Jackson Free Press

The National Republican Congressional Committee is campaigning early this season. The NRCC identified 70 Democrats to target for the 2010 election, according to an email obtained by Washington political periodical Roll Call.

The NRCC is following a pattern on its hit list: plenty of the targets are relative newbies from conservative-leaning districts, many of them freshmen or sophomores.

The e-mail, sent from an NRCC staffer to Republican PACs, explains that the party has the "opportunity to focus on many more districts and some unusual districts that haven't been targeted in a long time."

The GOP only lists one Mississippi target out of the 70 potential marks on the list: freshman Democratic U.S. Rep. Travis Childers, who sent the party reeling last year after claiming Mississippi's first Congressional District in multiple elections, including a special election granting him the district for only a few weeks before the next election came around. The Republican Party had held the seat for decades, but Gov. Haley Barbour appointed Republican U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker to fill a spot abruptly vacated by U.S. Sen. Trent Lott in 2007—days after feds raided the law office of the senator's brother-in-law, convicted attorney Dickie Scruggs.

Wicker went on to take Lott's old seat on a more permanent basis in 2008, but the GOP couldn't keep Democrats from claiming Wickers' old seat in north Mississippi. The election proved a stunning blow to Republicans due to the generally conservative electorate of the district.

Childers is, however, a considerably conservative Democrat, and one who seems determined to out-Republican the GOP on traditional Republican issues. The new congressman led an effort to bring guns back to the crime-infested neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. last year, and supported the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the U.S. capital's local ban on firearms. Childers also offered an amendment to a House bill that eased gun-safe storage requirements and age limits for the possession of assault rifles, and allowed D.C. residents to stockpile semiautomatic assault weapons with high capacity ammunition magazines.

Childers voted in favor of options expanding healthcare for Mississippi residents, however. He was one of the House members who voted to overturn former-President George W. Bush's veto of H.R. 6331, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008.

"I worked diligently to ensure the passage of this bill to prevent Medicare cuts to our healthcare providers," Childers said on his website, adding that the House "passed H.R. 6331 in June by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 355-59."

GOP dominance in the House took a dive during the Bush years. Republicans currently hold 178 seats, and the party needs to win 40 more to retake the majority. NRCC campaign Director John Randall did not return calls for comment on what advantage Republicans had in 2009 that could help them achieve their goal. The NRCC website is stirring up fear over President Barack Obama's public health-care option, however, and sending mass mail-outs to congressmen, including Childers, asking if they will vote with "party bosses" and "devastate" Medicare.

The website offers no explanation on how a new public option will destroy the older public option of Medicare, however. Randall also did not return calls to specify what options Republicans were seeking to insure the half-million Mississippians who currently live without insurance.

Childers said he is sensitive to the state's healthcare needs, however.

"Each year Mississippi spends over $14 million to provide health care services to its citizens while over 500,000 Mississippians remain uninsured. With so many North Mississippi workers and families in need of quality health care, I am deeply dedicated to passing commonsense legislation that will ensure all Americans have access to quality affordable healthcare services," Childers says on his Web site.

But Childers is a member of the House Blue Dog coalition, a collection of conservative House Democrats who are slowing the production of a health-care bill in the House, much to the delight of House Republicans. Conservative and moderate Democrats demanded changes in the legislation last month before voting it out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, arguing that setting rates for the payments to doctors and other health care providers under a proposed government-run health plan would compete with private insurance.

The House bill modeled the payments based on Medicare, a hugely popular government healthcare program that few politicians dare to touch. But the Blue Dogs argue that if the public health-care program is too affordable to customers it will put out of business private insurance companies—who routinely exclude coverage for previously existing conditions, or charge outlandish rates to customers with a history of health issues.

John C. Stennis Institute of Government Director Marty Wiseman said Mississippians are growing more needful of some sort of public health-care option as more and more Mississippians lose their insurance.

"Mississippians are finding their income dropping because they had to take a lower paying job, or they lost their job, or their employer no longer covers them," Wiseman said. "There's lots of reasons that public health care is popular, even if Republicans are banging the drum on it, and Childers will have to be mindful of that."

Wiseman said during the height of Childers' election that younger generations in Mississippi are clearly less fearful of a public healthcare option, which could spell changes in the state's political environment in the next few decades.

Previous Comments

ID

150636

Comment

Poor Childers. He's not a Republican, yet not liberal enough for the rest of the Democrats.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2009-08-06T13:12:30-06:00