Greg Davis Says Running Against Obama Won't Work

As we learned in the LA-06 and the MS-01 special elections, the strategy of tying local candidates to Barack Obama is a poor plan of action. Republican Woody Jenkins was bested by Democrat Don Cazayoux in the ruby red Sixth Congressional District of Louisiana. Travis Childers soundly defeated Republican Greg Davis in the north Mississippi special election.

In both elections the NRCC spent heavily on negative ads tying the local Democrats to Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wrpght and national Dems. This strategy not only did not work, but backfired completely. The Black voter turnout increased substantially in the special election runoffs, directly after the negative Obama ads were run. Remember that Obama was not on the ticket on the days these special elections were held. These Black voters came out to support Cazayoux and Childers.

I believe the Republicans used MS-01 and LA-06 as test labs for negative advertising against Obama and the Democratic brand. They fired all of their guns, and made note of which ones registered and which ones fired blanks. What we learned in north Mississippi is that Obama might not be so unpopular after all. We also learned that voters are smart enough to realize when their legs are being pulled. The NRCC tried to link Travis Childers to well known politicians in California, Massachusetts, and Illinois, thankfully to no avail.

Greg Davis is here to tell you that strategy will not work.

"We're going to spend more time going out there and meeting with voters and letting them know who I am, and less on the contrast ads which just didn't work," Davis says, referring to ads that tried to link Childers to presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Both Davis and the Mississippi GOP say they realize the negative ads linking Childers to Obama and the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright didn't do the trick for conservative voters in northern Mississippi.

"The campaign this time around has to be about what Davis is-not what Childers isn't," says Cory Adair, a spokesman for the Mississippi Republican Party. "They completely hijacked the Republican platform," he says, referring to Childers' successful marketing of himself as a conservative during the special election on such issues as the second amendment, abortion, and immigration.

I love the last part of that quote. "They hijacked our brand", cries the GOP. Too bad the Davis campaign was counting on these issues to win. I never even heard a single economic proposa,l or even policy proposal for that matter, in any of Greg Davis's advertising. What solutions did he offer the working people of north Mississippi? Travis Childers had answers, Greg Davis did not.

Davis was counting on painting Childers as some pinko who was gonna take your guns, have gays on every corner, and make abortion commonplace. Once this became an election on REAL issues Greg Davis did not have a chance. To seal the deal, the once astute Republican brain trust decided to motivate the Black vote by running a smear campaign focused on Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright. Bad move, ask Greg Davis.