The Eye

Republicans hope Stivers, an Iraq War veteran and former state senator, will face a better environment than he did in 2008. Last year, President Barack Obama headed the Democratic ticket and two minor-party candidates in the House race siphoned votes from the main event.

"Mary Jo Kilroy asked for this rematch when she blindly followed her party leaders down a path of reckless spending that has produced little but increased government and rising unemployment throughout the country," Natonal Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Paul Lindsay said. "Families in central Ohio deserve better, and Steve Stivers' strong record of service is exactly what they are looking for to hold this Democrat Congress accountable in Washington."

Gabby Adler, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee countered Lindsay, saying, "In these difficult economic times, Central Ohio voters deserve a representative who fights for solutions to the challenges they face, not someone like Steve Stivers, a former bank lobbyist who is only looking out for Washington special interests."

"This new Steve Stivers of 2010 may be repackaged, but voters will easily see he is still the same Steve Stivers they rejected in 2008," Adler said.

Challengers aren't typically successful in do-over races.

CQ's Greg Giroux compiled a list of the 18 House rematches run in 2008 in December and wrote about them in CQ Weekly magazine.

Only three of the challengers won their rematches -- all of them Democrats who were able to capitalize on another "big year" for their party to capture a Senate seat in New Hampshire and House seats in North Carolina and New York.

But the roster of second-time losers was bipartisan: eight Democrats and seven Republicans. And in all but three of those 15 House races (GOP survivors in Omaha and the suburbs of Chicago and Sacramento) the incumbent won more decisively in 2008 than two years before