BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Democrats blamed an independent candidate for their loss of a Louisiana congressional seat, saying Michael Jackson delivered the seat to Republicans by diverting votes from incumbent Don Cazayoux.Nationwide, Cazayoux’s loss was one of only four suffered by House Democrats on Tuesday. Republican Bill Cassidy won with 48 percent of the vote, Cazayoux had 40 percent of the vote and Jackson, the only black candidate, had 12 percent.”Cazayoux lost because Michael Jackson took just enough off him, and kept him from reaching the plurality,” said Chris Whittington, chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “Jackson was in the race as a spoiler. He sold out to the Republicans to elect Cassidy.”Jackson did not return a call for comment on Wednesday. He has repeatedly denied that he ran simply to get back at the party for supporting Cazayoux.”I’m in this race to win,” Jackson said at a debate last month.This was Jackson’s second run for the 6th Congressional District seat. Jackson, a third-term Democratic state lawmaker from Baton Rouge, ran and lost to Cazayoux in a party primary earlier this year. Cazayoux went on to defeat Republican Woody Jenkins in the general election in May.For this week’s election, Jackson dropped his longtime party designation and signed up as an independent instead.Assessments of Tuesday’s election returns found that Cazayoux and Jackson essentially divided up Democratic precincts — allowing Cassidy to win with support of less than half of voters. Analysts noted that Barack Obama beat John McCain in East Baton Rouge Parish in the presidential race, and Jackson likely benefited from high black turnout in the district’s most populous city.Cassidy finished with 150,226 votes, Cazayoux had 125,716 and Jackson had 36,133.”You have to expect that if Michael Jackson hadn’t been in the race, some of those votes might have stayed home, but most would have gone to Cazayoux,” said Kirby Goidel, a political scientist at LSU.Bob Mann, a former adviser to Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, said Jackson effectively gave the race to the Republicans.”I think (Jackson) accomplished what he wanted, which was to take down Don Cazayoux,” said Mann, now an LSU mass communications professor.Adding to Democrats’ suspicions about Jackson’s function in the race was the financial support he received from Lane Grigsby, a Baton Rouge businessman who typically supports conservative causes.Cassidy agreed that Jackson’s candidacy altered the race, but he expressed confidence that he would have won a head-to-head campaign against the incumbent Cazayoux.Cassidy, a physician, said he would have focused more of his campaigning on health care — but didn’t because Jackson is strong on the issue, having long been involved in the Legislature, pushing for greater funding.”We ran a different campaign because Michael was in the race,” Cassidy said. “If Michael, who has a strong background in health care, had not been in the race, we would have played on that in our strategy.”——Contact The Daily Reveille news staff at [email protected]