The special election this week for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama points to a similar battle of ideologies looming in Mississippi.
The race in our neighboring state was seen as a microcosm of the bitter divide continuing to emerge within the Republican party pitting the traditional power base of businessmen against Tea Party-influenced conservatives. Think the National Review versus Breitbart.com.
On one side was Roy Moore. The conservative Baptist is most famous for being ousted as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court twice: once in 2003 for refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from the a courthouse and again in 2016 for telling judges to continue to enforce the state’s same-sex marriage ban after it had been overturned.
On the other was Luther Strange, a connected lawyer who had been the state’s attorney general until he was appointed to the U.S. Senate earlier this year after President Trump appointed the incumbent, Jeff Sessions, as U.S. attorney general.
Trump personally campaigned for Strange, but Moore captured Tuesday’s runoff easily with 55 percent of the vote and will be a heavy favorite to defeat a Democratic opponent in December. The conservative folk hero took 63 of the state’s 67 counties, but three of the four Strange won are among the most populous.
The parallels between Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race next year are strong, but the situation is not identical. Roger Wicker has served a decade in the Senate and 22 years in Congress overall and is expected to face State Sen. Chris McDaniel, the firebrand from Jones County who only by the narrowest margins failed to unseat popular incumbent Thad Cochran in 2014.
McDaniel has not said for sure if he’s running but sounded like a for-sure candidate after Moore’s victory. McDaniel tweeted joyously about the results and said in one message, “Now it’s time to take this energy, channel it, and kick the GOP establishment out of DC.” Will that work here? No one knows, but it’s bound to be a tight race. The populist sentiment in conservative Southern states is leaning toward the Breitbart set.
But McDaniel ultimately lost to Cochran, a much weaker candidate at this point in his life than Wicker. Cochran, who has a long history of service but is physically and mentally weak now in his late 70s, did not campaign until the last minute. Yet he still won. Contrast that with Wicker, who is in his political prime. He helped orchestrate the GOP strategy that led to Senate victories across the nation last year and has been preparing for this election for a long time.
One strategy to look for: Expect McDaniel to use the state flag, which retains large popular support among Republicans, against Wicker, who has advocated changing it. The establishment will have to find a way to counteract that, which influential lobbyist Andy Taggart seems to be doing with his recently launched campaign to have the GOP lead the charge to change the flag. It’s a sign of our times that an emotional yet largely unsubstantial issue like that could determine the state’s political future.
— Charlie Smith
