Surge of Obama Voters Wipe Out the G.O.P. in Rural Missisippi Congressional Race--What This May Mean for the Fall Campaign

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

The Civil War and Reconstruction have affected Southern politics for 150 years.

Until Lyndon Johnson’s embrace of civil rights, the South was “solid” for the Democrats – who supported the right of states to impose an apartheid social and economic system on former African-American slaves. When Johnson snarled, “and we shall overcome” to the Southern Congressional delegation that changed. Barry Goldwater and the G.O.P. took the old position of the Democrats, and the white South has been “solid” for the Republicans ever since.

Until yesterday.

In a largely rural Northern Mississippi Congressional District – Republican since the mid 1990’s – a Democrat won. Historically, the seat’s large African-American population that votes Democratic turned out in small numbers that were easily outdistanced by the Republican suburbs. Poor white rural voters supported the GOP.

George Bush carried this district with 62% of the vote four years ago. Yesterday, it sent Democrat Travis Childers – a local ‘courthouse’ official – to Washington with a 54-46 margin.

The RNC spent over a million dollars in an effort to retain the seat. Vice President Cheney and Governor Harley Barbour campaigned for the Republican. Robocalls were made by John McCain and by the President.

And, of course, Mississippi voters were reminded, then reminded again, that the Democrats were about to nominate a Black Man and that Travis Childers would be supporting that Black Man’s agenda. Willie Horton redux, the usual appeal to racial division that had served the Southern GOP well since 1964.

But this time, it didn’t work.

Instead, there was a record high turnout of African-American voters who voted Democratic. Not because Travis Childers was supportive of their community’s agenda. He wasn’t: Childers is a conservative “blue dog” Democrat. But the connection between Democrat Obama and Democrat Childers was accepted by the Black community in Mississippi.

At the same time, it was rejected by enough white voters that – when combined with a weak turnout among dispirited Republican rank and file “base” who are “angry” at the President and find McCain uninspiring – to produce the upset.

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