Strong Recruit a Must for Democrats to Compete for Lott’s Senate Seat

Strong Recruit a Must for Democrats to Compete for Lott’s Senate Seat
By Rachel Kapochunas, CQ Staff


Democratic strategists seeking to grow their party’s narrow majority in the U.S. Senate may see a window of opportunity open in Mississippi, following Republican Trent Lott ’s unexpected announcement Monday that he is going to soon resign from the seat he has held for almost 20 years.

But the Democrats’ hopes of seriously competing in a November 2008 special election to fill out the final four years of Lott’s unexpired term — in a conservative Southern state that has been trending steadily Republican — depends on their ability to recruit a top-tier candidate from a quite small pool of party political heavyweights. That list includes such figures as former state Attorney General Mike Moore, who released a statement Monday evening saying he is considering a Senate bid; former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove; veteran U.S. House incumbent Gene Taylor ; and former Rep. Ronnie Shows.

CQ Politics has placed a preliminary rating of Republican Favored on the previously unscheduled contest, which will be the 35th Senate race next year and the 23rd for a seat currently held by the Republicans. The rating reflects the analysis that the Democrats could make a run at the seat — precluding a Safe Republican rating — but that they do not yet have an official contender who can make that serious challenge real, precluding at least for now a Leans Republican rating that would signify a more competitive race.

All of these machinations take place within the context of the Republicans’ growing strength in Mississippi politics over the past quarter-century. Democrats have not won a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982, when John Stennis sealed his sixth and final term, and have not carried the state for president since Jimmy Carter of Georgia did so in 1976. Republican Gov. Haley Barbour ’s re-election victory Nov. 6 was the fourth for his party in the state’s past five elections for governor.

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