Harper carries Lauderdale County

In Tuesday night's 3rd Congressional District race, Charlie Ross carried the vote district-wide.

Likewise, for the past few weeks in Lauderdale County, there has been a profusion of Charlie Ross signage splattered across the landscape. But, alas, about 70% of the county's Republican voters payed no heed to the signs. With seven candidates running, Gregg Harper carried Lauderdale County with 118 more votes than Ross, who was the second highest vote-getter in the county. Harper won about 31 and a half percent of the vote. Ross won almost 30%, so it was a pretty close race here in Lauderdale County.

In last year's lieutenant governor's race, Ross won Lauderdale County but lost the state-wide election to Phil Bryant. It seems that, to date, Lauderdale County just can't agree with the rest of Mississippi when it comes to Mr. Ross.

Of course, with seven candidates running, no one got the 51% of the vote needed to win outright, so Harper and Ross, the top two vote-getters district-wide, will face-off again in an April 1 run-off. It's going to be a busy three weeks for those two.

You may be thinking that Ross, as the top district-wide vote-getter Tuesday, is bound to win April 1, and he may well do that, but not necessarily. A big chunk of Tuesday's vote went to neither Harper nor Ross, and those voters, should they choose to vote in the run-off, are going to have to decide between two of the guys they didn't vote for before. And besides that, a lot can happen in three weeks.

David Landrum, who was at one time considered the front-runner, came in third both district-wide and in Lauderdale County, getting 26% of the district vote and around 22% of the county vote. Who his supporters are likely to vote for now that he's out of the running is not clear.

For my part, I'm not making any predictions. Unless you're in a Bush-Dukakis-or-Clinton-Dole-obvious kind of situation, predicting election results can be a very tricky business. Sometimes winners can't be predicted even after a large percentage of the vote has already been counted. Take last year's Lauderdale County Board of Supervisor elections, for example. At the end of election night, incumbent District 2 Supervisor Jimmie Smith was ahead of his opponent, Wayman Newell, by a small margin. A local television station declared Smith the winner. A few days later, after affidavit votes were counted, it turned out that Newell won the election by less than 30 votes.

So now that all the votes that went to Landrum, John Rounsaville, Greg Hatcher, Bill Marcy, and James Broadwater are up for grabs, expect to see Harper and Ross working hard to attain them, and expect to see them returning to Lauderdale County as well.

For those who are curious about how exactly the votes were divided in Lauderdale County, here are the results form the circuit clerk's office. These results are unofficial, with affidavit votes still to be counted (Note that, unlike in the recent supervisor's race, affidavit votes are not expected to make much difference in this case):

James Broadwater - 22 votes - 0.31 %
Gregg Harper - 2230 votes - 31.49%
Greg Hatcher - 182 votes - 2.57%
David Landrum - 1536 - 21.69%
Bill Marcy - 71 - 1%
Charlie Ross - 2118 - 29.91%
John Rounsaville - 919 - 12.98%
Write-in Votes - 3 - 0.04%

Total votes cast: 7081

As you can see, Harper, Ross, and Landrum all got a chunk of the vote in Lauderdale County, but whoever this "write-in" guy is didn't do so well.

On the Democratic side of the 3rd Congressional District race, Randy Eads carried the county, with 3820 votes, or 62.46%, while Joel Gill received 2287 votes, at 37.39%. Mr. write-in did a little better on the Democratic side, getting three times as many votes as he did on the Republican ticket - nine of them, to be exact.

Lauderdale County disagreed with the rest of the district in this race as well - Gill won the district-wide vote by a good margin. But I don't think it's any mystery why Randy Eads won here in Lauderdale County - Limited as it was, he spent some time in Meridian. Joel Gill didn't.

Similarly, on the Republican side, the candidate who spent the least amount of time in Lauderdale County, James Broadwater, went away with only 22 of our votes, putting him in Lauderdale County's last place position. Unless you count the write-in vote, that is.

If you live anywhere in the third district, expect both Ross and Harper to visit an area near you over the next three weeks. Both these gentlemen are well-aware that absence will not make the heart grow fonder in this race.

- Jennifer Jacob
jjacob@themeridianstar.com

P.S. Do please forgive me for the terrible "write-in" jokes...