Is the Ohio special election a bellwether?

ABP's Patrick Hynes does some analysis of the results of last Tuesday's Congressional election in the Ohio 2nd district. First, the Democrat opponent:

"[T]he Democrats pulled out all the stops to win the seat. Hackett is a Marine just back from Iraq who sometimes sounded like he was running against George W. Bush himself, rather than Jean Schmidt, so critical of the president was he (he openly called the president a "chicken hawk" on the stump). Hackett is tall, good-looking, and smart. Jim Carville and Max Cleland trekked to Ohio to help him raise money. The leftwing blogosphere, still chasing the idea that if they just hate George W. Bush enough they will eventually win something, helped Hackett raise tens of thousands of dollars."

Ohio seems to have become the new Florida - a "Red" state closely won by Bush that the Republicans must have "stolen" in order to win the White House. So Democrats desperately wanted this seat as poke in the eye to Bush (again, it always comes back to Bush). But more importantly for the Dems, they desperately need any seat they can possibly get. Looking at the political landscape for 2006, it doesn't look like there's much in the way of potential for taking back the House.

With a 233-201-1 current advantage for Republicans, Hynes notes that political analyst Charlie Cook sees only 8 competitive (i.e. toss-up) races next year. And of those eight, five seats are currently Democrat-held and need to be defended. And what of the financial resources for the these races?

"According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission through the month of July, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has raised a total of $24,070,752.10 so far this year. The National Republican Congressional Committee has raised $39,984,494.62. The DCCC has only $8,544,288.27 cash on hand compared to the NRCC's $16,377, 230.66. The DCCC has $3,666,666.67 in outstanding debts. The NRCC has no debt.

Put simply, Democrats have fewer dollars to defend more seats, which limits their ability to create a greater number of competitive races by recruiting rock star candidates."

For Dems, the future's so dark, they're gonna need seeing-eye dogs.

Posted by: Gary at 09:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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