Small-town lawyer battles GOP for La. House seat

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - A Louisiana congressional seat held by Republicans for more than three decades was up for grabs in Saturday's special election in which Democrats said a conservative, small-town lawyer finally has the edge over a Christian-right, former GOP legislator.

Democratic state Rep. Don Cazayoux, 44, has raised twice as much money as Woody Jenkins, 61, who spent 28 years in the Louisiana House. He's also led recent polls in the race for the Baton Rouge-area seat vacated when Richard Baker resigned in January to take a job in hedge funds.

If Cazayoux wins the 6th Congressional District, Louisiana's seven-member delegation would have three Democrats for the first time since 2004, and for only the second time in 12 years.

Voters in the 1st Congressional District, which includes a bit of New Orleans and several suburban parishes, also have a special election Saturday. But Republicans are not expected to have any trouble holding onto that seat, opened when Bobby Jindal was elected governor.

Republican state Sen. Steve Scalise, a 43-year-old computer systems engineer, faces Democratic college professor Gilda Reed and two independents, Anthony "Tony G" Gentile and R. A. "Skip" Galan.

Coming in the middle of a presidential campaign, the close 6th District race covering the Old South plantation country around Baton Rouge has attracted attention from Washington interest groups and the national parties.

"It's of enormous national significance," said Dane Strother, a Washington-based Democratic consultant. President Bush won 59 percent of the district's vote in 2004, he noted.

"If we take yet another Republican seat, a seat that has been considered safe for years, then every 59-percent district is at play," he said.

Three independents, Ashley Casey of Baton Rouge, Peter Aranyosi of Hammond and Randall Hayes of Winnfield, also are running.

Cazayoux has drawn most of the attacks, painting him as a supporter of "big government" policies of presidential contender Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But Bernie Pinsonat, a Baton Rouge-based pollster, said that for Democrats, "If you can't beat Woody Jenkins, I don't know who you can beat."

Jenkins' strident views on abortion and religion do not resonate with Republican voters in affluent parts of Baton Rouge and he has a track record of losing elections, Pinsonat said.

Jenkins narrowly lost a bitter Senate race in 1996 to Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and a 1999 race for state elections commissioner. His company, Great Oaks Broadcasting, has run into problems for not paying taxes on time.

He's also been connected with polarizing characters.

In 2002, the Federal Elections Commission fined him for illegally concealing his purchase of a phone bank tied to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. In the 1980s, Jenkins was aligned with Iran-Contra figure Oliver North through a charity he operated, Friends of the Americas, which sent medical supplies to Central America.

But Jenkins's campaign has adroitly sidestepped toxic issues such as the faltering economy, abysmal popularity ratings for Bush and the Iraq war, said Roy Fletcher, a Baton Rouge political consultant.

Fletcher said Republicans "have made Cazayoux the issue instead of Jenkins."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080503/ap_on_el_ho/congress_louisiana [link]