American humorist, essayist and entertainer Will Rogers is long dead, but his words, in some cases, remain as relevant today as they were when he first uttered them more than 80 years ago.
This week, Jason Shelton, Tupelo’s Democrat mayor, announced he will run to fill the unexpired term of Thad Cochran in the U.S. Senate special election on Nov. 6.
His announcement came at a time when the state’s Democratic Party seemed to be ready to unite behind a single candidate, former U.S. Representative and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy.
Although the special election is officially non-partisan — there will be no party designations on the ballot — the presence of two Democrats running against two Republicans — recently-appointed Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and radical right state senator Chris McDaniel — dilutes the Democratic Party’s chances of flipping a Senate seat during the mid-term elections when national control of the House and Senate are in play.
Mississippi hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the mid-1980s when John Stennis was elected to his final term.
Buoyed by the success of Democrat Doug Jones, who won a special election in the Alabama Senate race earlier this year, the prospects of sending a Democrat to D.C. seems better than they’ve been in decades.
To do that, a few things would be required. First, the party would have to find a candidate with name recognition in the state and national party circles, the latter of which is essential to raising the kind of money required to run a successful campaign. The second requirement was for Hyde-Smith to get out there on the lunatic fringe with McDaniel, thus contracting the GOP-leaning base. The final requirement: A unified party throwing its full support behind a single candidate.
You can’t scratch No. 3 off that list, thanks to Shelton’s arrival in the race.
That echo you hear is the voice of Will Rogers: “I don’t belong to any organized political party,” he said. “I’m a Democrat.”
Indeed, this is how you wind up with a truck driver as your party’s nominee for Governor.
Shelton has little name recognition outside of Lee County, where he has served as mayor of Tupelo for the past five years. He has no money, either, and that isn’t likely to change.
In short, he has zero chance to win, but plenty of chances to pull enough votes from Espy to make the inevitable run-off election a Hyde-Smith vs. McDaniel showdown.
Without another Democrat in the race, Espy almost certainly would advance to the run-off. He is currently leading both Republicans in the early polling. With Shelton in the race, Espy’s prospects are hurt, how badly hurt no one knows.
But under any circumstance, the Democrats need every single vote they can to break the Republican stranglehold on the U.S. Senate.
Who is to blame if Shelton does indeed knee-cap Espy’s Senate run?
Easy. It’s the state Democratic Party, which has been wandering around in a bitter, boozy fog for decades.
State party organizations generally attract little attention, but their behind-the-scenes work is often critical to success and failure. Say what you will, but the Republicans have their house in order. They know who their candidate is, organize on the local level in support of that candidate and, most importantly of all, exert party disciple when required.
When Republican Andy Tagert toyed with joining the Senate race, you can bet the state party was behind the scenes exerting influence. Tagert announced Thursday he would not run and the GOP will unite behind Hyde-Smith. The message was delivered and accepted.
You don’t see that influence on the Democratic Party side. There appears to be no one among Democrats who can quietly pull Shelton aside and inform him that while his time will come, this is not his time. The stakes are too high.
The Democrats have enough to worry about without the prospect of getting shot in the butt by friendly fire.
But then, as Will Rogers long ago observed, should anyone really be surprised?
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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