LA-04: It Begins

The DCCC is up on the air with its first negative ad of the race to replace retiring GOP Rep. Jim McCrery, which will be decided on December 6th. You can check that ad out here.

The D-trip spent $77,000 on this first ad buy (that may sound like chicken feed, but keep in mind that this district ranks pretty highly on SSP’s Bang-for-Buck Index). We’ll be keeping track of these expenditures closely. For their part, the NRCC is promising to “spend big” on this race:

…National Republicans said they’re planning to spend big on the race, with their own advertising on the air soon.

“We are taking the necessary steps in order to prepare for a competitive race,” said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

This race is very much a tossup at this point. In our favor, Democrats appear to have the superior candidate in Caddo Parish District Attorney Paul Carmouche, while Republicans have a self-funding physician, John Fleming, who just emerged from a relentlessly negative primary runoff.

Combined, Carmouche and his primary challenger, Willie Banks, received just under 150,000 votes on Tuesday. In the GOP primary, only 77,000 ballots were cast. But don’t let those numbers fool you — in the 6th District primaries earlier in the year, many, many more Democratic ballots were cast than Republican primary votes, but Don Cazayoux only narrowly defeated Woody Jenkins in the May speial election. Similarly, I’m sure that Carmouche picked up the support of more than a few DINOs on Tuesday. His task will be to mobilize his base, as well as the many African-Americans who voted for Banks while keeping up his conservative Democrat crossover appeal. With the NRCC fully engaged here, this one is poised to be a real dogfight.