GOP strives to avert Miss. train wreck

Republicans are pulling out all the stops to win Tuesday’s special election in a northern Mississippi district that has been held safely by the GOP for more than a decade.

Vice President Dick Cheney headlined a roster of GOP stars campaigning for Republican candidate Greg Davis on Monday, as the party tried to prevent the most significant blow yet to the GOP this cycle.

{mosads}Davis spent the final day before the election rallying with Cheney, Sen. Roger Wicker (R), Gov. Haley Barbour (R) and Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant (R), whipping up voters from Tupelo to Oxford to Batesville to his base in DeSoto County, where Cheney was set to appear.

Former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) have also helped in recent days. Davis is competing with Democrat Travis Childers for the former seat of Wicker, who was appointed to the Senate after Lott retired.

Republicans have already lost two formerly safe House seats in special elections this year, and may lose a sitting House member if Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) resigns due to scandal. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has said his party could face a major disaster on Election Day.

While Republicans have blamed faulty candidates for previous losses in Illinois and Louisiana, they have few excuses in Mississippi, where they nearly lost Wicker’s seat outright three weeks ago when Childers fell just short of the majority vote necessary to avoid a runoff. Since then, the GOP has dispatched valuable personal and financial resources to support Davis, a candidate about whom it has few reservations.

“If they can’t win here, it doesn’t look well for the Republicans,” said Marvin King, an assistant political science professor at the University of Mississippi.

Because the special election’s ballot is nonpartisan, Davis will not be identified as a Republican. But King said that and other factors don’t explain the GOP’s struggles.

“They can’t even blame it on Bush, I don’t think,” King said. “For whatever reason, the Republican message just isn’t as strong this year.

In its two losses, the national GOP has privately grumbled about its baggage-ridden candidate before the race.

Neither drew a visit from the vice president or president.

All that has changed in Wicker’s Mississippi district, a place friendly enough to the GOP that Republicans think the unpopular Cheney’s visit could help. Yet even here, the GOP’s hold is imperiled in a way few anticipated when Wicker ascended to the Senate.

Democrats also point out that Republicans have been forced to spend heavily on the race — $1.3 million so far — and suggested they have wounded the GOP, no matter what the result Tuesday.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has spent more, at $1.8 million, but $450,000 from Freedom’s Watch has bolstered the GOP’s cause. Still, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has far less money than its Democratic counterpart.

A flood of money in recent days for Davis — about $275,000 in the last week — has extended the Davis campaign’s financial advantage. It has raised about $1.2 million total, while Childers has raised $680,000.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Wednesday that Republican infighting at the primary level has been at the root of the problem in the special elections, since many of the candidates have waited years for the seat to open up.{mospagebreak}

“Republicans line up and fight [for the seat],” he said, adding, “I get really tired of the flawed-candidate excuse.”

The bloody-primary argument could hold some water in Mississippi, where Davis, the popular mayor of Southaven, the state’s fastest-growing city, had to go negative in a narrow primary win over former Tupelo Mayor Glenn McCullough (R). But Republicans have had six weeks and a close-shave election to work out their differences since then.

Davis said the one thing GOPers could use to explain a loss would be low special-election turnout — a common complaint.

{mosads}“I hope they don’t blame it on a flawed candidate down here,” he said with a laugh. “If there’s anything to be said — I don’t think it’s indicative for the national party if, by chance, we lose.”

Davis said he thought Childers had topped out on his special-election support three weeks ago and that raising turnout would be key. Childers beat Davis 49-46, and only missed a clean victory that would have avoided a runoff by about 400 votes.

If there’s one post-game analysis for a GOP loss, it will likely be geography. Childers has found success as the well-known longtime Prentiss County Chancery Clerk, while Davis has less broad appeal as the mayor of a Memphis suburb in the very northwest corner of the 1st district.

Childers, who has been trying to fight the GOP’s attempts to nationalize the race and attach him to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said the race is a local one and that he doesn’t believe it’s necessarily a harbinger for Republicans.

“They’re scared, and they’ve lost two elections,” Childers said. “I really don’t understand the national implications, that they feel like if they lose this seat it spells doom and gloom for them in November. But if it does spell doom and gloom, it’s their own making.”

The GOP feels its strategy of emphasizing Childers’s party affiliation and attacking his credibility has made headway. The former strategy will be put to the test Tuesday.

“Republicans are committed to winning in Mississippi and we believe the momentum is on our side,” said a spokesman for the NRCC, Ken Spain.

DCCC spokesman Doug Thornell said the amount of money the GOP has sunk into a district that voted 62 percent for President Bush “speaks volumes about their woeful candidate recruitment and the strength of Travis Childers.”