Jackson Jambalaya

Time for predictions for tomorrow night. I'm making these guesses based on no special scoop or internal polls leaked to me- just going by what I read and hear out in the field. I'll miss them all so have fun with them.

Governor: Phil avoids a runoff at 62% of the vote. Phil has been working at getting this job for four years. He's got the stump speech down pat, has made a point the last two years to talk to all the right groups. He's raised much more money than his opponents and has put together a pretty good campaign team. The Dennis campaign sputtered. Dave only put a half a million dollars or so of his own money into the campaign. The Dennis campaign should have spent the first few months of this year on a heavy "get acquainted with the candidate" tour and media campaign only to squander it doing, well, we are still trying to figure out what they were doing. It only produced a few ads. His sterling resume was turned into a state secret. Instead of seeing a man serving at the Federal Reserve, we got a hard hat and a cherry picker. The campaign threw few punches until the last ten days of the race- too little and too late.

Lieutentant Governor: Reeves at 58%. Yeah I know, I keep hearing the race is tightening. I still think Hewes had a problem getting known outside of the Coast and Jackson area. He, too, made the same mistake Dennis made; he didn't spend the first few months of this year becoming familiar to the voters. The McDonald's-like commercial was a good start but like a boxer with a good jab and little else, the campaign failed to follow up the jab with a good combination. Meanwhile, Tate has been aggressive in fund-raising and campaigning since day one. He's put together a top-notch team led by Justin Brasell while the Hewes team led by Morgan Shands and a certain member of Frontier Strategies has made some questionable decisions. Billy went negative and gained ground on Tate, but I still think its too little, too late. Billy's ads were either hit or miss while Tate's showed a certain level of consistency that rarely hurt his candidacy.

Treasurer: Damn. This a tough one. Going to make my crazy pic here. Lynn and Lee make the runoff and Lucien comes in third. Lynn and Lee have both produced good ads while Lucien's, well, I need to catch my breath while watching his because it tries to do too much in one ad. Money doesn't necessarily mean votes and Lee is the only one with any kind of a true base. I can't put my finger on why Lynn will make the runoff, call it one of those weird hunches, hence I call this my crazy pic even though I should be picking Lucien and Lee for the runoff.

Ag: Max Phillips at 54%. Cindy has Farm Bureau behind her and that should be enough but Lester's endorsement doesn't help in some areas and Max has put together a good campaign team managed by the guy who led Delbert's in 2007. The fund-raising has been respectable for the two candidates while Danny Reed's has been almost non-existent. I still think in some areas more than a few people will not pull the trigger for a woman running for Ag, traditionally thought of as a male-dominated office in the same way DPS is.

Hinds Sheriff: Malcolm at 53%. Tyrone has some really interesting friends and some people are waking up to that fact. Mac has his blemishes but can actually testify in a courtroom and has built up support in the black community over the years. He won by more than the number of Republican crossover votes in 2007 (12,000 crossover votes). I think the surprise will be Republican voters voting for Mac, especially in NE Jackson, an area plagued by a 60% increase in house burglaries over the last two years.

Senate District #25: Longwitz at 60%. Yes, you read right. Turnout for Mac will hurt Mr. Barbour's chances and the fact a majority of the voters are in Madison County will hurt even more. The race has grown contentious over the last few days. In other words, its turned into a typical local race. They have both worked hard and done more than their share of door-knocking.

Senate District #20: Runoff between Ross and Harkins. Hard to read this race. The online poll for this race on this site probably is about right: Both candidates will be in the 40's but Gaines and Boohoo will be enough to keep one from winning outright.

Central Commissioner for MDOT: Dick Hall wins at 55%. Everyone I know has been completely turned off by the Elvis ads, even those that don't care about politics. Elvis goes down as a goofy campaign and past history of Madison BOS shenanigans catches up with him.

Madison County Sheriff: Houston and Harbour in runoff. Houston has the name, a base, and the warchest. Harbour is home-grown, somewhat well-known, and campaigned hard. I think that lawsuit two weeks ago hurt Tucker as he was endorsed by Belvedresi and used his name on his direct mail. I don't think Tucker ever really recovered from that punch. Sandridge had his little 15 minutes of fame with that ad but never really followed up with any fundraising or other advertising. He comes in fourth.

Madison County District 1 Supervisor: John Bell wins over Leland Herrington. Too much money even if from Rudy. He's an incumbent, and John is actually a nice guy.

Madison County District 2 Supervisor: Ronnie Lott over Dick Hutchinson. Lott has campaigned hard for this seat for quite some time. He spent over $33,000 on advertising. Hutchinson raised maybe a third of that, gives a better speech, and is probably more qualified, I just think Lott has been more aggressive across the board and it will pay off tomorrow. If he wins, he will have earned it fair and square.

Madison County District 3 Supervisor: D.I. Smith or Gerald Steen? hmmmm..... tossup. Gerald is the sign king yet I rarely meet anyone voting for Gerald. They are fairly even on reported fund-raising, although Mr. Steen refuses to document who his donors are. Mr. Steen is a veteran politician who knows how to win elections on that turf and is facing someone who is a rookie campaigner but has a group of people enthusiastically working the district over for him. Toss-up.


Tomorrow night, have fun ripping me for being so wrong.