JACKSON — Republican state treasurer nominee Lynn Fitch says she campaign this fall as she did in the party primary — delivering a positive message to Mississippi voters.
Fitch, 49, of Madison, defeated one-term state Sen. Lee Yancey, 43, of Brandon, Tuesday in a runoff for the GOP nomination. Fitch will face Ocean Springs Mayor Connie Moran, who was unopposed for the Democratic nomination. A faction of the Reform Party also wants to put a candidate on the ballot for the Nov. 8 general election.
Fitch and Yancey emerged from a three-person primary on Aug. 2.
There's no incumbent in the treasurer's race this year because Republican Tate Reeves, who's held the job two terms, is running for lieutenant governor.
In a phone interview from her campaign party in Ridgeland, Fitch said she campaigned in the runoff as she did in the first primary, "continuing to move forward with a positive and very upbeat message."
She said that would continue in the general election.
"We're just going to stay with our message ... that we know what to do and how to do it," Fitch said.
Fitch worked for the state attorney general's office and as staff attorney for the House Ways and Means Committee. She has also been a bond attorney in private practice. Since Republican Gov. Haley Barbour took office in 2003, Fitch has served in two high-level administration jobs, as deputy director of the state Department of Employment Security and as Barbour's appointee leading the state Personnel Board.
Fitch is on leave as state Personnel Board director during the campaign.
Moran, 55, grew up in Ocean Springs and is in her second term as mayor, overseeing her hometown's recovery from Hurricane Katrina. She has been an economist at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, and for five years in the 1990s she was managing director of Mississippi's European trade office in Frankfurt, Germany. After returning to Mississippi, Moran served three years as economic development director for coastal Jackson County. She also has run a marketing and economic development consulting firm.
Yancey could not be reached for comment Tuesday night. He is a former youth minister at First Baptist Church of Meridian and worked as a lobbyist for the Mississippi Baptist Convention before he was elected to the state Senate in 2007. He works for a financial services company.
The treasurer is the Mississippi's top financial officer, managing the state-sponsored college savings plans, helping set annual revenue estimates that legislators use as a basis for writing the state budget and sitting on several boards that oversee investments. Along with the governor and the attorney general, the treasurer is a member of the commission that has final say over whether the state issues bonds for projects approved by the Legislature.
