Jackson Free Press

The June 1 primaries will be here in a handful of days, and the winners will likely give two of the state's four incumbents a hard time, say politicos.

Democratic incumbent Travis Childers dropped jaws as far away as Washington when he won multiple special elections and the general election to claim the Mississippi District 1 seat in 2008.

The new representative is a conservative "Blue Dog Democrat," who votes largely with Republicans on House votes. Congressional score-keeper "That's My Congress" gives Childers a progressive rating of "14," meaning he has voted positively to support only 14 percent of a slate of progressive policies in the 111th Congress. Childers voted in favor of the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009--adding up to 4 million previously ineligible children to the state Children Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Childers' voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and his repeated anti-abortion stance gains him no friends among pro-abortion rights advocates.

Childers made plenty of friends with the National Rifle Association, however. In April, Childers introduced the "Second Amendment Enforcement Act," which eliminates some recent gun-control laws Washington D.C. instituted as a result of a 2008 Supreme Court decision loosening restrictions on ownership of hand-guns in the D.C. area.

Nevertheless, Republicans aim to take the seat back this year. Childers has no opponent in the Democratic primary, but he faces three well-known Republican personalities: former Fox News commentator Angela McGlowan, former Eupora Mayor Henry Ross and Mississippi Sen. Alan Nunnelee.

McGlowan is an easily recognized face in the national Tea Party Movement, but she has a difficult primary, despite her Fox News presence. Opponents were eager to attack her over statements she made on the "The Paul Gallo Show," when she vocally approved additional gun registration requirements pushed by the Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act, introduced by Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush. The bill qualifies as a fringe bill with no co-sponsors, but Gallo saw fit to press McGlowan on the matter.

Since then, Nunnelee and Ross supporters have targeted McGlowan with considerable acrimony, even though she now emphasizes on her website that she is "deeply committed to the 2nd Amendment" and "will fight against each and every attempt by government to require law-abiding citizens to register the firearms they have the right to possess."

McGlowan also lists among her platform goals to partially privatize Social Security--a move considered unpopular according to many public-opinion polls in 2004, when President George Bush backed the attempt, and is unlikely to have gained in popularity since the 2008 crash of the stock market.

Looking at the Issues

Ross, an attorney, served as an assistant district attorney and later a judge on the 5th Circuit Court District, and won the Eupora mayor's seat in 1997. His Republican credentials were obvious when Bush appointed him to the U.S. Department of Justice to serve as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general in the Environment and Natural Resources Division--where he worked to defend the Navy's desire to use ear-bursting sonar in dolphin- and whale-inhabited waters.

Ross is a fan of term limits, and criticizes both Childers and Nunnelee for never taking a position on the matter. All Republican candidates claim they want to roll-back or repeal health-care reform signed into law by President Barack Obama, but Ross joins McGlowan in arguing for private accounts for Americans to pay for retirement health coverage, according to a May Q&A published by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

Nunnelee has the advantage of carrying his campaign to the state Senate. During the 2010 legislative session, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee made a name for himself by backing traditional issues guaranteed to make him popular among Republican primary voters.

Last month, the senator submitted legislation preventing the state from using any federal or state money resulting from the March passage of health-care reform for abortions. The largely Republican Senate easily passed the measure, while House members passed it grudgingly, fussing all the while that the bill makes no difference because the president signed a March 24 executive order forbidding federal money resulting from federal health insurance incentives for abortions.

Nunnelee can also boast that he led efforts as chairman of the Public Health committee to require low-income adults and parents trying to qualify for health coverage for their children to annually re-certify their eligibility for healthcare from Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. The recertification requires a face-to-face interview with government officials, and Mississippi is the only state requiring the practice for both Medicaid and CHIP renewal.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attacked the senator in January for backing state budget appropriation bills that filled the state's $90 million Medicaid deficit by re-instating a tax on hospitals similar to a tax in effect in years prior to 2005, even though hospital officials warned that re-instating the tax would mean passing new costs down to non-Medicaid patients.

Despite adhering to popular Republican crusades such as anti-abortion laws, Nunnelee is capable of deviating from some GOP sacred cows. In 2009, both Nunnelee and Barbour saw the writing on the wall and approved a 50-cent increase in the state's tobacco tax, an issue also reported by the DCCC as Nunnelee's pro-tax behavior.

Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Brad White said he believed Childers is up against a difficult election because the political mood had changed.

"A lot of this is going to have to do with the mood of the country," White told the Jackson Free Press. "This isn't a good year for incumbents who have pushed the unpopular initiatives of the Obama administration."

White acknowledged that Childers rarely supported controversial issues promoted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but added that Childers voted to place Pelosi in the speaker's seat. White added that Republicans made Childers' election easier in 2008 by "shooting ourselves in the foot," with a bitter GOP primary battle.

Marty Wiseman, executive director of Mississippi State University's John C. Stennis Institute of Government, predicted Childers would gain a slight edge in the general election thanks to the sheer number of politically independent conservatives falling over themselves to take his seat.

A total of seven independent and third-party candidates will run against the Republican primary winner and Childers, and Wiseman points out that every one of them is conservative, potentially chipping away at the Republican in the race.

"One or two are not a big problem, but if they all get a couple of thousand votes apiece they could be a problem," Wiseman said. "Nunnelee, if he wins, has got to contend with all of them with the same anti-government, anti-Washington message."

King of Taylorville

A second race likely to prove a fight is Mississippi's 4th District, a district currently held by Democrat Gene Taylor.

Taylor finds himself with plenty of angry opposition every two years, as Republicans vow to claim the coastal district as their own. But Taylor has retained his seat every year since he first won the spot in 1989, to much Republican outrage and head-scratching.

Nevertheless, White thinks Taylor's goose is cooked this time around, despite his historical staying power, if only because of the sheer Republican bent of the area.

Taylor's continued return in the district remains a curiosity because of the its clear Republican lean. The Cook Partisan Voting Index for the 111th Congress says the district is heavily Republican, voting 67 percent Republican John McCain in the last presidential race. Taylor is an independent-minded Democrat who frequently parts ways with the Democratically-led House. He supports traditional Republican endeavors such as building a fence along the Mexican border and reporting illegal aliens who receive hospital treatment. Like Childers, he also voted against the March health-care reform bill.

His most notable deviations from popular Republican philosophy are his votes with Childers to expand the CHIP program to previously ineligible children, and his insistence that the insurance industry be put back under anti-trust laws preventing them from communicating with one another and planning how much to raise your rates. He has also been a vocal opponent of drilling inside the Mississippi Barrier Island federal park for various reasons--one of them being the potential for pollution disasters of the kind likely engulfing the park this week due to the March 20 destruction of a British Petroleum deep-water oil rig.

But with no Democrat daring to step forward this year, the fight on June 1 in his district remains between his two Republican rivals. Palazzo could prove the winner in the primary, if only for his comparatively familiar face and reliable conservative House record. Palazzo earned a "zero" on one progressive score-card devised by social activist Rims Barber. His vote on 10 progressive bills, from a bill restoring state budget cuts to a bill allowing the legal videotaping of police carrying out their duties, reveals a strong Republican background.

Palazzo's big issue appears to be curbing illegal immigration--which may or may not have anything to do with the massive influx of immigrant workers to the Coast during the rush of the casino industry and post-Katrina clean-up work.

Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance President Bill Chandler pointed out that Palazzo authored dead House Bill 939, an act to amend state law to require all state agencies and political subdivisions to offer all services or other materials in an English-only format.

Chandler showed low esteem for both Republicans and Democrats running for the MS-04 seat, however. He called the politicians running for MS-04 and MS-01 "short-sighted," and pointed out that all could benefit from reaching out to Latinos, considering the continuing influx of Latinos into those areas.

Tegerdine, a Portland, Ore., native, moved to Hattiesburg in 2007 but seeks to quickly affirm his GOP moxie by standing against Obama's health-care reform. In fact, he states clearly on his Web site that he demands "No Nationalized Health Care in any form." Tegerdine is unclear on whether this encompasses popular nationalized health-care programs known as Social Security and Medicare.

Tegerdine, who also favors term limits, wants to "decrease dependence on foreign oil by increasing supply in the U.S." This philosophy usually walks hand-in-hand with a push to expand offshore oil drilling, although both Tegerdine and many other politicians may be updating their "drill, baby, drill" philosophy as the damage along the Coast from the April 20 BP mishap continues to unfold.

Wiseman said coastal voters have considered Taylor one of their own since 1989, and likely continued to feel that way.

"The Coast is very Republican, but also very independent minded," Wiseman said. "Gene Taylor taps right into that independent vein. He is definitely not your average everyday congressman. He's a very independent thinking guy, and his personality seems to appeal to people."

CORRECTION 6/02/10: The Jackson Free Press previously reported that MS-01 Republican challenger Henry Ross served on the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals. Ross' website reports he served on the Fifth Circuit Court, which serves Attala, Carroll, Choctaw, Grenada and Montgomery counties, among others. We apologize for the error.