Add one more seat to the total

From The Washington Post's The Fix column:

House Democrats increased their 2006 election gains to 30 seats Tuesday, with former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez's (D) surprisingly convincing victory over Rep. Henry Bonilla (R) in a runoff election in Texas's massive 23rd District.

And it looks like all the immigrant bashing may have fed into the loss for the Republicans.

Rodriguez's win comes just five weeks after Bonilla received 49 percent of the vote in a special primary on Nov. 7. Rodriguez won just 20 percent that day, while a handful of other Democrats split up the remaining votes.

The apparent key to Rodriguez's come-from-behind victory was a heavy focus by national Democrats on identifying and turning out Latino voters -- especially in Bexar County

Of course it helped that the Republicans took a page out of Rep. Rob Kreibich's playbook and got a little cocky.

In contrast to the heavy spending by the DCCC, the National Republican Congressional Committee chose not to spend a dime on this race -- under the belief that Bonilla's massive financial edge (he outspent Rodriguez at a better than four-to-one clip) would be more than enough to hold the seat.

You can find the whole column here.