Barack Obama’s candidacy has had plenty written about it over the past year. Whether it was about Obama’s initial strength among white voters (Iowa) or his subsequent lack of strength amongst whites, working class, etc (West Virginia) we have heard and read plenty. But the Obama effect can now be seen through some real non-presidential election results. The election of Democrat Travis Childers in Mississippi came in spite of a Republican media attack trying to link Obama to Childers. Did these Republican attacks actually drive Democratic turnout? From todays New York Times:

With the strong support of black voters, a conservative white Democrat, Travis W. Childers, scored an upset victory in that race, in a district held by Republicans since 1995. Kelvin Buck, a black state representative who helped the Childers campaign, said he saw a “level of enthusiasm and energy” that he had not seen before from black voters — significantly motivated, he said, by a recent Republican anti-Obama campaign.

The numbers appear to bear that out. In one black precinct in the town of Amory, Miss., the number of voters nearly doubled, to 413, from the Congressional election in 2006, and this for a special election with nothing else on the ballot. Meanwhile, in a nearby white precinct, the number of voters dropped by nearly half.

Maybe Childers should drop a thank you note to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee for the 1.2 million dollars they spent on an anti Obama message.

Yet one sure lesson of the surprising Congressional result from northern Mississippi is that the use of Mr. Obama as an electoral tactic — Republicans resorted to it heavily in the contest — is at best a double-edged sword. At worst it is a guillotine for Republican candidates in areas with substantial black populations, like the Mississippi district won by Mr. Childers, where 26 percent are African-American. Indeed, Tuesday’s Mississippi vote emerged as a case study in the effects and consequences of focusing on Mr. Obama.

“We realized the Republican machine was on the attack,” said Mr. Buck, the state representative who helped Mr. Childers. “They wanted to say he was tied to Barack Obama. The question we asked was, What’s wrong with that? We wanted to prove to them that there’s nothing wrong in Mississippi with a person being tied to Barack Obama.”

And with Republicans in full retreat is the solid Republican south now being put into play? With some conservative antipathy to John McCain one would have to say that Republicans will be forced to spend money in states that did not require much attention in years gone by.

But in Southern states with large black populations, like Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia, an energized black electorate could create a countervailing force, particularly if conservative white voters choose not to flock to Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, predicts “the largest black turnout in the history of the United States” this fall if Mr. Obama is the nominee.

To hold these states, Republicans may have to work harder than ever. Already, turnout in Democratic primaries this year has substantially exceeded Republican turnout in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

There is no question that there is a flip side to all of this (no candidate that I am aware of presents a perfect fit everywhere) but the Obama candidacy presents Democrats with some unique opportunities as well as a few challenges. If handled as deftly as the Obama political operation has handled matters up to this point his candidacy could be the perfect storm for Republicans. Read the New York Times article at this link.