From Scoop # 54 December 20, 2007

A Couple of Things (Elections)
You May Have Missed
by Carl Soderberg
of The Inside Scoop

Two special elections for vacant US Congress seats were held on Tuesday, December 11th.  But don’t be surprised if you didn’t hear about either of them - they were barely, if at all, covered by the mainstream liberal media.

The Races
One of the two races, for the First District of Virginia, was essentially uncontested by the Democrats.  The other, the Fifth District of Ohio, was hotly contested.  The Fifth District, suburban Toledo and rural Northwest Ohio, is a conservative, usually Republican district.  It voted 61% - 39% Bush in 2004, and hasn’t had a Democrat Representative since the 1930’s.  It’s Congressman, Paul Gillmor, died in early September from injuries resulting from an accidental fall.

The Candidates
The special election race pitted Republican Bob Latta, a former state legislator, against Democrat Robin Weirauch, an economic development official.  Latta, age 51, is a lawyer who served 11 years combined in both houses of the Ohio legislature.  He first ran for Fifth District’s seat in Congress in 1988, losing to the late incumbent Gillmor in the GOP primary by just 27 votes.  Latta’s father, Delbert (“Del”) Latta, held the same seat from 1959 - 1989.  Latta won a five-way primary race in November.  He beat his closest opponent Steve Beuhrer 44% - 40%, after a close, nasty race with each candidate striving to be the most conservative.

Democrat candidate Robin Weirauch, age 50, with degrees in Business Administration and Public Administration, was the Assistant Director of Bowling Green State University’s Center for Regional Development from 1998 to 2006.  (The Center provides economic and community development assistance to Ohio municipalities.)  She is involved in local (county) & multi-state Humane Society groups, and Big Brothers / Big Sisters.  In her home town, she is a volunteer medical technician, and a special advocate for children involved in the legal system in her home county.  Weirauch never held elected office before, and she ran for this same seat twice before, getting 33% of the vote in 2004 and 43% in 2006.

In both previous campaigns, she received little to no support from the Democrat party.  In this election, however, she had more than one thousand union “volunteers” phone banking, distributing literature, talking to voters, and arranging campaign stops.  Fresh off the 2006 Democrat sweep, Ohio’s Governor Ted Strickland and US Senator Sherrod Brown both campaigned for Weirauch, with Strickland even appearing in a TV advertisement.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent a quarter of a milllion dollars, mostly on TV ads, and EMILY’s list and other national left-wing also contributed money to Weirauch’s campaign.

The Democrat Strategy
After the primary races finished, some internal polls reportedly showed the race at nearly 50% - 50% despite the traditionally conservative make-up of the district.  This apparently encouraged Democrats’ optimism that, although a long shot, the seat could be won. 

The Democrats’ thinking was, this being a special election, turn-out would be low.  Independents & moderates would vote Democrat, continuing the repudiation of the Bush Administration over the slow progress in the Iraq war.  Union “volunteers” would maximize the party’s base and union member turnout.  Television ads linking Latta to the Ohio GOP’s scandals and sell-out on taxes & spending would drive down GOP voter turnout, as happened nationally in 2006.

Combined increase Democrat turnout, decreased GOP turnout, and moderates voting Democrat would be just enough to overcome the district’s 60% Republican demographic.  And then several similar special election upset victories across the nation would provide the confidence boost needed to propel a Democrat to the Presidency in 2008.

The Campaigns
Besides the unpopularity of the war on terror, Weirauch’s campaign focused on two main themes:  skepticism of free trade, and GOP ethics violations.  Trying to exploit Ohio’s loss of manufacturing jobs to the third world, Weirauch called for a “moratorium on faulty free trade deals.”   

In 2006, Ohio’s Governor Bob Taft lost his re-election bid after being convicted of ethics violations for not reporting gifts received from the now infamous lobbyist & convicted embezzler Tom Noe.  Weirauch tried unsuccessfully to link Latta to this scandal because Latta had received $ 1000 in campaign donations from Noe.  One Weirauch ad juxtaposed Latta’s photo with a newspaper headline “Ex-Taft Aides are Charged in Ethics Case,” even though Latta was neither a Governor’s aide, nor charged with anything, nor involved in the Noe-Taft scandal.

Unlike the state-wide GOP candidates in 2006, Latta responded with a clear, simple, common sense conservative message.  First, both Latta and the Ohio GOP refuted the intentionallly misleading advertisement.  (Some television stations refused to air the commercial unmodified.)  Second,  Latta emphasized two main themes throughout his campaign:  taxes & spending, and illegal immigration.  Lower taxes, reduced government spending, and smaller government were important issues throughout the campaign. 

After the primary, Latta made illegal immigration as important an issue as taxes & spending.  Repudiating the national GOP’s waffling on illegal immigration issues, he came out strongly for securing the border and against amnesty, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and tax-payer funded government benefits, like subsidized college tuition and health care for illegal immigrants.  The National Republican Congressional Committee spent almost $450,000 aiding Latta’s post-primary publicity blitz, hammering home the issues of taxes & spending and illegal immigration.

The Result
Sticking to core conservative values paid off for the Latta campaign.  At 23.5%, voter turnout was much better than expected for a special election.  (15% is not uncommon for off-year special elections.)  Clearly, the conservative district responded to a candidate running on traditional conservative core values.  Not only was turnout high, Latta won the election 56,367 to 42,563 (or about 57% - 43%), despite predictions of a close race.

What is the lesson learned from the special elections?  When GOP candidates run on traditional conservative values, the votes respond.  We can only hope more GOP candidates see these results and learn from the lesson of 2006.  While Iraq is still a thorn in the GOP’s side, with some moderates impatient for final victory in Iraq, what really cost GOP candidates their seats in 2006 was Congressional Republicans’ alienating their conservative base by selling out on taxes, spending and big government. 

Apparently, the Republican base in Ohio didn’t get the memo that securing the border and enforcing immigration law is mean, nasty, and racist.  They support it as a common sense law & order issue, as do the vast majority of American voters.