John Eaves Held His Own Against Flustered Barbour

If the debate had been between two candidates with equally strong campaigns and equally respected by the news-media then I would agree with Pender in his assessment that there was no clear winner:

The gloves came off in the gubernatorial race Thursday during a Biloxi debate between Barbour and Eaves in which each raised questions about the other's suitability for office.

Barbour has been expected to steamroll political neophyte Eaves. Many old campaign heads are still wondering why Barbour agreed to debate him. Conventional wisdom is if you're sitting on a pretty lead against a relatively unknown candidate, don't acknowledge he exists in your campaign.

Eaves at the very least didn't get blown off the stage at this first debate and his campaign has picked up noticeable momentum, and been legitimized by Barbour himself in agreeing to debate him.

Those conditions didn't exist though. The Barbour campaign has been seen as a juggernaut with Barbour treating the election as nothing more than an inconvenience. It was with this hubris that Barbour agreed to debate Eaves expecting to deliver an early knockout blow.

The curious thing though is he didn't. Haley, the politician's politician, lost his cool going off message (leadership) and lashed out without any specific focus. John Eaves stayed on message and broke new ground giving one possible solution to paying for increased teacher salaries by increasing our very low casino taxes.

If you look at it in those terms there was a clear winner, and it wasn't Haley.