General

Official OH5 Live Thread — UPDATE: Latta Wins! I call it at 9:05PM

10:38 - Final Results 57 - 43 in Latta’s favor. Looks like I was way pessimistic in my earlier call. So with a lot of help from Kos, a safe +10 GOP district becomes a safe +14 for the Republicans. Well done!

And I’m done for the night, but that was much more fun than a year ago November.

10:15 - Paindealer:

My take #2: Well at least I won’t have to wade thru so many campaign ad lefty blog posts about this Robin W woman for awhile

Ugh. Yes.

10:11 - OK just filed a report at the Machine. Bizzyblog:

So the 5th will be represented by:

• A person who believes in the sanctity of life, unlike the loser, who was “honored” to be backed by a group that wants to bring back partial-birth abortion — but “somehow” forgot to tell us on her web site.
• A person who at least had the courtesy to tell us where he stands on a number of issues, unlike the loser, who told us virtually nothing — and what little she did tell us wasn’t even consistent.

And there’s a bonus with the new congressman vs. his predecessor: He lives in the district.

Heh.

9:54 - So there are two notable things about Bob Bennett’s statement. One is that he did not miss an opportunity to link Strickland with this loss, which is a nice shot. And also he is clearly not happy with the way the primary played out. Especially the part about dishonoring Gillmor. Strong stuff that.

9:50 - Apparently I’m not on Bob Bennett’s email list, but Maggie is and thanks to her comment we have his remarks:

(Columbus) - Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett issued the following statement regarding Bob Latta’s victory in the 5th Congressional District special election:

“Bob Latta won this race despite all the firepower state and national Democrats could provide. He held back the 20-to-one fundraising advantage of majority Democrats, the vast resources of Big Labor and the personal appeals of Barack Obama, John Edwards and Nancy Pelosi.

“The outcome is a clear rejection of a popular governor who spent enormous political capital on this race, and it’s a sign that voters are tired of the worn-out rhetoric from a party that has nothing more to offer than a sad fixation on yesterday’s news.

“This is still a race we could have lost. Our candidate came out of a nasty primary wounded and broke. He was dramatically weakened by a vicious primary battle that angered voters, embarrassed the party and disgraced the honorable legacy of Paul Gillmor. Republicans cannot allow those nuclear primary tactics to continue if we expect to win future elections.”

For those of you scoring at home this is spin option #3 about which BSB said earlier:

The likelihood of #3 has waned significantly with the rise of the Weirauch momentum. Beyond that, the analysis seems pretty solid. I’m not going to repost any of it, but if it piques your interest you should check it out.

Oops.

9:45 - Commiserating at Kos. Some are blaming Steny Hoyer. Ha!

9:42 - Now Weirauch is down to 44% and the game is “how low can she go?” three Western counties and one Eastern yet to report. Defiance is still out. That’s a reddiest of the red counties.

9:28 - Wood is all in and as it turns out it appears that Weirauch under, that’s right underperformed her 2006 performance by 3 points. Latta wins wood 55-45 and that’s the game. The low turnout probably made the difference, but just for fun, let’s call it the “Kos Effect” at -3 points.

9:24 - AP Calls it for Latta. Depending on when this was filed I probably beat him by at least 15 minutes. Yeah! for blogs.

Republican Bob Latta defeated Robin Weirauch to complete the term of U.S. Rep. Paul Gillmor who died in September from a fall at his Washington apartment.

Latta, the son of a former Ohio congressman, had 55 percent of the vote and Weirauch had 45 percent with 42 percent of the vote counted.

The 5th District in northwest Ohio is conservative and traditionally Republican. No Democrat has won the seat since the 1930s.

9:22 - Ohio Daily is conceding that things look bad for the Weirauch.

9:15 - For Tom in the comments: Fulton came in 55-45 for Latta with 25% turnout and 100% counted.

9:02 - Folks, it’s over, I know I’m in the habit of calling these things early, but this is a clincher. Wood county just put up new numbers and with 67 out of 97 precincts Latta is leading by 55-45, way ahead of Gilmor in 2006. In addition among the several counties being reported at the SOS, Latta is leading in all of them, some by healthy numbers.

If these numbers are correct, Latta will win with somewhere around 53-55%.

8:57 - According to the SOS, Sandusky is all in and Latta won it 53-47% and in 2006 Gilmore won that county 58-42. So we have what? A five point swing toward Weirauch? If that holds for the rest of the district? This is going to be close.

8:52 - This CNN site confirms it. Wood county has the most votes and is also where Weirauch did best in 2006. If she can’t win in Wood county today, she doesn’t win at all.

8:43 - Crawford is now reporting in with a similar healthy lead for Latta. And I have to give props to whoever at the SOS built the new interactive site. Well done and has an RSS feed! Nice.

8:38 - According to the SOS, Latta is off to early leads in Seneca and Ashland. Time for cautious optimism?

8:35 - The Wood county site appears to be faster than the SOS, but tip to GCJ for the link.

8:33 - 10 precincts reporting in Wood county: Latta 1,402 Weirauch 1,123

8:04 - one would expect turnout to be extremely low with all the floods and whatnot.

7:49 - Kicking off the live thread. It will probably be an hour or so before we start getting some results. Watch this page.

© 2007 NixGuy.com.