The campaign of state Rep. Steve Dreihaus (D-Price Hill) is ecstatic about his win Tuesday night unseating U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Westwood).

Congressman-elect Driehaus won the race for Ohio's 1st Congressional District 51.49 percent to Chabot's 48.49 percent, and received 143,743 votes compared to 135,376 for Chabot.

"Unbelievable would be a stretch because I think we all believed it was going to happen," said Driehaus spokesperson Joe Wessels. "But somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose and it felt like a close race. It was a close race."

Wessels said that the Driehaus camp was confident but didn't want to be overconfident. Wessels said Hamilton County has been trending Democratic for a while now.

"You saw it with the county commissioner's race two years ago, and now with Driehaus' election," Wessels said.

Looking forward to his role in Congress, Wessels said they don't know yet what committees Driehaus will have the opportunity to sit on. He mentioned a chance he would be asked to sit on Financial Services.

"There's nothing written in stone," Wessels said.

Wessels said Driehaus will be going to Washington the week after next for an orientation and said they'd know more after that.

Wessels said that Driehaus' big priority would remain housing.

"He's been a leader on housing in the Ohio state House," Wessels said. "We believe his knowledge and leadership on that will have that much of a greater impact on the federal level."

Wessels pointed out Driehaus' prescience on the housing crisis when Vice President Dick Cheney visited Price House Chili in 2004 and Driehaus was quoted in the story talking about the housing crisis.

"That was 2004," Wessels said. "We're in 2008 and that supposedly is a new issue. So he was talking about this stuff four years ago and no one realized. Now, he would like to take that experience and that leadership to the national level, so that's a big priority for him."

Wessels said fixing housing was tied to fixing the economy in general, and said that these were the main priorities of Driehaus in the next Congress.