Published: November 04, 2007 01:45 am            

Barbour, Bryant will win races on Tuesday

In a campaign dominated by far more lukewarm heat than by bright light, incumbent Republican Gov. Haley Barbour will on Tuesday withstand a surprisingly focused challenge from Democratic contender John Arthur Eaves Jr. to win a second term. On a percentage basis, Barbour’s win against Eaves should exceed his 2003 numbers against former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.

Despite what should be a double-digit margin of victory, the Barbour camp continues to run as if trailing by five points and is busily working the vaunted “72-hour plan” this weekend in hopes of driving a large Republican turnout to benefit down-ticket races.

The Eaves strategy of trying to take the so-called “faith and values” issues away from the Republicans was a political card that was well played but cost him votes among more liberal Democrats who found the strategy to be an exercise in pandering.

No meat on the bone For Eaves, the problem has been that, past the “old time religion” card, he appeared to be holding a losing hand. Even among loyal fellow Democrats, the Eaves campaign floundered amid complaints that Eaves failed to put any real meat on the bone of issues he identified as critical — public health care, public education and ethics.

To be fair, Eaves did at the 11th hour make portions of his federal income tax return public (which Barbour hasn’t) and offered a reasonable program of proposed ethics law enhancement recommendations. But the Democratic majority in the Legislature over the last century has consistently refused to make tough ethics laws and campaign finance reforms a priority — not that Republicans seemed to mind one bit.

In the lieutenant governor’s race, Republican Phil Bryant should defeat Democratic nominee Jamie Franks. Bryant never trailed in this race after

winning a hard-fought GOP primary over state Sen. Charlie Ross.

While media prognosticators (including this one) believed early on that Franks would be a more formidable candidate than Eaves, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Franks’ institutional knowledge of state government — a weakness that plagued Eaves — didn’t translate into moving the needle of

public support for his candidacy.

Spell’s race is close Down the ticket, Democrat Jim Hood will defeat Republican challenger Al Hopkins. Despite pounding Hood over the practice of giving outside counsel legal contracts to a number of his biggest campaign contributors, Hopkins never got the traction necessary to unseat the incumbent.

State Treasurer Tate Reeves will easily win re-election over Democratic challenger Shawn O’Hara. Republican challenger Stacy Pickering will win a

closer-than-expected race with Democratic contender Mike Sumrall for the open state auditor’s post.

Republican nominee Delbert Hosemann will win a close race with Democratic nominee Rob Smith. The insurance commissioner’s race finds Republican Mike Chaney with a slight lead on the eve of the election, but this race is up for grabs with Democrat Gary Anderson.

Incumbent Republican Agriculture Commissioner Lester Spell is fighting for his political life against Democrat Rickey Cole and the Constitution Party’s Les Riley. That race is too close to call, but don’t be shocked if Cole and Riley combine to keep Spell from winning a majority of the vote.



Contact Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at http://www.clarionledger.com/misc/

blogs/ssalter/sidblog.html.

        

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