The Battle of the Steves?

Rep. Steve Chabot won a seventh term in the U.S. House last fall by fending off a well-financed challenged from Democrat John Cranley, but the Westwood Republican may not be out of the woods yet.

Next year, if he decides to seek an eighth term, Chabot is likely to face a Democratic challenger whose family is well known in the GOP enclaves of Cincinnati's west side suburbs and who has made a career of winning elections in a Republican-leaning Ohio House district - State Rep. Steve Driehaus.

The Price Hill Democrat has already had discussions with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) about taking on Chabot in 2008; and will be in a perfect position to do it - his eight years in the Ohio House under Ohio's term limits law will be ending and Driehaus will have to move on.

Tuesday, he sounded like a candidate.

"By next year, Steve Chabot, with all due respect, will have been there 14 years and people are going to start looking at whether or not it is time for something new,'' Driehaus said.

Driehaus, the minority whip of the Ohio House, said that term limits forces him to "look at other options'' and running for Congress, he said, "ranks right up there at the top of the list."

Last year, Chabot won re-election by about 9,000 votes out of about 202,000 cast in the 1st District, which includes most of the western half of Hamilton County, a small area of Butler County, and most of the city of Cincinnati.

The district is considered to have a 50-50 split between Republican and Democrat voters, based in part on the nearly flat-footed tie between George W. Bush and John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.