By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

At first glance, Ohio’s 5th District does not stand out as a hotbed of two-party competition, but there are plenty of signs that a Dec. 11 special election will be much more competitive than its political demographics and election history would indicate.

Anchored in the state’s rural northwest, the 5th’s Republican leanings are undeniable — from its overwhelming support for President Bush in the 2004 election to the district’s exclusive Republican representation in the House for the past 70 years. But now, a close race is expected between Republican state Rep. Bob Latta and Democrat Robin Weirauch who are vying to succeed the late Republican Rep. Paul E. Gillmor.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) have spent a few hundred thousand dollars combined on television advertisements and other communications that criticize the opposition.

The NRCC and DCCC regularly conduct private polling to gauge the competitiveness of congressional races, so their decisions to spend money in the Ohio 5 special election suggest both sides view the race as highly competitive. Members of Congress and political action committees (PACs) have been giving campaign funds to Latta and Weirauch in the campaign’s homestretch.

Republicans are not taking this normally rock-ribbed Republican district for granted because they continue to face a difficult political environment 13 months after Democrats registered big wins in the November 2006 election — including the election of Ohio Democrats Ted Strickland and Sherrod Brown as governor and senator, respectively. And the timing of the special election, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, guarantees a low turnout and an outcome difficult to gauge.

“We’ve got to really work hard to make sure that people know that there’s an election on December 11th,” said Matt Parker, who is managing Latta’s campaign. “It’s called a special election for a reason. It’s an odd date, and we have to do everything that we can to make sure that our voters know that December 11th is election day.”

Moreover, two special elections earlier this year — one in Massachusetts’ 5th District, where Democrat Niki Tsongas won by an unexpectedly slender again, and one in Georgia’s 10th District, where little-known Republican physician Paul Broun was shockingly elected over a better-known and politically experienced Republican — are testimony to the unpredictable political environment.

A Weirauch victory would be a stunning upset, given the generic political leanings of the 5th District. In the current 110th Congress, just seven House Democrats represent districts that gave Bush a greater share of than in Ohio’s 5th, where he won 61 percent of the vote.

Even if she loses, should Weirauch make a strong showing the Democrats will point to the race as evidence that they can continue to compete in Republican-leaning districts like Ohio’s 5th — and that they made the cash-strapped NRCC spend several hundred thousand dollars from its limited treasury in a race they should have won easily. Republicans will portray a Latta win, regardless of his margin of victory, as a win nonetheless — and as a setback for majority Democrats.

Latta has several advantages, not least being his name: his father, Republican Delbert Latta, represented the district from 1959 through 1989 and still lives in Bowling Green, the district’s most populous city. Robert Latta sought to succeed his father in a 1988 primary, but he lost narrowly to Gillmor. But Latta pivoted quickly to begin a long political career — first as an elected commissioner in Wood County, which includes Bowling Green, and then as a legislator in the Ohio Senate and the Ohio House.

It helps Latta that his political base is Wood, the most populous county in the district and the area in the 5th that, while no Democratic-leaning turf, is probably the least friendly territory to Republicans — Bush won just 53 percent of the vote in Wood in 2004, his lowest total in the district. So Latta should do better in Wood than a Republican nominee who did not have ties to the Bowling Green area.

Latta generally is a down-the-line conservative, opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, and backing tax cuts — though he was harshly criticized during the Republican primary election for supporting a budget plan in the state legislature that included a one-cent increase in the sales tax.

Like the Republicans he seeks to join in Congress, Latta has been vocal about curbing illegal immigration. He emphasized his opposition to “amnesty” and to issuing drivers’ licenses to illegal entrants in a television ad his campaign began airing this week.

“Broken borders, and Washington does nothing,” a narrator says in the ad. “Had enough? Bob Latta wants to get tough.”

Weirauch, a former official with a regional development center that is affiliated with the district’s Bowling Green State University, has achieved some name recognition after taking 33 percent of the vote against Gillmor in 2004 and 43 percent in 2006, when Democratic candidates nationwide posted strong vote percentages in that anti-Republican election year.

A chief focus of Weirauch’s is opposing trade pacts that she says have hampered economic development by hemorrhaging U.S. jobs overseas. She used the day after Thanksgiving — “Black Friday,” the first day of the holiday shopping season — to denounce China-made toys that have been found to be lead-tainted. Weirauch has also emphasized energy issues and says the 5th District could be a hub for alternative energy development.

“This area specifically has all of the necessary ingredients to start a very, very strong clean energy economy,” said Weirauch spokesman Brad Bauman. “We’ve got access to just about everything you can imagine in terms of the raw material needed for biofuels, clean coal, coal-to-liquid, hydroelectric, wind. ... We believe that northwest Ohio could very well be one of the world’s leading clean-energy regions and would like to explore ways to bring research and development and capital here to build that infrastructure.”

Surrogates for the candidates have attacked the opposition even more vigorously than have the principals themselves. At a time when most voters hold a gloomy view of Congress and President Bush, Democrats are portraying Latta as a “career politician.” The DCCC has aired an ad that sought to link Latta to Tom Noe, a former Ohio Republican fundraiser who was involved in some recent political scandals.

With the price of gasoline topping three dollars per gallon, a DCCC web-based ad criticizes Latta for voting for a 2003 transportation budget bill in the state legislature that included a provision to gradually increase the gasoline tax by six cents, from 22 cents to 28 cents per gallon — a 27 percent increase. The measure passed overwhelmingly and was supported by some Democrats — including Chris Redfern, now the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, which has also attacked Latta’s gas tax vote. Latta’s campaign said the transportation bill raised needed funds for roads and bridges.

The NRCC, the campaign arm of House Republicans, issued a release Monday that alleged that Weirauch’s “liberal extreme views,” particularly on social issues, “don’t reflect Ohio values.” It has also aired a television adcritical of Weirauch.

In recent days the NRCC has homed in on Weirauch’s support during her 2006 campaign for a publicly financed “single payer” universal health insurance measure (HR 676) whose chief sponsors include liberal Ohio Democrat Dennis J. Kucinich , the representative of the Cleveland-based 10th District and a longshot candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The NRCC said that the legislation would allow for health care coverage for illegal immigrants, though Weirauch denies this is the case.

Weirauch’s “liberal positions” on issues “are all clear signs that she would be nothing more than a reliable vote for the San Francisco Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her left-wing agenda,” said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain.

Responded Bauman: “To say that Robin is some sort of liberal is just a complete fallacy. You look at her stances on the issues, and she’s an extremely practical person, somebody who believes in extremely practical solutions, and will always put the needs of northwest Ohio residents over ideology.”

Latta has raised more money than Weirauch but has also spent a lot more because Latta was in a contentious primary election on Nov. 6 which he narrowly defeated state Sen. Steve Buehrer. Weirauch easily won the Democratic primary election.

Weirauch has plenty of Democratic heavyweights in her corner. Brown, who unseated Republican Sen. Mike DeWine last year on the strength of populist, anti-free trade themes that Weirauch also is adopting, has also campaigned with the Democrat.

Strickland, who carried the 5th District in his landslide 2006 victory, appeared with Weirauch Dec. 1 for multiple campaign stops and appears in a television ad for her this week.

Strickland, who previous served in the House (1993-95, 1997-2007), noted during a campaign stop that he was elected to Congress after losing three previous times — and that Weirauch would win on her third try. Strickland also said he and Weirauch share the same pollster and that “what we know is that this is a very winnable race.”