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May 5, 2008

Rhode Islander engineers big win in Louisiana

A 26-year-old Cranston native spearheaded last Saturday's upset special election of a Democratic U.S. House member from a very conservative district anchored by Baton Rouge and its McMansion suburbs.

Meet Katie Nee, who tomorrow will become the youngest chief of staff in the U.S. House after her boss, U.S. Rep.-elect Don Cazayoux, takes his seat tomorrow. The seat was open because a Republican incumbent left it to become a lobbyist.

Nee was not available for an interview today: She was on an plane from Baton Rouge, a city best-known as the home of Louisiana State University, to Washington.

Katie Nee's father, George Nee, is secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL_CIO, and her mother, Anne Sliney, is a nurse who works with the Clinton Foundation battling AIDS in Third World countries.

"She seems thrilled,'' said George Nee yesterday."They were a little nervous election night but it all turned out all right in the end.''

Katie went from Cranston High School East to the University of Virginia. She graduated from UVA in 2003 and started working in politics shortly after. Katie Nee worked on Dick Gephardt's 2004 presidential campaign and in losing Democratic campaigns in Republican-leaning House districts in Indiana and Arizona.

At the outset, the Louisiana district near Baton Rouge looked like an unlikely place for a Democratic victory. The seat had been held by Republicans since the 1974 election. President Bush carried it by about a 2 to 1 margin over Democrat John Kerry.

The Republican candidate was Woody Jenkins, a very conservative Republican who tried to tie Democrat Cazayoux to Democratic presidential aspirant Barack Obama, the Illinois senator.

`"This was obviously the Republican test case for nationalizing Congressional races, and it failed completely,'' said Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Posted by Scott MacKay  at 7:35 PM | Permalink

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