By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

Republican Steve Scalise won the special House election held Saturday in Louisiana’s 1st District — a victory that confirms there still are “safe Republican” seats despite the party’s numerous setbacks since the 2006 election cycle.

Scalise, a state senator, easily outran Democrat Gilda Reed, a psychologist, by 75 percent to 23 percent with all precincts reporting, as two minor candidates split the remainder of the vote. Scalise will succeed Republican Bobby Jindal , who in January vacated the seat in this New Orleans-area Republican stronghold as he was inaugurated to the office of governor that he won last October in Louisiana’s off-year election.

Scalise’s victory was never really in doubt. No Democrat in more than 30 years has been elected to Congress from Louisiana’s 1st District, which covers both the parishes (counties) south of Lake Pontchartrain in and around New Orleans, and territory north of the lake that reaches the Mississippi border. President Bush took 70 percent of the district vote at the top of the Republican ticket in 2004.

The major parties’ House campaign organizations in Washington basically ignored the 1st District to concentrate instead on the much more competitive race in the adjacent 6th District, where Democratic state Rep. Don Cazayoux narrowly defeated Republican former state Rep. Woody Jenkins in a race to succeed resigned Republican Rep. Richard H. Baker. That race attracted far more national attention and voter participation than the contest in the 1st District, where Scalise was expected to win overwhelmingly.

Scalise effectively clinched the 1st District seat in Congress on April 5, when he defeated state Rep. Tim Burns in a Republican primary runoff election. A month before that, Scalise led the field in first-round Republican primary balloting but fell just short of garnering the majority vote needed to win outright and avoid the runoff.

A 42-year-old systems engineer who received a degree in computer science from Louisiana State University, Scalise will be a reliably conservative vote in the House. He is an opponent of abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration. He wants to make permanent the tax cuts that were implemented in 2001 and 2003 at the urging of the Bush administration.

His fiscal conservatism does not preclude his pledge to work for more federal funds for coastal restoration and levee protection in a state that was battered by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago.

In editorially endorsing Scalise for the seat, the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans cited his legislative experience. Scalise served 12 years in the state House, where he promoted tax incentives for the movie industry to film in Louisiana, and was elected to the state Senate last fall.

“His experience in Baton Rouge would allow him to make a swift transition in Congress, which is particularly important as this area continues to recover from disaster,” the newspaper said.

Serving in Congress has long been on Scalise’s mind. In 1999, Scalise took steps to run in a special election to succeed Republican Rep. Robert L. Livingston, who had resigned after admitting to extramarital relations. But Scalise ultimately declined to join a race that was won by Republican David Vitter .

The situation was virtually replicated in 2004. When Vitter left open the 1st District seat for what would be a successful bid for the U.S. Senate, Scalise initially ran to succeed him but eventually deferred to Jindal, the preferred candidate of the Republican establishment, who had narrowly lost an initial bid for governor the year before.

“His heart and soul are in Washington,” Scalise’s father told the Times-Picayune for a profile that appeared in February and had the headline, “Steve Scalise: In pursuit of a lifetime goal.”