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Obama's 'toxicity' yet to be proven

May 7, 2008 — Last weekend, after Democrat Don Cazayoux beat Republican Woody Jenkins in the special election to fill a vacancy in Louisiana’s 6^th Congressional District, the National Republican Congressional Committee issued a terse statement defending its strategy of tying the Democratic candidate with Barack Obama.

In effect what it said what that Jenkins would have been beaten even worse if the NRCC hadn’t run the ads, one of which said, “a vote for Cazayoux is a vote for Obama.”

“This election speaks to the potential toxicity of an Obama candidacy and the possible drag he could have down-ballot this fall,” the NRCC release said.

“Potential” and “possible” are the big words here. The GOP’s internal polling does show the ads narrowed the losing margin for Jenkins, a religious conservative who was not a popular choice in the Republican establishment.

But it wasn’t enough to knock off a Democratic legislator who looks like a grown-up Opie Taylor, and has a conservative legislative record, in a special election in which the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee brought $1.2 million to the table to counter the NRCC ads.

Coupled with Obama’s sweeping victory in the Democratic primary Tuesday in North Carolina, where the state GOP ran an ad linking him to both leading Democratic candidates for governor, the Louisiana election last weekend suggests that Obama won’t be so toxic for down-ticket Democratic candidates in the South this fall. A better way to say that might be: no more toxic than the average Democratic presidential candidate is for the party’s candidates in Southern races.

The Democrats had the advantage of a mismatch in the Louisiana race which has been obvious from the beginning. When the president of the LSU College Republicans joined Republicans for Cazayoux, the GOP must have known it had a problem.

Still, the loss of a seat held more than 33 years sent shockwaves through Republican circles in Washington. NRCC chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) called a tough-love meeting to warn Republican members the campaign organization wouldn’t have enough money to go around for every competitive race the party faces this fall, while Newt Gingrich, rapidly assuming the role of party Cassandra, warned that if House Republicans thought Obama and Jeremiah Wright would save them this fall, they face a debacle.

The Republicans’ consternation over Louisiana 6 creates enormous anxiety over the May 13 runoff in Mississippi’s 1^st Congressional District runoff between Democrat Travis Childers, who almost won the seat outright in a special election last month, and Republican Greg Davis. Vice President Dick Cheney is coming to the district to campaign with Davis, and both parties are spending even more than they spent in Louisiana.

The Republicans are pursuing the Obama strategy against Childers, this time with shots of Jeremiah Wright thrown in. If the strategy doesn’t work in northern Mississippi, there really will be consternation.