Published: November 06, 2007 11:03 pm            

Mississippi’s 2008 congressional campaigns launching today

While the popped balloons and confetti are still on the hotel ballroom floors from the state’s 2007 general election victory parties on Tuesday night, the sound you hear Wednesday morning is the state’s 2008 congressional campaigns launching.

That’s particularly true in the state’s 3rd Congressional District where veteran Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering of Flora is stepping down after six terms in office at the end of his current term. Pickering’s announcement that he would not seek another term based on the need to spend more time with his family set off shock waves in state politics in August and the jockeying for position in the Republican primary began almost the next day.

As it was when the late 3rd District U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery stepped down in 1996, expect a relatively large Republican primary. Pickering was one of nine candidates seeking to succeed Montgomery. In all, 12 candidates sought the seat Montgomery was vacating in a 1996 race that eventually came down to a general election showdown between Pickering and a young trial lawyer named John Arthur Eaves Jr.

In 2008, the GOP is again expected to be crowded for the open 3rd District seat. Possible Republican contenders include longtime Rankin County GOP chairman Gregg Harper, a Brandon attorney; State Sen. Charlie Ross of Brandon, fresh off a tough GOP lieutenant governor primary with Phil Bryant; former U.S. Rural Development Authority state director John Rounsaville; Madison businessman David Landrum; and State Sen. Walter Michel of Jackson.

At least a half-dozen other Republican candidates have been frequently mentioned as potential candidates on conservative state Web sites and blogs like mississippipolitics.com and majorityinms.com

What’s missing in a lot of the speculation over a successor to Pickering is a long list of Democratic Party contenders in a district that is believed to favor Republicans.

The most mentioned name in Democratic circles is former 4th District U.S. Rep. Ronnie Shows, who Pickering dispatched in their 2002 showdown after congressional redistricting gave Shows the short end of the straw in much of his former district.

Mississippi lost a congressional seat after the 2000 Census and the combining of districts pitted them in a winner-take-all contact that Pickering won by 64 percent.

In the state’s other three congressional districts, the incumbents have reached sufficient levels of seniority as to make them virtually bulletproof in the 2008 congressional elections:

• 1st District U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Tupelo, will be seeking an eighth term, holds a House minority whip post and has a seat on the House Appropriations Committee.

• 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Bolton, will be seeking a ninth term and holds the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security Committee.

• 4th District U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, will be seeking a 10th term and a seat on the powerful House Armed Services Committee, where he is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces.

In terms of the state’s ongoing recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the state’s overall Capitol Hill clout, no race will be more important that senior U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran’s expected run for a seventh term.

Cochran, who will turn 70 in December, has already held several campaign fundraisers in Washington and in Mississippi and has a campaign warchest of over $3.1 million. But an Oct. 31 article in the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill quotes unnamed sources as saying that Cochran is considering retirement at the end of this term. What a devastating blow to the state’s congressional seniority if that’s true.



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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