WHEN Bermuda pension fund manager Mark Lay decided to place a large bet on the movement of interest rates, he could not have envisaged that it would lead an Ohio Marine veteran of Iraq to campaign against his state's Republican administration, and to deliver the harshest denunciation of President George Bush since he first ran for office.

Mr. Lay's client, Ohio's Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC), lost his bet; or rather, his Bermuda-registered ADF hedge fund lost $215 million of BWC's money in a year. While Mr. Lay insists the BWC was aware of his actions, the BWC has sued him for fraud and breach of contract.

But Marine Major Paul Hackett decided the scandal-plagued Republican administration was also at fault, and opted to contest a vacant seat in Ohio's Second Congressional District, a seat held by Republicans for three decades. In such a solidly conservative district, received political wisdom held that calling President Bush a "chicken hawk", or coward, for not fighting in Vietnam, and harshly criticising his decision to go to war in Iraq, was not a recipe for success.

Republicans might have been wary of too-harsh criticism of a lawyer and Marine reservist who volunteered last year to serve in Iraq and spent seven months there, including service around the dangerous Sunni-triangle cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. But Major Hackett's criticism of President Bush, who joined the Texas Air National Guard in the late Sixties and never saw service overseas, stung the Republican machine into action.

Neither party had shown much interest in a race that seemed hopelessly one-sided until Paul Hackett, stressing his military service and independence, returned from Iraq in March and decided to jump into the race.

He told USA Today that Bush's taunting line to the Iraqi insurgents, "Bring 'em on", was "the most incredibly stupid comment I've ever heard a president of the United States make".

While he was willing to put his life on the line for the president, he said: "I don't like the son-of-a-bitch that lives in the White House." It was clearly time for Republicans to take the gloves off. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) bought TV time for commercials last weekend. NRCC spokesman Carl Forti told the New York Times: "He called the commander-in-chief a son-of-a-bitch, (so) we decided to bury him."

But the Democrats also rushed to help Major Hackett, whose lone commercial opened with a shot of the president saying: "There is no higher calling than service in our armed forces."

After initially ignoring the race, the Democratic mood changed when polls indicated that Hackett had turned "a potential walkover into a sharply contested race", according to the Times. Young staffers were dispatched to Ohio, hoping to send a message that Bush was weak in one of his most loyal districts.

In addition, Democratic strategist James Carville was the headliner in an event in Cincinnati that raised nearly $100,000 for Mr. Hackett, and former Democratic Senator from Georgia and Vietnam veteran Max Cleland campaigned with Mr. Hackett, calling his decision to volunteer for Iraq "an act of conscience. Someone who has led on the battlefield, that's the kind of person you want to see in the United States Congress."