By Anna Edney and Louis Peck, CongressDaily
© National Journal Group Inc.
UPDATED: Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008

GOP Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood today challenged Gov. Haley Barbour over the timing of a special election to pick a successor to finish the remainder of resigned Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott's term.

Barbour Monday named GOP Rep. Roger Wicker, 56, to succeed Lott and Wicker will serve until a special election is held. Barbour has scheduled that contest for Nov. 4, but Hood today filed a lawsuit today seeking to force a special election within 90 days rather than wait until November.

"The attorney general is entitled to his opinion, but the Mississippi Supreme Court will ultimately decide when the election is," said Pete Smith, a spokesman for Barbour.

Republicans argue the timing of Lott's resignation, which occurred after Mississippi's 2007 general election, allows them to schedule a special election to coincide with this November's general election.

Lott echoed this view in an interview published in CongressDaily last month.

“I read the law and I had what I think is the best lawyer in the state to read it, and my impression is clearly that the governor makes an interim appointment and the election is the next regular statewide general election, which is next November,” said Lott. “I don’t know why Democrats will get all in a huff about it. Do they really think they are better off by having an election in 90 days instead of 11 months?”

Hood argues in court documents that a special election is required because a general election was not looming in the same year Lott resigned. Hood wrote that the clause known as the "November exception" that Republicans are claiming applies only if a senator resigns before a general election scheduled in the same year.

"Since a vacancy created by Senator Lott's retirement on or before midnight December, 31, 2007, will not have occurred in a year in which 'there shall be' a general or congressional election, the exception does not apply," Hood wrote.

Hood did not request a specific date for the special election, but contends state law requires it to be held within 90 days.

Wicker resigned his House seat Monday, but is not expected to be sworn into the Senate until it returns Jan. 22, said spokesman Kyle Steward said.

Barbour is supposed to call a special election to fill Wicker's House seat within 60 days, but has not done so yet.

Wicker, first elected to the House in 1994 from what is now a reliably Republican House district in the northern section of the state, has accumulated a strongly conservative voting record during his years on Capitol Hill. His appointment to the Senate also opens up a prized seat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Lott, who was elected to a fourth Senate term just last year, stunned congressional observers last month by announcing he had decided to vacate his seat. After a career in the House and Senate that spanned 35 years, the 66-year old Lott is expected to set up a lobbying practice – perhaps in partnership with former Sen. John Breaux, D-La.

Barbour’s announcement, at a news conference Monday in the state capital of Jackson, came just three days after another potential contender for the appointment – GOP Rep. Charles (Chip) Pickering -- took himself out of the running. The 44-year Pickering, a former Lott aide, announced earlier this year that he would not seek re-election to the House.

"I believe public service is an honorable calling," Pickering said in a statement last Friday. "But now is not my time."

Monday’s appointment of Wicker also scotched widespread speculation in Mississippi that Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman and Washington-based lobbyist, might seek to fill the seat with a short-termer – and then run for the spot himself in the special election.

Barbour said it was important to select a person with Lott's “conservative values'' and who would be able to work with the state’s senior senator, Republican Thad Cochran. The governor also declared that Wicker had “made an enormous difference as Mississippi sought unprecedented federal assistance after Hurricane Katrina” in 2005.

Said Wicker, who also served as a Lott aide before being elected to the state Senate and the U.S. House: “I am a mainstream conservative in the mold of Trent Lott, Thad Cochran, Haley Barbour and Chip Pickering and I believe the vast majority of Mississippians share this philosophy. At the same time, I hope my constituents and colleagues view me as a pragmatic problem-solver.''

Once solidly Democratic Mississippi has become reliably Republican in recent years, and any Democratic hopes of capturing Lott’s seat appear to rest on holding the special election this spring rather than next November – when the state is expected to deliver a solid margin for the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

But Democratic prospects received a blow earlier this month when – two weeks after Lott disclosed his decision to resign – former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore said he would not run for Senate. Moore, who garnered nationwide attention as one of the architects of the global tobacco settlement in the late 1990s, was widely regarded as the Democrats’ most formidable contender.

However, the state’s last two Democratic governors, Ray Mabus and Ronnie Musgrove, have been cited as possible candidates, as has former Rep. Wayne Dowdy, the current state Democratic chairman who narrowly lost to Lott when the latter first won the Senate seat in 1988.

The combination of Lott’s nearly 20-year Senate tenure, preceded by Stennis’ more than 40 years in the job, illustrate the high stakes involved in the current procedural wrangling: Vacant Mississippi Senate seats tend to be a nearly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The state’s senior senator, Cochran, was first elected in 1978, and had announced just weeks before Lott’s surprise resignation that he would seek a sixth term next year.

When he was first elected three decades ago, Cochran succeeded the late Democratic Sen. James Eastland, who was initially sent to the Senate less than a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Meanwhile, Wicker’s resignation from the House gives GOP leaders the opportunity to fill his vacancy with a plum assignment to the Appropriations Committee -- where Wicker is currently ranking minority member on the Military Construction/Veterans Affairs Subcommittee.

Although geography is not the sole factor, it likely will have a bearing in this case: Five of the nine Republican members who lost Appropriations seats due to retirement or re-election defeat in 2006 were from the South. None of the latter have been replaced, prompting several current Republican Southerners to voice interest in an Appropriations slot.

House Republicans who have expressed an interest are Reps. Jo Bonner of Alabama, Henry Brown and Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Michael Turner of Ohio, Dave Reichert of Washington and Tom Cole of Oklahoma.

Bonner, whose Alabama district abuts Mississippi, has competed for Appropriations openings in the past. And his predecessor and former boss, Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Ala., was a long-time appropriator.

One factor that could work against Bonner is that Alabama already has two members on the House panel: GOP Rep. Robert Aderholt and Democratic Rep. Bud Cramer.

Brown also plans to seek appointment to Wicker’s seat and could benefit from the fact that the Carolinas -- which have a total of 10 GOP members — have no Republican slot on the House Appropriations Committee. But age could be a downside for the 72-year-old Brown, given the importance of building seniority for appropriators.

As far as the House seat that Wicker is vacating – which was occupied by the late Democratic Rep. Jamie Whitten for a record 53 years prior to Wicker’s election in 1994 – Republicans expressed little worry about retaining it. Barbour has up to 60 days to issue a proclamation setting a special election date for that slot.

"[The] First Congressional District is a solid Republican seat and I am confident that it will elect another Republican to the U.S House of Representatives,” declared National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma.

Southaven Mayor Greg Davis and former Tupelo Mayor Glenn McCullough -- the latter also a former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority -- have indicated their intention to seek the Republican nomination for Wicker's House seat, and Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers said Wednesday that he would pursue the Democratic nomination.

According to reports in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, other potential Republican candidates include physician and former state Board of Health member Randy Russell and state Sen. Alan Nunnelee. Other possible Democratic contenders are state Reps. Steve Holland and Jamie Franks.

--Contributing: Richard E. Cohen and Kirk Victor

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