Republican Congressman Richard Baker, who is perhaps best known for having said in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did," is on his way out of Congress.

The dean of Louisiana's congressional delegation, Rep. Richard Baker, has decided to step down from Congress after 22 years to take a job in the private sector representing investors he has spent a career regulating.

The announcement by the Baton Rouge Republican was not unexpected and makes him the third member of the state's seven-member House delegation to resign or announce plans to resign in the past two months.

Baker, 59, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, will take the helm of the Managed Funds Association, the industry group that represents the $1.8 trillion hedge fund industry. Baker notified the House Ethics Committee 11 days ago that he had been approached by the group about becoming president and CEO.

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State Rep. Donald Cazayoux, a Democrat, has already announced his intention to run for Baker's seat. Baker's former chief of staff, Paul Sawyer, a Baton Rouge native and a Republican, also plans to run.

As brownsox over at Daily Kos noted yesterday, with Cazayoux in this race and Baker not, this is a very winnable district for the Democrats -- even as the district leans more than 6 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in presidential elections, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index. Because of the influx of voters into Baton Rouge who left New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, the make up of the district's electorate is a lot different than it did during the 2004 presidential election, specifically a lot more Democratic.

Now this isn't a sure fire pick up for the Democrats -- and even if it were, Cazayoux is decidedly on the conservative end of the Democratic Party. However, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee holding better than a $30 million cash-on-hand advantage over the National Republican Congressional Committee when debts and obligations are taken into account, the Republicans can ill afford to have to defend yet another open seat that realistically could go to the Democrats. And every cent spent in this district by the NRCC is a cent that isn't being spent in an even more competitive district where the Republicans are on defense, let alone in one of the very few districts in which the Republicans might be on offense in 2008.