1st CD Democrats

Here are some excerpts about Travis Childers & Steve Holland. Both were profiled in the Daily Journal last week.

Click on the names of each candidate to read the entire articles. Both articles are great potraits of each candidate.

Steve Holland:

The people Holland met seemed to enjoy the campaigning as much as the candidate. They hugged him, laughed with him, slapped him on the back and called him a "true Democrat."It wasn't always so.Holland flirted heavily with the Republican party during and after his college days at Mississippi State University. He worked on the staff of the state GOP and spent more than one year as political director on Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's staff. But Holland switched sides in 1983 to win the 16th District seat in the state House of Representatives. He also spent three years as an aide to the late Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Whitten. The Democratic party was a perfect fit, he said, even though he continues his friendships with old Republican pals like Gov. Haley Barbour."We have a macabre-kind of relationship today," Holland said.

Holland was born the third of six children to a family that farmed 5,000 acres. He grew up playing with his siblings and the children of various farm hands who helped work the land. Every day, Holland said, he took his meals in the pavilion behind the house where family and farmers alike sat at the same table and broke bread.In high school, Holland played right guard on the football team, weighing in at 162 pounds. But repeated hits left both his knees injured and made it difficult for Holland to stay active. Despite the aches, Holland kept his svelte physique all through college and into his first years in the Legislature.

"I would like nothing more than to have an office and a staff to help people and to give people a ray of hope," Holland said. "I've been advocating every second of my life for the least, the last, and the most vulnerable - poor folks, just like me."

Travis Childers:

"I've lived the challenges facing north Mississippi," Childers said while on the campaign trail Monday. "And I believe one person can make a difference. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in public service."A Democratic candidate for U.S. House of Representatives 1st District seat, Childers spent the afternoon greeting supporters in his hometown of Booneville, where he also serves as Prentiss County's chancery clerk.

Since qualifying for the election in January, Childers has kept a grueling schedule of campaigning while still working as chancery clerk and helping his wife, Tami, run the family's two businesses - Landmark Nursing Center and Landmark Community. The first is an 80-bed skilled-care facility; the second is an independent-living home with an on-site staff. He also owns Travis Childers Realty, but leaves the day-to-day operations to an associate.Childers doesn't mind the work. Nor does he consider unplugging the cell phone and drawing the shades to rest for a day."I'm a motivated person," he said. "If I want something, I don't give up until I get it."

Childers said he felt good about it, too: "I'm the underdog in this race," he said. "But I've been the underdog before."