Time for Paul Hackett

It's special election day in Ohio's 2nd Congressional District.

The district is holding a special election because former Rep. Portman was appointed by President Bush to be trade representative.

It's a heavily Republican district - but this race is different. This race is unique. Daily Kos' DavidNYC explains:

I first became aware that the Congressional seat in Ohio's second district was opening up back in March. At the time, I proposed we take the seat on a "trial run" - in other words, as one commenter helpfully put it, we could use this opportunity to do some political R&D. Even in losing, we could accomplish a lot, just by being aggressive and seeing what works and what doesn't. OH-02, in this view, should serve as our political research laboratory.

I suggested we test out two things in this lab: New campaign tactics and new messages. Until I get the full debriefing from Bob and Tim, I can't speak to #1 (though from afar, it does look like we've had a strong ground game). But as far as #2 goes - trying out new messages - I have some better insight into that. Back in March, I wholeheartedly agreed with commenters who said we should try to push the ethics/corruption/DeLay angle hard.

And indeed, we have. We had two great pieces of luck: We emerged from the primaries with a strong and upstanding Democrat in Paul Hackett and a corrupt, lying Republican in Jean Schmidt. As a result, playing up this storyline has worked perfectly: The Hackett campaign has mercilessly hammered Schmidt for her ethics problems, and the local media have taken notice. Schmidt even did us the favor of taking money straight from DeLay's PAC. It doesn't get better than that.

But how do we judge success? How do we know if the corruption angle really works? Well, as Tim notes below, the GOP has been winning this district by 50-point margins. If we get within 30 points, we'll know we've done something right. It will mean that our laboratory experiment truly has been a success, and that the national Democrats would do well to take notice. It'll mean that pushing the ethics angle really works, and that Congressional Dems seriously need to reconsider their refusal to file ethics complaints against Republicans.

(An aside: Some people have pointed out that Portman has had the advantages of incumbency, so his big recent margins need to be discounted. However, he won his very first election by a 70-29 margin. Others have observed that, after the 2000 redistricting, OH-02 became less Republican. Yes, that's true - but only by 2.6%, when looking at Bush v. Gore voting patterns.)

Along the way, of course, something quite unexpected happened. The blogosphere took notice and gave Hackett a huge pile of cash; his campaign caught fire; the Republicans got spooked and dumped in money they never expected to have to spend; brigades of grassroots volunteers came to the district to help Hackett; and the race garnered national attention. People, in short, began to feel that this race was actually winnable for the Dems.

And it may very well be. It goes without saying that I would be thrilled to no end if we pull off a major upset here. But I won't be disappointed if we do not. The ultimate measure of success here is not whether CNN puts a check-mark next to Paul Hackett's name tonight. As I've been saying since March, we can achieve a victory here even if we don't win outright.

And right now, I'm already feeling like we have.

We'll be watching what happens tonight.