quite a few of the races are considered "safe" for the incumbent.  So I’ll rank these in terms of tiers.  The top tier will be the races where there is a serious challenger to the incumbent (or at least the incumbent’s party, in cases of retirement), where the party holding the seat has a real shot of switching.  The second tier are races that could become top tier races, but are not at this point.  Tier III are ones where a major event would need to happen for the seat to come into play.  And the safe seats?  Well, Mike Gravel has a better shot at winning the presidency than those incumbents have of losing their races.

Follow me below the fold for all the races.  Note: Some of this may seem repetitive, with information you already know.  That’s because I originally wrote this for the Bruin Democrats, many of whom don’t follow the national races like we do.  Consider this a primer for both newcomers and political junkies alike.

Well, this will certainly help convince Louisiana voters to support lifetime-Democrat-recently-turned-Republican John Kennedy in his campaign to unseat our state’s Democratic senior Senator, Mary Landrieu – NOT!

Details on the flip:

The Musicians' Village in the Ninth Ward is a project of Habitat for Humanity

The profile of the most visible voice supporting New Orleans was lowered yesterday when John Edwards suspended his campaign.  While Sen. Edwards will of course continue to speak out for social justice in New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, the folks who live down here wonder if anyone else will.  If the track record and recent behavior of the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination is any indication, nobody will until after the party convention.

There's a good reason they'll blow us off:  New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are just not essential.

It has been more than two months since my last Senate rankings. With the presidential primaries on every one's mind, congressional races are looking less urgent, not to mention that there was just very little news coming out of down-the-ballot contests during the holiday period. But a lot has changed since the beginning of November -- starting with the number of Senate elections that will be decided in 2008. Trent Lott's shocking decision to prioritize lobbying over holding the position he was elected to a year before has added a 35th race to our rankings, and has expanded the map for Democrats with an unexpected opportunity.

Full rankings are posted here, on Campaign Diaries.

According to this Reuters article, The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint against Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) for purported bribery.  

WASHINGTON--(Business Wire)--Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today sent a complaint to the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District for Louisiana and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, asking for an investigation into whether Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) violated federal bribery law by including a $2 million earmark for Voyager Expanded Learning in a bill a mere four days after receiving $30,000 in campaign contributions from company executives and their relatives. CREW also asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the matter.

Of course, the interesting part of this incident is that the campaign contributions came from none other than Bush friend, Randy Best.

More below...

This will probably be the last of the MONTHLY installments of the FTP series, as the election is bound to ramp up with the new year. Perhaps this will become a weekly deal. I am sure that by October, it will be a daily installment. For now, brace yourself for a statistical flood, as there were 67 polls released over the course of this month, covering a total of 44 general election contests.

A few caveats, for those new to this particular corner of the community: I only do general election polls in this diary, and I average the polls for the time period (so, yes, a poll from December 1st gets lumped in with a poll from December 29th).

Follow me past the jump for all of the numbers.

Well, any political junkie worth his/her salt is currently preoccupied with electing the next POTUS, but as I've stated many times, I'm primarily a congressional nerd. This is my final Senate rundown of the year, so here are things as they stand today, on the brink of the busiest winter politics has ever seen.

Seats are ranked by likelihood of flipping parties. Read below the fold...

In his song "Rednecks," Randy Newman sums up David Vitter's position on public housing in New Orleans.  Vitty-cent has risen in opposition to a housing bill proposed by his senate colleague, Mary Landrieu.  Landrieu's bill would require a one-to-one replacement of public housing units.  Tear down a unit, it has to be replaced by a new one.  

[First, a cheap plug for Senate 2008 Guru: Following the Races.]

So, newly-Republican state Treasurer John N. Kennedy has taken the first steps toward a 2008 Senate challenge to Senator Mary Landrieu, as he announced yesterday by e-mail and via a message on his circa 1997 Geocities website.

To kick off his campaign, I'd suggest the media ask two questions of Treasurer Kennedy:

(Questions below the fold.)

This was expected after Rove got his preferred Democrat to switch parties.

Political Wire has learned that Lousiana state Treasurer John Kennedy (R) -- who switched his party affiliation to the Republican Party earlier this year -- will challenge Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) in 2008. The official announcement will be early next year though he began soliciting campaign contributions for the bid today.

This is the one seat Republicans have a prayer of picking up. And while Landrieu herself inspires little effort to come to her defense (she'll have plenty of her corporatist buddies helping her out), if nothing else, it would be nice to see Kennedy crushed next year. You have to be a special kind of stupid to switch to the Republican Party at a time its fortunes nationwide are crashing and burning.

Update: Holy shit, this Geo Cities site is John Kennedy's real campaign website. Hilarious! He really does belong with the neanderthals in the GOP.

Race tracker wiki: LA-Sen

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) can expect a challenge from Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy, who changed his party affiliation recently from Democrat to Republican.

A message on Kennedy's website makes the announcement, accompanied with a plea for campaign donations.

... many of you may think it is.

I like Hillary.  I think she is a strong and savvy politician.  But I think that her nomination will hurt our party.  I think that no matter how strong of a candidate she is, and how much I agree with her positions, she’s going to cause more trouble than good for this party.

I don’t care how much I like her politics, her record, her vision, whatever, there is no doubt in my mind, from my research, from my work here in Washington, that Hillary will help to mobilize the right against her, and more importantly, against our party.

Senator David Vitter's "hooker problem" is not going away.  Even the usually Republican-friendly daily newspaper of Louisiana’s capital decided that news of the publication of former New Orleans prostitute Wendy (Cortez) Ellis’s interview and pictorial in the latest Hustler, merits the top spot on their website this evening.  (That’s right, The Advocate reads Hustler so you don’t have to)!

Hey, I'm not complaining.  You know what happens when you repeat things often enough, a technique that seems to work especially well on Republicans.  Maybe if the Vitter hooker stories pop up often enough, the Repubs will get sick of rehashing that tired old spin, "...unlike Larry Craig, David Vitter did not enter a guilty plea" ... yadda yadda yadda...and figure out that Mr. Sanctity of Marriage really is a colossal hypocrite. Well it could happen!

A few interesting tidbits from the Hustler interview, on the flip:

September was an awful month for the GOP: John Warner and Hagel retired, Shaheen and Mark Warner jumped in for Democrats... October started much the same way, as New Mexico's Pete Domenici announced he would not run for re-election, opening up yet another very vulnerable seat. But Democrats then ran into a bad patch of their own that culminated in the disastrous news that Bob Kerrey would not run in Nebraska. That by itself made a race that was leaning towards Democrats become a likely hold for Republicans. Meanwhile, the shuffle in New Mexico has still not been resolved, with Democrats scrambling to find a strong candidate.

Check out the full rankings (and more political news) here, on Campaign Diaries.