Some pundits would have you believe that GOP Southaven Mayor Greg Davis’s second place finish in Tuesday’s special election in Mississippi represents the end of the world for the House Republicans. After all, newly appointed GOP Sen. Roger Wicker had held this very conservative Deep South district comfortably for more than a decade.
Don’t buy into the hype.
Coming on the heels of the party’s loss of former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat in Illinois, and nipping at the heels of a possible loss of another seat in Louisiana, the near miss in a reliably GOP district certainly plays into the notion that Republicans simply can’t catch a break in House politics. But Democratic Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers’s strong showing had more to do with GOP infighting and a quirky special election process than damage to the national Republican brand. As in Illinois and Louisiana, rotten local luck has made a national problem for the GOP look much worse than it really is.
The confusing election timetable in Mississippi called for a nonpartisan special election to fill Wicker’s seat
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