JACKSON - Mississippi Republicans patted themselves on the back Wednesday for their general election successes while Democrats said the GOP deserves credit for getting its voters out.
Republican Party chairman Jim Herring of Canton said the results from the election are a "major event that changed the political landscape in Mississippi and the nation."
Republicans won two congressional seats in Mississippi, including the hotly contested race in the new 3rd District where GOP incumbent Chip Pickering bested Democratic Rep. Ronnie Shows.
Herring said the party also backed winners in a Supreme Court race and two Court of Appeals campaigns.
Nationally, Republicans gained full control of Congress by taking over the Senate. They also padded their majority in the House. That sweeping victory drew resentful concessions from Democrats, who said the president's popularity in a time of warfare against terrorists, his fund-raising and his aggressive campaigning were keys to the outcome of Tuesday's voting.
Herring agreed.
He said Bush's visit to Mississippi on behalf of Pickering in August energized the local GOP faithful.
"President Bush was a major factor in this campaign," said Herring, a Canton attorney.
Mississippi Democratic Party chairman Rickey Cole said the 2002 campaign was a referendum on the president's popularity.
"Ronnie Shows just didn't have to face Chip Pickering but also George W. Bush in all of his post-9/11 splendor. The tenor and tone of this race was set the time the president came down here in August," Cole said Wednesday.
Herring said Pickering's exceptional showing throughout the new 3rd District should "lay to rest forever that the district was drawn for him."
Critics of the state's new congressional map, a result of Mississippi losing a congressional seat after slow population growth in the 1990s, said the new 3rd District contained more Pickering territory than Shows territory. Added to the new district were heavily Republican precincts of Hinds and Madison counties.
"You flip these numbers around," said Shows, "and you let me have 53 percent of my district, who knows? That's his good fortune."
Herring and Pickering campaign manager Henry Barbour said the Republican incumbent ran strongest in the GOP strongholds of Madison, Rankin and Hinds counties, as expected.
Barbour said Pickering put up large numbers in rural counties and black majority precincts of southwest Mississippi. That area was the only portion of Shows' old territory in the new 3rd District.
"Chip and Ronnie in southwest Mississippi were in a dead heat," Barbour said.
Republican Rep. Roger Wicker won re-election in Mississippi's 1st District. Democrats Bennie Thompson and Gene Taylor were re-elected in the 2nd and 4th districts, respectively.
U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., won election to a fifth term. He is now in line to become chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Copyright 2002, Associated Press. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
