So much for the argument that the people want a sharp break with the past.

A closely fought Congressional contest over a Republican stronghold here was apparently left hanging on Tuesday, with the two top candidates likely to face a runoff next month.

A conservative Democrat, Travis W. Childers, was seeking to wrest the open seat in the First Congressional District in northern Mississippi from Republicans who have held it since 1994. But Mr. Childers appeared to fall short, getting only 49 percent of the vote, according to The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. The special election was to fill the unexpired term of Roger Wicker, who moved on to the Senate.

Mr. Childers’s leading opponent, Greg Davis, the Republican mayor of Southaven, a Memphis suburb, got 46 percent. Four other people were on the ballot.

A runoff will be held May 13 if official tallies show no candidate won more than half the vote. After that, Mr. Childers and Mr. Davis are running against each other again in the November general election.

Mr. Childers, who differed little on social issues from his Republican opponent, exemplified the Democrats’ strategy of running conservatives in red districts, a tactic that proved successful in the 2006 midterm elections. Its potential was underscored here on Tuesday with a strong showing by Mr. Childers, a veteran courthouse official, in a conservative area that gave 62 percent of its vote to President Bush in 2004.

What does this tell us? Mainly, it says that the Democrats really don't have a message or a platform that can appeal to Americans nationally. Rather than run a Democrat who espouses the values of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (and there really isn's a dime's worth of difference between them), they continue to run candidates who espouse the GOP platform in conservative districts, making the issue one strictly of personalities.

The problem with this strategy is that if voters select such chameleons they empower not those who hold to their own core values, but those who oppose them. It would behoove voters in Mississippi (and elsewhere, like my own CD22 here in Texas) to pay attention to the party labels and vote accordingly.