Another high-profile special election looms next Tuesday in Mississippi's 1st congressional district, on the heels of last Saturday's contest in Louisiana.

The Mississippi matchup, a runoff between Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers (D) and Southaven Mayor Greg Davis (R), has by a wide margin already drawn more cash from the two national party campaign committees than any other special election this year. The cash-strapped National Republican Congressional Committee (the NRCC may actually add the words "cash-strapped" to its official title) had, as of Thursday, dumped $1.06 million into the race, while the more flush Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had spent $1.65 million on the contest.

That combined total of $2.7 million easily exceeds the $1.6 million the two parties spent on the Louisiana contest and even beats the $2.3 million they shelled out in the March special election in Illinois' 14th district, which includes the pricey Chicago media market.

As loyal Capitol Briefing readers know, Democrats won both the Louisiana and Illinois races, making the Mississippi contest into the GOP's special election Alamo. Republicans need to win next Tuesday at any cost, so you can expect the party to shovel hundreds of thousands of dollars more into the Magnolia State between now and then.

"My patience is growing thin," Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) growled today, and he wasn't referring to the typically glacial pace of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. Instead, Byrd was looking askance across the Capitol at House Democratic leaders, who have been dragging their feet on one of the most important bills Congress will deal with this year.

House Democrats are struggling to move a supplemental spending bill that has grown to include new benefits for veterans and the unemployed in addition to more than $160 billion to fund military options in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Having taken the unusual step of bypassing the Appropriations Committee altogether, House Democratic leaders had originally planned to bring their version of the spending bill straight to the chamber floor today, despite strong opposition from Republicans. At the same time, the Senate Appropriations panel planned to markup its own supplemental measure today. That was the plan -- "was" being the operative word.

Instead, neither of those things is happening. First the House decided to punt consideration of its bill until next week, after complaints from conservative Blue Dog Democrats that an otherwise popular part of the package -- increased educational benefits for military veterans -- was not "paid for" with a corresponding spending cut or tax increase. The Blue Dogs fear that the veterans money would quickly become a new mandatory government program that Congress would have to fund year after year without any obvious way to cover the cost. And House Democratic leaders need the support of just about every member of their own party, given how angry the GOP is with the way the majority has handled the bill.

The House's decision to postpone the bill forced Senator Byrd Byrd (D-W.Va.) to grudgingly put off his panel's markup, though he warned in a statement: "I am putting my colleagues in both the House and Senate on notice that whether the House acts or not next week, the Senate Appropriations Committee will move forward with a mark-up of the Supplemental Appropriations bill."

So Democrats have bought themselves at least a few more days to put together a very difficult political puzzle. Their decision to add domestic items to the supplemental seems to have guaranteed a veto from President Bush, if the bill gets that far. Anti-war Democrats still want the chance to vote on language that would require the Iraq money to be spent only on troop withdrawal. The Blue Dogs have their problems with the veterans funding issue, and Republicans are unhappy with everything from the substance of the bill to the process of moving it through the system.

Will Democrats devise a way to reconcile all of those competing concerns by next Tuesday or Wednesday, and will they get a bill to Bush's desk before the Memorial Day recess? Seems like a tall order, but the majority isn't considering failure as an option.

"I am very confident that next week we will come to the floor with a bill that has the full consensus of the Democrats and hopefully can attract a large number of Republicans as well," Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said today. "We will then send it to the Senate. The Senate will work its will, and it will probably come back to us, and we will send it to the President. And, yes, we intend to do that by Memorial Day break."

The Senate Ethics Committee informed Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) today that it was dismissing a complaint against him for his alleged patronage of a call-girl service that emerged from the so-called "D.C. Madam" scandal.

The letter explained that the panel was dismissing the matter because "the conduct at issue occurred before your Senate candidacy and service; as alleged, the conduct at issue did not result in your being charged criminally; as alleged, the conduct at issue did not involve use of public office or status for improper purposes."

But the committee did add that its decision to dismiss the matter "should not be taken as personal approbation or acceptance by any of the Members of the Committee of the kind of conduct alleged in this matter. In fact, if proven to be true, the Members of the Committee would find the alleged conduct of solicitation of prostitution to be reprehensible."

Vitter acknowledged "a very serious sin" in his past but has not given any further details about his behavior after his name surfaced in the investigation into the prositution ring run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who was convicted on multiple federal charges on April 15 and committed suicide last week.

During Palfrey's trial, Vitter was on a list of potential witnesses submitted by Palfrey's lawyer, but he was never called to testify.

Today's Post reports that "a disgruntled former employee," Laura Flores, has accused Reps. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) of forcing staff to do personal and campaign business for them on official time. Flores, who has pleaded guilty to fraud charges for embezzling money from her employers, is reportedly cooperating with a broader Justice Department probe into members' alleged misuse of official resources for their campaigns. Harman and Abercrombie both deny any wrongdoing.

What other members might come under scrutiny by the DOJ? Which lawmakers have faced such allegations in recent years? A few candidates come to mind, but none so clearly as Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.).

Federal investigators won't have to use Google to figure out who Miller is; the California lawmaker has already been the subject of a Justice investigation -- one whose current status is unclear -- into real estate deals he made with two Southern California communities. But Miller has also been accused, in particularly memorable and colorful fashion, of misusing his staff.

In December 2006, the Los Angeles Times published a lengthy account of such allegations against Miller. The story quoted anonymous former aides, but also backed them up with letters and e-mails from and between Miller's staffers.

The lead anecdote concerns Miller allegedly asking aides to help get a position on a federal board for a local councilman whose support he was seeking to clinch one of those now-suspect land deals. The story also reported that Miller's staff "were asked, on occasion, to help his son register for college classes. They were asked to check his stock prices and put together a morning report for him. And they twice bought flowers for his wife for Valentine's Day. ... Some of the most urgent e-mails reviewed by The Times focus on tickets to concerts and sporting events. Miller has, on several occasions, interrupted his staff's congressional work to send them hunting for concert tickets," particularly for his beloved Rolling Stones.

Miller's office did not comment on most of the allegations in the original Times story, but the lawmaker strongly denied to Capitol Briefing today that he had ever misused his staff.

"We don't use my staff for campaign use, or for personal use," Miller said, adding that he had never spoken to the House ethics committee or DOJ about the subject because "there's nothing to talk about. My staff doesn't do that."

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) just caused a brief stir in the House by strolling onto the chamber floor during a vote to talk to lawmakers/superdelegates.

Obama appeared to speak mostly with Pennsylvania Democrats, including Reps. Paul Kanjorski, Tim Murphy and John Murtha. Obama briefly stopped his conversations to sign autographs for House pages, as reporters jammed up to the doors to sneak a peak at the Demorcratic candidate.

Would Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) have prompted such a reaction? Probably not, but who knows what the West Virginia primary will bring. Clinton and her husband were both campaigning this morning in West Virginia.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) talked about opposing the Iraq war, responding to the economic downturn and addressing energy issues in an interview Friday with the online video site BigThink.

Reid on Iraq:

BATON ROUGE, La. -- State Rep. Don Cazayoux (D-La.) is refusing to endorse House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should he win a special House election Saturday and get to cast a ballot in the next vote for the speaker's gavel in January.

In an interview Thursday, Cazayoux went a step further and endorsed his home-state colleague, Rep. Charlie Melancon, a backbench conservative Democrat in office barely three years.

"Nancy Pelosi's going to be speaker of the House when I get elected regardless," Cazayoux said after a meet-and-greet at a senior citizens center outside the state capital. "[But] who knows who's running in the fall for speaker? I mean, 'Charlie Boy' Melancon might run. If Charlie Boy's running, that's going to be where I am."

Rest assured, "Charlie Boy" is not running for speaker. Nor is any other Democrat.

Pelosi's hold on power inside the Democratic caucus is stronger than it's ever been, even as national Republicans craft a strategy making her and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) co-stars in attack ads linking them to House Democratic candidates. This is particularly the case in southern races such as Saturday's special election to fill a vacancy in Louisiana's 6th Congressional District, which Cazayoux stands at least a 50-50 shot of winning.

Cazayoux's dilemma is similar to that faced by moderate Republicans in the mid-1990s, after Newt Gingrich led House Republicans into power after 40 years in minority exile. Because of his lightning rod status in swing districts some moderate Republicans needed to take symbolic stands against Gingrich (R-Ga.) after the House ethics committee rebuked him for a questionable book deal.

So a handful voted against Gingrich's second term as speaker in January 1997 as a means of political self-defense, but Gingrich remained speaker for another two years.

By endorsing Melancon's nonexistent speaker's bid, Cazayoux hopes to distance himself from Pelosi. More importantly, Cazayoux is following a route already taken by Melancon earlier this decade in winning a previously GOP-held seat in an oddly timed election after the incumbent retired to become a high-priced K Street lobbyist.

[My thanks to Mike Dowty -- the encyclopedic editor-reporter-photographer-do-everything of the Livingston Parish News, who's covered his area's politics for more than 30 years -- for pointing out my error in forgetting Melancon's victory in yesterday's post.]

In 2004 Melancon took advantage of rising discontent with the Bush administration among the liberal Democratic base, and he benefited from a divided local GOP. Billy Tauzin, a Democrat-turned-Republican after the '94 elections, was retiring to become a lobbyist, although he didn't announce his job as the top lobbyist for PhRMA until after the elections.

(With Capitol Briefing author Ben Pershing on his honeymoon, today's guest post is from this blog's founder, Paul Kane of the Washington Post, reporting from Louisiana in advance of Saturday's special election for the seat of retired Republican representative Richard Baker.)

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Watch television one night here these days, and you'll see the new world order of politics: Democrats have institutionally become the party of money.

That's true both in terms of the small dollar donations that their party's presidential candidates love to tout and the big donations that provide the bulk of TV revenue for congressional candidates. Here, state Rep. Don Cazayoux (D-La.) has an enormous financial advantage heading into the final 72 hours of the campaign for a seat long held by Republicans.

After both Cazayoux and his opponent, veteran Republican state legislator Woody Jenkins , stumbled out of their respective party primaries earlier this month, both were nearly broke. But with the backing of party leaders in Washington, Cazayoux's coffers have been flooded with donations that have allowed him to fill the airwaves with feel-good ads showing his parents talking about his love of babies and guns -- while also attacking Jenkins for tax liens from business deals more than a decade ago.

In the last two weeks before an election, the Federal Election Commission only requires candidates to file reports showing donations of $1,000 or more. In that span, Cazayoux took in $505,000 in those large donations. Demonstrating how important this race is to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democratic leaders have begged their colleagues to pour money from their own campaign accounts and PACs into the race.

They've responded. Of the haul collected by Cazayoux in the last two weeks of April, more than 20 percent -- at least $141,000 -- came from members of the Democratic caucus. A huge chunk of Cazayoux's other contributions have come from national labor unions, the trial lawyers PAC and other party celebrities such as James Carville ($1,000) and former Louisiana Senator John Breaux ($1,000).

Meanwhile, Jenkins has been on financial life support, and he's received little help from his potential colleagues in the House Republican Conference. Jenkins, a member of the state legislature for 28 years who now runs weekly newspapers west of Baton Rouge, raised about one forth of Cazayoux's haul in late April, almost $130,000.

House Republicans have put up a meager $35,000 for Jenkins in the last few weeks. Somewhere in Texas and Illinois, Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert must be rolling their eyes. The former majority leader and former speaker used to strong arm their conference into raising and giving money for key races, almost always leading to a GOP money edge.

Jenkins, with no real presence on TV, has been running a traditional grassroots campaign, littering the region with mailers and door knockers touting the endorsement of the ridiculously popular Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.).

While outside conservative groups have tied Cazayoux to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Jenkins makes Pelosi his No. 1 target on the stump. He's trying to educate voters on the rules of the House and how, no matter what Cazayoux says about his moderate views on guns and abortion, Pelosi rules the roost on Capitol Hill. "Once Nancy Pelosi's chosen speaker, everything else falls into place," he told me.

Those outside groups, including Freedom's Watch and Club for Growth, have effectively roughed up Cazayoux. Ads on TV last night showed him and Obama on the screen together supporting a "big government scheme" on health care, and another hard-hitting ad questioned Cazayoux's views on illegal immigration.

Those ads have driven up Cazayoux's negatives. At the same time, however, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has poured almost $1 million into the race in April, according to FEC records. The DCCC has spent more than double what the National Republican Congressional Committee has coughed up to defend retiring Rep. Richard Baker's seat, which has been reliably Republican for the past 21 years.

That DCCC leverage may have effectively neutralized the effort by the outside groups, giving Cazayoux something of an edge in a race that the most optimistic estimates call for a 20 percent turnout.

Make no mistake, this could be a watershed moment for House Democrats. In the last decade, the Democrats have won just two seats that were previously held by Republicans in the Deep South. One was a Georgia seat drawn up to be Democratic but it took a couple of years for the right candidate -- Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) - to run and win. The other Democratic "win" on GOP soil was Rep. Rodney Alexander, who won not far from here in 2002 -- only to switch parties in 2004 and join the Republicans.

Now, Jenkins is sounding the alarm that a true Democratic win here would signal long-term dominance by Pelosi.

"It really is the beginning of the Democratic control of the House for a long time, or the beginning of the end," he said.

-- Paul Kane

(Capitol Briefing's Ben Perhing is on his honeymoon this week, but some of his Washington Post colleagues have agreed to weigh in with postings from time to time in his absence.)

His name was never mentioned, but as Republican and Democratic lawmakers took turns praising each other this afternoon for backing legislation that would greatly expand veterans' education benefits, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain was the Republican elephant not in the room.

On the west front of the Capitol, its white dome resplendent in intermitent sunshine, a pantheon of veterans groups, from leather-clad Rolling Thunder Vietnam bikers to the geriatric World War II survivors of the VFW gathered with Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and John Warner (R-Va.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), conservative Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) and freshman Democrat Harry Mitchell (Ariz.) to push what is being billed as a G.I. Bill for the 21st Century.

House and Senate Democratic leaders said today it is a virtual certainty that the measure will be attached to war-funding legislation when it begins moving as early as next week. And with 71 Republican co-sponsors in the House and 11 Republicans in the Senate, it is close to unstoppable. But the Bush administration does not like it, fearing it is too expensive, too difficult to administer and so generous it could lure soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen out of a military that desperately needs them.

Caught in the middle is McCain, who may be loathe to jeopardize his new credentials as a small-government conservative but has made his political reputation as a decorated Vietnam war hero. McCain, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham
(R-S.C.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) have now proposed a less-expensive version of the veterans' education bill that they say would be easier to administer and less likely to deplete the military's ranks.

But with so much momentum, Webb, Warner and company are accepting no alternatives.

"Folks, this is not a difficult concept," Webb said today. "When our country was paralyzed with fear after 9-11, these are the people who willingly moved forward to the sound of the guns."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Warner pronounced, "we are going to win."

-- Jonathan Weisman

Capitol Briefing is getting married this weekend, and no, he's not stressed or concerned about it. ALL IS WELL.

After the nuptials, he will be going on his honeymoon and (to borrow The Fix's parlance) he suspects the soon-to-be Mrs. Briefing would not appreciate it if he blogged while at the beach. So this is it from him until May 8th. But keep watching this space for occasional posts by other authors, and you can always check out one of washingtonpost.com's other fine political blogs or the Congress page for all the latest happenings. Bye for now, and feel free to provide marriage advice in the comments section below.