I found the following article interesting for a couple of reasons, especially because an open US Senate seat in 2006 may be in the works (please, Trent, retire...pleeease!). Most importantly, however is that as Minnesota showed yesterday, the Democrats are winning special elections left and right, which may portend a Democratic landslide in 2006. This is even true in deep-red Mississippi, where Democrats recently went 3 for 3 in special elections held after Hurricane Katrina devastated the southern portion of the state. Suprisingly, all three seats were held previously by Democrats, and none of them were "minority" seats. How were these seats won and held? Read on to find out...
In Mississippi, the following article from "The Magnolia Report", a Mississippi political site talks about three recent special legislative elections that went Democratic:
http://www.magnoliareport.com/...
"Special Elections leave the GOP out in the cold
In late summer 2005, Governor Barbour called three special elections to fill vacancies in the House of Representatives. Charlie Capps, Jr. retired in District 28, as did David Green in District 96. Joe Taylor vacated his District 86 position after winning the mayor's election in Waynesboro. All three representatives were Democrats, opening the door for Republicans to try and gain some traction in the House of Representatives. After the dust settled, Democrats loyal to Speaker McCoy held all three seats.
Hurricane Katrina struck Mississippi the day before the elections were to be held. Governor Barbour postponed the elections in Districts 86 and 96, but the election in District 28 went on as scheduled. Charlie Capps, III, son of Charlie Capps Jr. and the GOP-backed candidate, managed to get in a runoff with David Norquist, but that was as close as he'd get. Norquist, a Cleveland lawyer who was backed by the Mississippi Democratic Party, went on to win the election two weeks later.
Sherra Lane Hillman won the election in District 86 after a runoff with Waynesboro businessman Fred Stanley. Hillman was backed by the Democratic Party apparatus, plaintiffs' attorneys and allies of Speaker Billy McCoy. Stanley was supported by the business and medical communities. Neither candidate was supported by the GOP, even though the Southeast Mississippi district consistently has good numbers for Presidential and statewide elections.
Angela Cockerham, State Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Dowdy's law partner, won the special election in District 96. Holmes Sturgeon of Wilkinson County put up a fight in the run-off but fell well short in the end."
According to the Mississippi Democratic Party's website (which has a nice new blog, btw - too bad no one's commented on it yet), the Hillman and Norquist victories were particularly sweet. According to Chairman Wayne Dowdy (who lost in 1988 to Trent Lott in the last open race for the Senate in that state), Hillman faced attacks in her opponent's fliers for supporting "abortion on demand" and "being indebted to shady labor unions and ambulance chasing personal injury lawyers."
"This is the same kind of dirty politics Republicans have used in two special elections in the past year, and they lost both of them," Dowdy said. "It's about time Republicans learn that the people of Mississippi are more interested in talking about education, health care and economic development than in mud-slinging and character attacks."
Stanley, who said he was a conservative Democrat, was heavily supported by Republican fund-raisers and organizations." (From Dowdy's press release, http://www.msdemocrats.net/...)
As for the Norquist win, the GOP chose as its nominee the son of the outgoing Democratic legislator, but it didn't pan out. As Billy Tauzin III found out in Louisiana last year, the name doesn't win you the game (Charlie Melancon, a Democrat won the seat being vacated by Billy Tauzin Jr. and will face a tough reelection in 2006). Cockerham is African-American, btw, and she won in a district that was split between Kerry and Bush in 2004 (it therefore leans Democratic on a local level), so her victory isn't as of great significance as her fellow froshs' wins.
As we all know, the Magnolia State's southern area was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina (although clearly getting less attention than a metropolis like New Orleans), and Governor Haley Barbour was highly acclaimed (rightly or wrongly) for his efforts. Naturally, the GOP thought they could swing these three seats in a state that is rather Republican (to say the least). All three retiring incumbents were conservative Democrats, and their districts either were close or voted for Bush in 2004. So why did the Democrats win? In a word, Katrina, for it has changed the political climate in the state and in the nation at large. In the last several years, many southern legislative seats being vacated by the Democrats have gone Republican, most notably in Georgia (where the GOP took both legislative houses and the governorship in just two years). That trend may well have been permanently ended by Katrina, if Mississippi is any indication.
The Democrats also ran smart, targeted efforts in these three races. They had to, for as we saw in the GOP fliers the Democrats were painted as the 2nd coming of the Black Death. Winning with less, making the GOP pay more - that is the way Democrats can and should win elections. And should Trent Lott retire for 2006, a Democrat like Mike Moore (the popular ex-AG) could rely on the same grassroots efforts to win. Without massive national intervention, it will be hard for the GOP to paint Moore as a "latte liberal" (or whatever they come up with), whereas Moore could show the GOP as the corrupt establishment in Washington. Check out the MS Dems' site at http://www.msdemocrats.net/ to see what I'm talking about.
In Minnesota, a similar anti-Republican backlash seems to be taking place. Late last month a GOP-leaning Senate district went Democratic, as Terri Bonoff defeated her Republican opponent handily. Yesterday the Democrats scored a hold on a House race (courtesy of a GOP error) and won big in a GOP-leaning State Senate seat in St. Cloud (in Minnesota's 6th Congressional district, which will be hotly contested in 2006). The Democratic winner there was Tarryl Clark (http://www.tarrylforsenate.com/), a two-time candidate for the seat who had narrowly lost to the GOP incumbent in 2002 (by a 50-49% margin). When the incumbent resigned this fall, Clark ran in yesterday's special election to succeed him. She won by a 55-37 margin.
St. Cloud is a college town, but many of the city's liberal-leaning students were home for the holidays. This was apparently a deliberate move by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, who would have liked to kept the DFL (the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, founded in 1944 as a merger of the Dems and another party) from expanding their lead in the State Senate again. As of mid-November the DFL held a 35-31 margin there, with 1 Independence Party Senator. Now, they have a 37-29 margin, making it unlikely that the GOP will be able to capture that body in 2006. Meanwhile, the Democrats gained 13 seats in 2004 in the House, and Larry Haws' win in a House race yesterday kept the gains intact. The GOP currently holds a 68-66 margin in that body, and the Democrats could very well capture it in 2006. Haws' opponent was kicked off the ballot for not being a resident of her district, and her mother drew only 25% as a write-in candidate. Haws, who bears a resemblance to an elderly Theodore Roosevelt, has a site as well at http://www.larryhaws.com/ .
However, the DFL victories in Bonoff and Clark's cases and the Magnolia State wins are proof that even GOP-leaning areas of the country are willing to vote Democratic. If the trend continues, and if the Democrats run good campaigns as they did in those two states, we could be looking at a country turned blue in 2006. Let's keep it up!
