New York Times on MS-01: "In a Red State, a Blue Dog Has Republicans Worried"

Today is the big day. With all the build up nationally for the what has seemed like eternal wait for the Pennsylvania primary, the New York Times took time to devote an article to the MS-01 race. It is great to see national attention from the gold standard in journalism.

Republicans’ longstanding sway in this in this red corner of Mississippi could be tested here Tuesday in a special Congressional election in which a down-home Democrat is given fair odds of winning.

The seat had been considered a lock for President Bush’s party: a Republican, Roger Wicker, held it for 14 years before resigning to fill a Senate vacancy late last year; Mr. Bush won 62 percent of the vote here in 2004; and the Congressional district has some of the most conservative voters in the nation. Its placid unofficial capital, Tupelo, is home to the Christian conservative minister Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association.

But the Republicans’ hold is being unexpectedly tested by a self-described “Mississippi Democrat,” a gregarious local courthouse official whose positions on social issues — guns, abortion, same-sex marriage — are indistinguishable from those of the other party. Democrats are hoping to add the candidate, Travis Childers, 50, to the raft of conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats elected in the 2006 midterm elections, due partly to economic appeals and doubts about the war.

If anything, those pitches have been sharpened in the campaign of Mr. Childers, a veteran of grass-roots politics in a state where many local officials are still Democrats, despite the Republicans’ solid grip on national elections here.

Up and down the rolling hills, black-soil prairies and small towns of this upstate district stretching north to Tennessee, Mr. Childers makes frequent appeals to what he calls “working folks” struggling in a weak economy, and expresses his opposition to a war policy he says is “not working.”

He has been bolstered by his conservative positions, his network of contacts and the more tenuous connection to the district of his Republican opponent, Greg Davis. Mr. Davis is mayor of a Memphis suburb, Southaven, which many here consider barely part of Mississippi.

In an appearance in the university town of Oxford, Mr. Childers quoted Franklin D. Roosevelt and, as he often does, told the students that he was forced to support his family, as a teenager, after his father died.

“True conservatism was going to work full time when you’re 16,” Mr. Childers said, echoing that theme as he campaigned outside a retirement home in the old brick downtown here.

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New York Times: MS-01