The organization spent more than $2 million to support the upset bid of Democratic Queen Anne's County prosecutor Frank M. Kratovil Jr. in Maryland's Republican-leaning 1st District. Kratovil, who leads GOP state Sen. Andy Harris by 2,154 votes with about 8,000 absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, is expected to declare victory today in a race that has already been called by the Associated Press.
That would give Democrats a 20th House seat in the 2008 elections with four races still undecided. That's on top of three special-election pickups during the past two years.
Already, Democrats say, they have picked up the most new seats ever by a party in the election immediately after one in which it gained a new majority. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said last week that Van Hollen had done "an excellent job"; Pelosi called him "maestro."
"No one could have done a better job to strengthen our Democratic majority in the House and enable us to continue to address the priorities of all Americans," Pelosi said last week.
Van Hollen played a role in the Democratic gains of 2006 as co-chair of the DCCC's "Red to Blue" program, which steered money to challengers in districts held by Republicans.
That earned him the chair of the whole outfit for the 2008 election. He also won a seat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, a valuable position from which to raise money. He is spoken of as a potential future Senate candidate.
Van Hollen said last week that he was considering a run for chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, a position left vacant by the departure of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel to become chief of staff in Barack Obama's White House. That would have meant a showdown with current Vice Chairman John B. Larson of Connecticut, a confrontation Pelosi appears to have headed off.
With Obama's victory, Van Hollen is looking forward to his first term serving alongside a Democratic president.
The first priority, he said, will be an economic recovery package. If negotiations with the Bush administration fall through, he said a package passed after Obama is sworn in could include "all or some of President-elect Obama's tax relief for the middle class."
