By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

The political arms of Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Dec. 11 special election in Ohio’s vacant 5th District, where Republican state Rep. Bob Latta and Democrat Robin Weirauch are vying to succeed the late Republican Rep. Paul E. Gillmor.

In a filing Monday with the Federal Election Commission, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reported spending about $280,000 in independent expenditures to produce and air television commercials and send mailings attacking Weirauch in Ohio’s 5th, which includes Bowling Green and rural territory in the northwestern part of the state.

Weirauch, who lost to Gillmor in 2004 and 2006, is hoping to pull a major upset against Latta — a veteran officeholder who is the son of former Republican Rep. Delbert Latta (1959-89) — in a strongly Republican-leaning district that gave President Bush 61 percent of the vote in the 2004 election.

That the NRCC is spending its relatively limited financial resources in such a strongly Republican-leaning district suggests that House Republican campaign officials are not taking the race for granted — and that the contest may be closer than is suggested by the district’s political demographics and election history.

The NRCC is sharing the airwaves in Ohio’s 5th with its cash-flush partisan counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which on Sunday reported independent expenditures of $157,000 to produce and air television ads critical of Latta.

That spending, coupled with Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland ’s campaigning with Weirauch over the weekend, suggests that Democratic leaders think an upset is possible.

Under federal campaign finance laws, national party committees can spend unlimited sums on independent expenditures as long as the outlays are not made “in concert” with the campaigns of the candidates they prefer.

Gillmor died in September while serving his 10th House term. Latta and Weirauch won their party primary elections on Nov. 6.

CQ Politics rates this race as Republican Favored.