JACKSON — Roger Wicker may well not have been Gov. Haley Barbour's first choice or best choice as a successor to retiring U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, but he's a safe and solid choice to bear the Republican standard as Mississippi chooses a new senator for only the fifth time in the last six decades.
Barbour named Wicker, the current Republican 1st District congressman from Tupelo, as the interim Senate successor to Lott during a Monday press conference in Jackson.
Barbour has set the special election to choose Lott's permanent successor for November 2008. Despite an anticipated legal challenge from Attorney General Jim Hood, that's the likely date of the election. Look for Hood to win a challenge in the Hinds County courts and lose at the state Supreme Court level if he pushes it.
In the final analysis, Barbour's Senate choice came down to the state's two veteran Republican congressmen — Wicker and 3rd District Rep. Chip Pickering.
In polling conducted by Democrats and Republicans after Lott announced his retirement, Pickering had better polling numbers than Wicker. Those numbers and constant pressure from GOP supporters kept Pickering, who last July announced his intention not to seek re-election to his House seat over family considerations, busy contemplating the Senate vacancy for most of December.
But in the final days, Pickering stepped out of contention. For his part, Wicker never wavered in seeking the post.
The likely partisan showdown in November will be between now-interim U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and former Democratic Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.
In their early political lives, Wicker and Musgrove were roommates during their tenures in the Mississippi Senate, sharing a metro Jackson apartment. That alone should make for an interesting campaign.
Democratic national polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has conducted polling in early December that gives Musgrove a 48 to 34 percent lead over Wicker. Those numbers are bolstered somewhat by history.
Musgrove has run three statewide races, winning his race for lieutenant governor against Eddie Briggs in 1995 with 52.7 percent of the vote, getting 49.6 percent of the vote in winning a plurality election as governor in 1999 and losing to Barbour in 2003 in a gubernatorial re-election bid with 45.8 percent of the vote.
In three statewide races, Musgrove has averaged winning 49.3 percent of the vote. Wicker, on the other hand, has never won a statewide race and has never sought any office outside the relatively compact 1st Congressional District in North Mississippi.
But the other significant number to consider is that the last Democrat to win a Senate race in Mississippi was the late John C. Stennis back in 1982, when he was making his last political race against a young upstart Republican named Haley Barbour.
National Democrats are believed to smell blood in the water and are expected to invest heavily in helping the Democrats contend for the seat. But Mississippi's decidedly Republican voting record in national politics since the 1970s says Wicker can quickly and effectively introduce himself to folks in South Mississippi with enough money, and Republicans have dominated political fund-raising in Mississippi of late.
While the Barbour-Wicker press conference had the trappings of a coronation, the reality of this is that Wicker's interim service will give him an advantage, but only an advantage.
A Wicker-Musgrove race in 2008 will be a competitive affair and one that won't be a cakewalk for Wicker even with the interim service on his resumé. Musgrove's last interaction with the voters was a loss, and he's endured some negative publicity from the courts.
The number suggests a tough, tight 2008 race to succeed Lott.
