No rest for Democrats after Cazayoux win

• By GERARD SHIELDS
• Advocate Washington bureau
• Published: May 5, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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WASHINGTON — One down, two to go.

That’s how national Democrats are viewing Saturday’s stunning victory by state Rep. Don Cazayoux for Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District seat. Democrats now move on to Mississippi, where their candidate has forced a runoff in the special election for what was considered a “safe” Republican district.

And national Democratic Party leaders are already eyeing Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District seat held by 20-year GOP veteran U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery of Shreveport. With a popular district attorney announcing his intent to run, Democrats see the possibility of adding that seat to their captures in the Deep South, a traditional Republican bastion.

The win by Cazayoux, a New Roads Democrat, follows a similar upset earlier this year by the Democratic Party candidate succeeding longtime Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois. Cazayoux’s Saturday victory for the 6th Congressional District seat, which was held by Republicans for 33 years, gives Democrats national momentum heading into November’s general election.

“I think it will be a deep psychological blow to the Republican Party, especially after the loss of the Hastert seat,” said David Wasserman, House editor for The Cook Political Report in Washington.

“It was assumed that after the 1990s, Democrats could write off the South,” Wasserman added. “That’s not happening.”

Kyra Jennings, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman for the Southern region, said Democrats intend to press hard to add the seats in Mississippi and Louisiana, which were largely expected to remain Republican.

“We are already thinking that we can get two districts in Louisiana,” Jennings said.

The loss to Cazayoux was a blow to the Republican strategy of tying Democrats to national party leaders. In advertisements and literature, Republicans supporting former state Rep. Louis “Woody” Jenkins tried to link Cazayoux to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Republicans say they are already very active in the Mississippi special election on May 13, where they are using the same strategy and have no intent of lying down on the political  battlefront.

“We’re going to do what we know how to do best,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee. “We’re going to hold Democrats accountable.”

Jenkins, a community newspaper publisher in Baton Rouge, did not get the kind of help that Cazayoux received from national party leaders. According to Federal Election Commission filings, the cash-strapped Republican committee spent about $440,000 in the campaign, far short of the $1.2 million they dumped into the Hastert race.

The Democratic Party committee spent twice that much. Cazayoux also gained significant support from national party leaders in Washington, collecting $160,000 from party officials, including Pelosi, who held a Washington fundraiser for him.