Blue Dog Walking Down The Middle Of The Highway

The big political news around Cincy this morning is that Blue Dog Dem Steve Driehaus in Cincy's main district, OH-1, discovered the plug was pulled on his ads by the DCCC.

If Rep. Steve Driehaus didn't already face an extremely difficult re-election bid, a move Monday by national Democrats is making the freshman's task even tougher.


The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is pulling the plug on television commercials for Driehaus after this week. A Democratic source confirms reports earlier Monday by the Rothenberg Political Report and by the National Journal's Political Hotline that the DCCC has canceled its media buys after this week. But the DCCC will still finance get out the vote efforts in the district.

Two years ago Driehaus beat seven-term Republican Rep. Steve Chabot by five points in a district that President Barack Obama captured by 11 points.

This year Chabot is running to reclaim his old seat and both the Rothenberg Political Report and the Cook Political Report, two of the top non-partisan political handicappers, rate the race as "Lean Republican."

"It is difficult to read the cancellations as anything other than the Committee's decision to write off the Driehaus race. The DCCC could reverse course and re-purchase the time, of course, but it would then pay a higher rate," says Rothenberg.

What nobody seems to be saying is the fact that while Driehaus was certainly an improvement over Chabot, he still ran as a Blue Dog and as a member of the "Stupak bloc" during the health care debate, and he's tried to split the baby on that.  A lot of national attention has been focused on this race for a number of reasons:  Stupak's voting record, Chabot winning his seat back, Ohio being a battleground state, etc.

Chabot certainly can't run as a political outsider on this seat.  But he has slammed Driehaus for his health care reform vote mercilessly, and Driehaus has responded by talking up his conservative credentials rather than sticking with his base:  West Cincy's urban core.  Driehaus needs to turn out people and can, he proved that when he won.

What's interesting to note is that Chabot's pretty unpopular around here still.  There was a reason Chabot lost by five points in a fairly red urban district.  Still, it's worth noting the NRCC isn't spending much money here either right now, but Chabot's still getting funding for a flood of ads from, well, somewhere.

These days of course you don't know who's behind them.