WHAT MAINE REPUBLICANS CAN LEARN FROM JIM OGONOWSKI

Last Tuesday, political junkies from across America watched with limited interest as the Special Congressional Election in Massachusetts’ 5th District came to a close. With no Republican having won a Congressional election in Massachusetts since 1994, the talk at the water cooler at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee no doubt consisted of speculation as to the size of Niki Tsongas’ inevitable victory and the location of her new office once she arrived for work in Washington.

Democrats had good reason to be confident. Massachusetts’ 5th Congressional district boasts a mere 14% Republican registration and has not elected a Republican to Congress since Paul Cronin in 1974. Compound that with the fact that Democrat nominee Niki Tsongas (the wife of the late Congressman Paul Tsongas who happened to have been the one to defeat Cronin in ’76) has a “household” last name.

Pile on the fact that Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy campaigned hard for Tsongas; she received the endorsement of every newspaper within a 50 mile radius of her district; and Emily’s List, the Sierra Club and the AFL-CIO poured money into the district to run up the score on her hapless Republican opponent who ended up being outspent by a margin of 4-1 come Election Day. Insider accounts are that the Tsongas media buy outweighed her opponent by an 80 to 1 ratio. National Democrats wanted to send a clear message that Republicans had no business running for federal office in Massachusetts.

(More after the jump...)