Blue Dog Democrats on the Prowl

George W. Bush is less popular than poison ivy; the economy is in worse shape than Homer Simpson; if the Republican Party were a bank, it would need a bailout. But none of that can explain why Democrat Travis Childers won a startling special election to represent Mississippi's First Congressional District in May or why he's expected to keep his seat in November.

To understand the appeal the former Prentiss County chancery clerk has in deep red northern Mississippi, it's less helpful to know his party affiliation than to watch him deliver a 15-minute soliloquy on the glories of fried green tomatoes over lunch in Columbus or work the crowd at the annual Good Ole Boys and Gals political barbecue in Oxford or react to the news that squirrel dumplings would be served at a cookout in Yalobusha County. "Honey child!" Childers shouted with glee. "I think it's fair to say," he told me later, "that I'm a squirrel-dumpling kind of guy."

In the past few decades, Democrats have not done well in squirrel-dumpling kinds of districts. Bush dominated this one by 25 points in 2004, and Republican Roger Wicker held its congressional seat without much trouble for seven straight elections before he was appointed to the Senate to replace Trent Lott. But last spring Childers became a national symbol of Democratic resurgence when he defeated Republican Greg Davis to win Wicker's vacated seat, and his apparent advantage in their upcoming rematch has been described as a metaphor for GOP problems this fall. After gaining 31 House seats in 2006, Democrats are poised to capture perhaps 10 to 20 more on Nov. 4.

Childers is outpolling and outspending Davis, and Childers will benefit from an estimated 100,000-plus new Democratic registrations in Mississippi, many of them African Americans inspired by Barack Obama. And the collapse of the GOP brand--a party leader has said that if House Republicans were a dog food, they'd be pulled off the shelves--has gotten Childers some second looks from fed-up voters. Jim Lyons, a Republican whose trucking business is on the brink of failure, said after meeting Childers at a diner in tiny Mathiston that he's done with straight-ticket voting. "People are sick to death of all the incompetence and corruption in Washington," he said.

But Childers has not focused his campaign on Bush or on a House Republican caucus that has usually marched in lockstep with Bush or even on Davis; Childers' speeches make it sound as if he's running against a Washington resident named Partisan Bickering. He may be a Democrat, but he's a pro-gun, pro-life, pro-drilling Blue Dog Democrat who rarely mentions House Speaker Nancy Pelosi except to assure voters that she doesn't tell him what to do. And for all his folksy chatter, he won't even say whether he's voting for Obama, shifting to evasive blather about fiercely independent-minded Mississippians who don't want their Congressman to tell them how to vote. John McCain will win the First District easily, and Childers can't win without McCain voters, but he also needs an enthusiastic turnout from blacks, who make up more than a quarter of the electorate. "This is still a conservative Republican district, and that's why Travis is running away from his own party," Davis complains. "When he's home, he sounds like a Republican. But he's not."