Most Democrats will spend Tuesday night watching election returns from the West Virgina primary. But if they want some hints about what will happen in November, they should really be watching a little congressional special election in the northeastern Mississippi.
The Tuesday special election in Mississippi's 1st Congressional District is being held to replace veteran GOP congressman Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the Senate last December by Gov. Haley Barbour to replace the retiring Trent Lott. Wicker had been in the House for five terms and had always won re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote. This is exactly the kind of district that Democrats are routinely forced to write off because it is so difficult to overcome the culturally tainted associations that come with being a Democrat.
The election is producing extraordinary levels of GOP anxiety, because of what it says about Republican prospects in November. While losing any congressional seat these day is distressing for a Republican Party looking for ways to rebuild a majority in the House, to lose this particular seat, in this particular state, is to confront just how much trouble Republicans are in with voters all over the country. Mississippi is the last place Republicans should be in trouble.
The fact that Democrat Travis Childers is on the verge of wresting the seat is one measure of how damaged the GOP finds itself going into the fall elections. If Democrats can pick up a house seat in Mississippi, the most conservative state in the GOP conservative Southern State bloc it may very big trouble for them nationally. Both national party campaign committees have been pouring money into the Mississippi race, with each side now having spent more than a million dollars. On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney will campaign with the Republican candidate, Southaven Mayor Greg Davis
In private meetings with House Republicans this week, President George W. Bush tried to reassure them by insisting that 2008 will not be a reprise the 2006 midterms, in which Republicans took a whuppin' (his word, not mine). But after losing two previously-reliable GOP seats in special elections this year, the trouble in Mississippi suggests that the GOP may be looking at wholesale slaughter at the polls in November.
"This is in the nature of the times," says Richard Forgette, who chairs the political science department at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, which sits right in the heart of the district. "The economy is bad and with Iraq, this is making it a good season for the Democrats." So good in fact, that by the time the 111th Congress is seated next January, Democrats could have picked up both a House and Senate seat from Republicans in Mississippi, something that would have been unimaginable just a year ago.
And slowly they seem to be getting it.
After Democrats picked up a GOP seat in a Louisiana special election last week, none other than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sounded the alarm, urging fellow Republicans to change or face disaster. Last Monday, conservatives all across the country got an email from Gingrich that began, "The Republican loss in the special election for Louisiana's Sixth Congressional District last Saturday should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November."
The architect of the 1994 Republican Revolution went on outline what may be its final collapse, suggesting that the GOP is so badly damaged and unpopular with voters that it could cost John McCain the election, despite his personal popularity and appeal to independents. "...There is a grave danger for the McCain campaign that if the generic ballot stays at only 32 percent for the GOP, it will ultimately outweigh McCain's personal appeal and drag his candidacy into defeat."
Gingrich's rant seems provoked by what he sees as the pattern set by this year's two special-election losses for his party; in addition to the Louisiana loss last week, Republican also lost the seat held by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The seat had been in Republican hand for 76 years until a special election in March. A loss in Mississippi on Tuesday would reaffirm his analysis and, no doubt, deepen the GOP despair.
And even if they survive on Tuesday, Mississippi Republicans must worry about defending the both that House seat and Senate seat that Wicker assumed after Lott's retirement. Wicker is facing a strong challenge from former Democratic governor Ronnie Musgrove, who has run three statewide campaigns. (Wicker has never run in a statewide race.)
Forgette, the political science professor, predicts that a win for Childers in the special election on Tuesday will embolden Democrats and open up the money taps for Musgrove in the senate race.
One effect of the ongoing Clinton-Obama white-working-class feud is that a lot of Democrats are worried now that Obama may hurt them in down-ballot races. But in Mississippi, despite a relentless effort by the state Republican Party and to tie Childers to Obama and other national Democrats, the Obama factor could actually hurt the GOP in the fall. Thirty-seven percent of Mississippians are African American, and with Obama at the top of the ticket, huge black turnout could help put Musgrove over the top.
If the GOP loses a House seat in Mississippi on Tuesday, or a Senate seat in the fall, it can be of no comfort to John McCain, regardless of what happens in West Virginia.
