For national Republicans looking for lessons from GOP nominee Jean Schmidt’s narrow win last night over Democrat Paul Hackett in the special election in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District to replace newly-sworn in U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, it is that in this current political environment, being tagged as a “rubber stamp” for this President can be a problem, even in one of the most Republican districts in the country.
Hackett, an attorney and Iraq war veteran, did a very good job of both playing up his service in Iraq and down-playing his party identification (even using clips of President Bush praising military service in his ads), both of which proved to be critical moves in a district where Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry took just 36 percent of the vote. At the same time, Hackett was able to criticize the President and his handling of the war in the press, going so far as to call him a S.O.B., yet still get 48 percent of the vote in the second-most Republican district in Ohio and 57th most Republican in
Subscribe Today
Our subscribers have first access to individual race pages for each House, Senate and Governors race, which will include race ratings (each race is rated on a seven-point scale) and a narrative analysis pertaining to that race.