JACKSON — Mississippi voters are in the unusual position this year of choosing a new U.S. senator and two new U.S. representatives. Given the penchant of state voters for rewarding their federal officials with long, often lifetime tenures, these campaigns are important to voters of all stripes.
Most prognosticators are predicting a light turnout in the second primary. Given how seldom congressional seats are open in Mississippi, that’s a crying shame.
It’s unlikely that longtime incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Oxford, or U.S. Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Bolton, or Gene Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, won’t be re-elected with substantial majorities. Cochran’s seniority and rank on the Senate Appropriations Committee is vital to the state’s immediate future, and both Thompson and Taylor have been on Capitol Hill long enough to earn valuable seniority and committee assignments themselves.
Thompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee while Taylor chairs a key House Armed Services subcommittee.
But in the state’s 1st and 3rd congressional districts, voters will choose new representation. The 1st District, which remains competitive from a partisan standpoint, features hot races on both sides of the political fence.
Democrats will choose between Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers of Booneville and longtime state Rep. Steve Holland of Plantersville. Childers, a political newcomer outside his home county, showed surprising strength in leading the Democratic ticket in the first primary. In the Democratic second primary, Childers will face Holland — the outspoken, sometimes controversial legislator who has openly battled Gov. Haley Barbour on issues like Medicaid and education funding.
Legislative experience and name recognition should be on Holland’s side, but unfortunately not all Holland’s name recognition has been beneficial to him.
On the Republican side in the second primary, Southaven Mayor Greg Davis faces Glenn McCullough, a former TVA chairman and former Tupelo mayor. McCullough led the ticket in the first primary. The Davis-McCullough showdown has taken on a strange twist in that Cochran has endorsed the candidacy of McCullough while former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott has thrown his support to Davis.
Cochran and Lott didn’t see eye-to-eye on a number of issues — some policy, most politics — while they served together in Congress. Seems McCullough fell from favor with Lott when he refused to endorse a Lott-backed TVA initiative that McCullough found to be dubious.
Davis has DeSoto County numbers on his side, but McCullough showed surprising strength in the district’s rural counties.
Over in the 3rd District, Democrat Joel Gill of Pickens has sewn up the Democratic nomination and will be a serious candidate in November.
But the makeup of the district still leaves the Republican nominee in the driver’s seat, and the GOP second primary features a tight, tough race between former state Sen. Charlie Ross of Brandon, the first primary front-runner, and Pearl attorney Gregg Harper, the former longtime Rankin County GOP chairman.
Ross, an experienced legislator with the pedigree of the U.S. Air Force Academy and Harvard Law School, has run a solid campaign and avoided most of the mistakes that plagued his failed 2007 GOP lieutenant governor’s bid.
Harper used an effective ground game, particularly in Rankin County and smaller counties on the east side of the district, to surprise the prognosticators in the first primary. Lott’s backing Harper, while Ross has the backing of the influential Club for Growth.
But Harper’s support among evangelical voters may be the deciding factor — that and his relentless, thorough ground game.
