Democrat Picks Up Miss. House Seat

In Mississippi's 1st district, Democrat Travis Childers (see left) picked up a House seat in a special election Tuesday.

MS-01 is a highly conservative district, and it was the third big win for the Democrats in highly conservative districts in the last three months in special House elections.

The seat opened up because the representative of that district, Republican Roger Wicker, was called upon by Mississippi's governor to fill Sen. Trent Lott's position in the Senate.

Childers, a court official in Prentiss county, defeated Republican Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven (a suburb of Memphis), by a margin of 54% to 46%. Childers put together a coalition of blacks, who were angered by the racial tone of the primary, and conservative "yellow dog" Democrats, who have not voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter.

This is a crushing blow to the NRCC, who poured over $1 million into this race, and a combined $3 million in their past three unsuccessful special election races. If the Republicans keep losing these races in their so-called "strongholds", what will happen to the dozen or so open seats in districts with ratings of R+5 or less?

This loss also means that tying these Democrats to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi doesn't really work, which is a bad sign for the Fall. It didn't work with Don Cazayoux of LA-06, and it didn't work with Childers in MS-01. Even the classic Republican strategy of calling people liberal doesn't work anymore. I guess after Bush, liberal isn't such a dirty word anymore.

The NRCC and the Republican party has to gravitate away from Bush and towards the center if they want to have a fighting chance in November, or we could have a massacre on our hands.