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By almost every measure, 2008 promises to be another banner year at the ballot box for congressional Democrats. The party that picked up 30 House seats in November 2006 and another three in recent special elections is thrashing the GOP in the polls, the money chase, and the candidate-recruitment war.

But a Supreme Court ruling last week proved that no party can ever get everything it wants. Nearly lost amid the hubbub surrounding the Court’s 5-4 nixing of the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, the justices struck down the “millionaire’s amendment,” the provision of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that sought to level the playing field for House or Senate candidates who face wealthy opponents writing big checks to their own campaigns.

The ruling is modestly good news for this year’s crop of deep-pocketed hopefuls, including more than a dozen very wealthy Republican House candidates who were recruited by a cash-strapped national party for an obvious reason: They can fund their own campaigns. The twist? The successful millionaire plaintiff in the case, a twice-unsuccessful candidate from upstate New York, is a Democrat who may have—inadvertently or not—hurt his own party. On balance, the party whose fortunes depend more this year on the success of its millionaire candidates is the GOP.

So, meet Jack Davis. A fiery 75-year-old industrialist whose furnace-parts company has made him a fortune over the course of four decades, Davis is on his third run to represent New York’s 26th Congressional District in as many election cycles. In 2004, he spent $1.25 million of his own money to rail against GOP Rep. Tom Reynolds and won 44 percent of the vote. In 2006, Davis spent $2.25 million in personal resources, and in a less hospitable environment for the GOP, he increased his share of the vote to 48 percent.

Reynolds has opted not to seek a sixth term. And Davis has vowed to spend millions more to win a very competitive Democratic primary and a potentially tough general election contest for the seat.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is giddy about many of its candidates, but it is giving the cold shoulder to Davis, who has a habit of speaking his mind and skipping many standard campaign niceties. In the days after his 2006 loss, Davis defended his lack of personal campaigning, telling the Tonawanda News that addressing small crowds at campaign events would not have been “an efficient use of my time.” And in March of this year, Davis chided his chief Democratic rival, 29-year-old Iraq war veteran Jon Powers, telling Newsday that Powers had “never had a real job.”

Under the millionaire’s amendment, as soon as Davis spent more than $350,000 out of his own pocket, Powers would have been allowed to raise up to $6,900—three times the normal $2,300 limit for a House seat—from each of his donors. But Davis’s successful challenge to the law—based on the argument that it violated the First Amendment’s right to free speech and had unfairly come to the rescue of entrenched incumbents like Reynolds—has the effect of making Powers’s road to financial competitiveness in the race slightly steeper.

To be sure, the high court’s ruling in Davis v. Federal Election Commission is far from a death blow to Powers’s primary campaign; for one thing, most Democratic organizations in the district have endorsed him. Most of the money raised by Powers, as is the case for most House candidates, has been in the form of individual contributions of less than $2,300. In fact, there is scant evidence that the millionaire’s amendment actually ever did much to level the playing field in its two election cycles.

Because of the Court ruling, Powers cannot go back to his maxed-out donors to ask for an extra helping. He will have to find other sources of funds in order to compete with Davis for airtime in a district that covers both the Buffalo and Rochester media markets. In a conveniently timed move, on Monday the DCCC added Powers to its “Red to Blue” list for targeted fundraising assistance.

It is easy to see why there was an appetite for an anti-millionaire provision when the campaign finance law (commonly known as McCain-Feingold) was passed in 2002. Just two years earlier, Democrats Maria Cantwell, Jon Corzine, and Mark Dayton each spent eight figures of their own resources to win Senate seats. But a 2005 analysis by Boston College political scientist Jennifer Steen, a leading expert on self-financed candidates, concluded that the millionaire’s amendment had a “limited impact on the political landscape” in 2004, the first cycle in which it was in effect. According to Steen, only 13 of the 56 candidates who took advantage of the loophole raised more than 10 percent of their funds because of it.

And the millionaire’s amendment seemed barely a factor in 2006, when most wealthy House candidates, including successful allergy-doctor-turned-Democratic-candidate Steve Kagen in Wisconsin, “triggered” the amendment too late in the campaign cycle to give their opponents a chance to take advantage.

The millionaire’s amendment comes with complex additional filing requirements. That may be one reason candidates have had trouble capitalizing on it. An even bigger reason was millionaire candidates’ propensity to game the system by strategically timing and apportioning their personal contributions and loans to their campaigns. As of mid-May, Alabama state Rep. Jay Love had reported lending his GOP congressional campaign $349,000—keeping him just below the amendment’s trigger point.

Still, it is possible that the millionaire’s amendment could have had a more substantial and more pro-Democratic effect in 2008 than it had in 2004 or 2006. Why? Because since 2000, when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee made no bones about its desire to recruit financially independent candidates, such as Cantwell, Corzine, and Dayton, no party committee had made recruiting millionaires a key element of its strategy until House Republicans recognized they would be in dire financial straits this year.

At the end of May, the National Republican Congressional Committee had only $6.6 million in cash-on-hand to the DCCC’s $47.2 million. It’s one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets that the NRCC’s unprecedented inability to buttress its targeted candidates with substantial ad buys has made recruitment of self-funders a top GOP priority this cycle. And that is reason enough for Democrats to pay attention to the implications of the Supreme Court ruling.

In New York alone, Republicans are fielding three candidates with an ability to contribute substantially to their own campaigns. In the 20th District, former GOP state party Chairman Sandy Treadwell will spend freely out of his own pocket to challenge freshman Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand. In the 24th District, centered on Utica, construction businessman Richard Hanna has signaled a willingness to unleash his fortune in trying to oust freshman Democratic Rep. Michael Arcuri. And in the Buffalo-based 26th, high-tech businessman Christopher Lee could be the only millionaire left in the race to succeed Reynolds if Powers defeats Davis in the September Democratic primary.

The Republicans have plenty of self-funded House aspirants outside the Empire State as well. Chris Hackett, who owns a temporary-staffing company, spent at least $590,000 of his own money to narrowly defeat another millionaire in the Republican primary in Pennsylvania’s 10th District. And Hackett will likely spend much more in a bid to unseat freshman Democratic Rep. Christopher Carney. In Virginia’s 11th District, building inspection businessman Keith Fimian had reported loaning his campaign $325,000 as of late May in his bid to hold a vulnerable open seat for the GOP.

And such wealthy Republican targets as Reps. Vern Buchanan of Florida and Robin Hayes of North Carolina will be relying on their own money to get them across the finish line yet again. In each of these cases, Democratic candidates won’t be able to raise as much money as they might have with the help of the millionaire’s amendment. Many will use their war chests to paint the Republicans as—you guessed it—out-of-touch millionaires.

Of course, these partisan roles are reversed in some races. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, will have to cancel any $6,900-a-head fundraisers he may have scheduled to help his campaign defend against the certain onslaught of ads from Democrat Michael Skelly, who made millions of dollars on wind energy, in the 7th District. And in Kentucky’s Senate race, wealthy Democratic businessman Bruce Lunsford stands to benefit from the Court’s ruling, as donations to Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s minority leader, will also be capped at $2,300 per individual.

But will the ruling in Davis v. FEC make a difference in more than a handful of races? Probably not. So the decision is not much consolation for Republicans at the moment, but in this kind of political environment, the GOP will take every pinch of good news it can get.

The author is House editor of The Cook Political Report.