CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 1, 2008 – 10:16 p.m.
GOP Goes ‘National’ in Uphill Louisiana’s Special Election Fight
By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff
Republican officials are trying, against tough odds, to hold Louisiana’s vacant 6th Congressional District seat in a special election coming up this Saturday.
State Rep. Don Cazayoux — the conservative Democratic nominee for the seat that 11-term Republican Rep. Richard H. Baker vacated in February to head a lobbying group for the hedge fund industry — is well-funded and is running a strong campaign in the usually Republican-leaning district. Former state Rep. Woody Jenkins, the Republican nominee, is certainly competitive, but has waged several unsuccessful campaigns for office and is portrayed by critics as a very hardline conservative.
So, in their efforts to salvage the seat and prevent a second embarrassing special election loss in less than two months, national Republican strategists — and some conservative surrogate organizations — are trying to “nationalize” the 6th District campaign. They are doing so with ads linking Cazayoux to more liberal national leaders of his party, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , the Democratic presidential contender.
That makes Saturday’s primary something of a test of a strategy that the Republicans hope to deploy widely in this fall’s national House campaign. Though the Democrats hold major advantages at this point in the national campaign — in terms of fundraising, candidate recruitment, incumbent retention and public opinion concerning the two parties — Republican planners contend they have a trump card: There are 61 seats currently held by Democrats in districts that favored President Bush in 2004, compared to just eight currently held by Republicans in districts that went for Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry .
This strategy stands somewhat in contrast to the approach the party took during the 2006 campaign, in its unsuccessful effort to defend the majority it then held in the House. Then, the Republicans were fighting hard to prevent the Democrats from nationalizing the campaign by tying Republican candidates to Bush’s low approval ratings, the increasingly unpopular U.S. military engagement in Iraq, and corruption scandals that then tainted several prominent congressional Republicans.
“All politics is local,” New York Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds , then the chairman of the House GOP campaign organization, said over and over again in 2006.
But Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole , Reynolds’ successor as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), is taking the opposite tack, at least pertaining to the races in those “Bush-Democratic” House districts. “As these elections become nationalized, we do better,” Cole told reporters Monday. He claimed that Pelosi and Obama have poor approval ratings in Louisiana’s 6th, a Baton Rouge-centered district where Bush took 59 percent of the vote in 2004.
The NRCC this week began airing a television ad in Louisiana 6 this week that inserted a photo of Cazayoux in between those of Obama and Pelosi, whom a narrator says want to pursue a “radical agenda, very different from Louisiana’s values.”
“The Obama-Pelosi team needs Don Cazayoux to win this special election,” the narrator says. “See, Cazayoux will be a vote for their agenda, so they fund his campaign.”
Jenkins also raised Pelosi as a specter during a candidate debate Monday in Baton Rouge. “The tactic of the Democratic Party is to talk conservative during the election but to vote liberal in Washington,” Jenkins said, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper.
Cazayoux and his supporters counter that this strategy will prove ineffective. Katie Nee, Cazayoux’s campaign manager, said, “I don’t think it’s working.” She added, “We hear from people that they see through that stuff, that they know this race is between Don Cazayoux and Woody Jenkins . . . I don’t think it’s really had much of an impact to attack us with these national figures who aren’t really in people’s minds here yet.”
Cazayoux portrays himself as a conservative-minded Democrat who opposes abortion and supports gun owners’ rights. He’s sought to burnish his center-right political profile by announcing endorsements from some Republican officials and political independents — as well as from centrist-minded Democrats such as former Louisiana Sen. John B. Breaux or the Blue Dog Coalition of congressional Democrats who urge fiscal restraint.
Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen , chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), told CQ Politics last week that Cazayoux was a “social conservative” and “economic populist” whose political profile fits Louisiana’s 6th.
GOP Goes ‘National’ in Uphill Louisiana’s Special Election Fight
Cole, though, said that Cazayoux is co-opting Republican principles. “Cazayoux is trying to be all things to all people — pro-life, pro-gun,” he said. “If you really believe those things, you don’t have a whole lot of reason to run as a Democrat because as a party, they’re not for any of those things.”
Finding the resources to back up those words has been difficult for Cole’s team. The NRCC has faced fundraising difficulties since the Republicans lost their House majority, and its huge cash-on-hand deficit to the DCCC was made worse by the GOP’s failed campaign leading up to the March 8 special election in Illinois’ 14th District. The NRCC plunged more than $1.3 million into that contest, for the seat Republican J. Dennis Hastert, the former House Speaker, vacated when he resigned last November. But Democrat Bill Foster , backed by about $1 million in DCCC spending, defeated Republican Jim Oberweis.
The overall fundraising imbalance is reflected in the party committee’s spending so far on the race in Louisiana’s 6th District. The NRCC has spent at least $436,000 on independent expenditures in this race, according to periodic reports it has filed with the Federal Election Commission. The DCCC has put at least $918,000 into independent outlays through April 30, primarily on television ads and mail pieces.
The Republicans have gotten some backup, however, from conservative political action groups that are running ads against Cazayoux. Freedom’s Watch, a conservative group whose leaders include some operatives who were involved in the party’s congressional campaigns in 2006, has run television ads that have linked Cazayoux to Obama on health care policy and also criticized Cazayoux for voting for some tax hikes.
The PAC associated with the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group that backed Jenkins for the April 5 Republican primary and is supporting him in the special election, is airing a television ad that also criticizes Cazayoux on taxes.
Cazayoux’s campaign says that the attacks on his tax votes are taken out of context, holding that his votes were for a broad tax overhaul, backed by Republican then-Gov. Mike Foster, that included tax cuts elsewhere in the code. Cazayoux says he supports tax relief for middle-class families.
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.”
But Cole contended that Jenkins also has a significant upside, stating, “You also get, by the way, some pretty strong support, which he has. That’s why he won that primary very easily. So there’s an intensity about him.”
Saturday’s ballot also will include three lesser-known candidates: independents Peter J. Aranyosi, Ashley Casey and Randall T. Hayes.
Please consult CQ Politics on Saturday night for analysis of the returns in Louisiana’s 6th, where the polls close at 9 p.m. eastern time.
Comments
If You're pro-life and pro-gun you can't be a Democrat? These issues are rarely limited, and Cole must not understand that as a party Democrats have true moderates, we don't force our members into a narrow viewpoint like Republicans do. Our moderates don't still vote the liberal line 90% of the time, like moderate Republicans do the conservative line. We have actual moderates because we have critical issues and viewpoints at the center of our party, and we acknowledge a wide variety of opinions on outlying issues.
I am a liberal Democrat and serve on my town committee in NYS. I can only say that the Democratic Party is open to conservatives and that they form an important component of our electoral coalition. It is important to us to be open to all perspectives in our party councils. It is important to us to represent the broadest possible spectrum of opinion as we are the party of the people and take that seriously. The GOP attempt to villify Pelosi and our other national leaders is a contemptible attempt to demonize their POLITICAL opposition. In rare circumstances this appeal to umbrage and anger can sway people, but in the current political climate, in which voters and Democratic leaders are searching for unity and ways to connect to voters in all parts of the political spectrum, we can only hope that it will fail and that Nr> Cazayoux wins and brings fresh ideas to Washington.
Congratulations to Don Cazayoux for his victory in the 6th La. CD. Mr. Cazayoux offered voters a chance to register their opinions on a number of issues. The voters repudiated the GOP culture of corruption which permits congressmen to leave public service and move into special interest corporate lobbying. The voters repudiated the John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, GW Bush approach to government by division and confrontation. Most importantly, the voters of LOUISIANA decisively rejected the Bush Administration and its policies which have set this country on such a disasterous course.
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