MS Supreme Court: Senate Election will Take Place in November

[memphis]

Musgrove can win this, though he's obviously an underdog.  I highly applaud the fact that the DSCC is contesting the race.

This race could mirror Arizona 2006, or it could mirror Virginia 2006.

We lost the 2006 AZ Senate race by 10%. Virginia was won by only 1%. Unless Wicker utters a racially insensitive remark, I don't see how Musgrove can win in November.

I don't think a racially insensitive remark would make any trouble in MS. Trent Lott's praise of Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign didn't cause him any trouble in 2006. We can only hope that Wicker accidentally slips and admits to believing in evolution

[MasterJedi]

I'll just post this quote for Adlai Stevenson from earlier:

This is good news; it may well be partisanship motivating me but I think justice has been served.  As I read the law, the election should have been in March rather than November. 

It's partisanship for me. I'll admit that I wouldn't give a &!*# about the law if it was Massachusetts.

Yeah OK then me too!

[Adlai Stevenson]

I'll just post this quote for Adlai Stevenson from earlier:

This is good news; it may well be partisanship motivating me but I think justice has been served.  As I read the law, the election should have been in March rather than November. 

It's partisanship for me. I'll admit that I wouldn't give a &!*# about the law if it was Massachusetts.

Yeah OK then me too!

I'll say it again.  I don't like the Republican Party - I think they are dangerous, arrogant, divisive and will do anything to win (perhaps that is why I am not a supporter of Hillary Clinton) and yes I admit this openly.  I want the bar to be set lower so that the Democratic candidate has a leg-up in getting elected in Mississippi.  And no, to answer the question, I don't give a whatever about New Jersey in 2002.  Musgrove For Senate!

[Jake]

So you don't want credibility at all. Gotcha.

And lol @ Harry, again.

[minionofmidas]

Musgrove can win this, though he's obviously an underdog.  I highly applaud the fact that the DSCC is contesting the race.

This race could mirror Arizona 2006, or it could mirror Virginia 2006.

We lost the 2006 AZ Senate race by 10%. Virginia was won by only 1%. Unless Wicker utters a racially insensitive remark, I don't see how Musgrove can win in November.

I don't think a racially insensitive remark would make any trouble in MS. Trent Lott's praise of Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign didn't cause him any trouble in 2006. We can only hope that Wicker accidentally slips and admits to believing in evolution

I think anything that sounds as if he supported votes for Blacks in teh 1960s counts as "racially insensitive" in Mississippi.

[MasterJedi]

I'll just post this quote for Adlai Stevenson from earlier:

This is good news; it may well be partisanship motivating me but I think justice has been served.  As I read the law, the election should have been in March rather than November. 

It's partisanship for me. I'll admit that I wouldn't give a &!*# about the law if it was Massachusetts.

Yeah OK then me too!

I'll say it again.  I don't like the Republican Party - I think they are dangerous, arrogant, divisive and will do anything to win (perhaps that is why I am not a supporter of Hillary Clinton) and yes I admit this openly.  I want the bar to be set lower so that the Democratic candidate has a leg-up in getting elected in Mississippi.  And no, to answer the question, I don't give a whatever about New Jersey in 2002.  Musgrove For Senate!

Ok so pretty much you don't care about free and fair elections and are just what you believe the Republican Party to be. Ok, great.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Musgrove can win this, though he's obviously an underdog.  I highly applaud the fact that the DSCC is contesting the race.

This race could mirror Arizona 2006, or it could mirror Virginia 2006.

We lost the 2006 AZ Senate race by 10%. Virginia was won by only 1%. Unless Wicker utters a racially insensitive remark, I don't see how Musgrove can win in November.

I don't think a racially insensitive remark would make any trouble in MS. Trent Lott's praise of Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign didn't cause him any trouble in 2006. We can only hope that Wicker accidentally slips and admits to believing in evolution

That's probably because only Democrats were offended by Lott's praise of a man at his 100th Birthday Party, and mostly because they were really looking for something to be offended by.

[Brittain33]

That's probably because only Democrats were offended by Lott's praise of a man at his 100th Birthday Party, and mostly because they were really looking for something to be offended by.

I knew at least one real live conservative Republican who was pissed off about it before Josh Marshall's campaign got underway, and you know well he went beyond praising the man to say "if the rest of the country had voted the way we did, we wouldn't have had all these problems all these years." There is just no way to spin that comment as a pat on Thurmond's head.

[Adlai Stevenson]

So you don't want credibility at all. Gotcha.

And lol @ Harry, again.

Not from you, no.  And I do believe in free and fair elections, MasterJedi.  Its the GOP that doesn't - hence when they are disadvantaged the playing field is rebalanced. 

[jimrtex]

"Mississippi already is preparing itself for the November Presidential Election, which is taking place in a few months," Justice Chuck Easley wrote. "Economically, a special election is unjustifiable in this election year. Reason and economy must prevail."

In a statement issued after the ruling, Barbour said the Nov. 4 date was in the best interest of voters and the state.

"This decision by the State Supreme Court means that a million Mississippians will vote on who will be their next United States senator," Barbour said.

I cannot quite grasp the sheer idiocy of both statements here, or decide which is worse; the Supreme Court Justice who has ruled that the law is inconvenient and therefore will be ignored, or the governor who believes that a regular general election is somehow more valid than a special election.

The Mississippi legislature clearly believes that in most cases it is best to hold the special election to fill a senatorial vacancy at the time of the next statewide general election.  They even wrote a law that says that if a vacancy occurs on the 1st Monday in November, that the special election will be held the next day (that part of the law is not ambigious, merely moronic).

This is not at all uncommon way for holding a special election to fill a senatorial vacancy, and it is consistent with the practice when senators were elected by the legislatures.  Most legislatures only meet once per year, and at one time, session lengths would be measured in weeks not months.  So rather than calling a special session to fill a vacancy, they would wait until the next regular session which might be close to a year away.  A statewide general election can be considered the equivalent of a regular session of the legislature - a regular organization of the elective body.

Mississippi holds a statewide general election 3 out of 4 years, congressional elections in the even years, and for statewide offices and the legislature in one of the odd years.  So 75% of the time the special election is held later in the year.  But if the vacancy occurs in the 4th year (eg 2009) there is no general election until November 2010, so in those years the special election is held within 90 days.  Since there will be the extra expense of a special election, there is no particular reason to wait any longer than it takes to organize an election.

The ambigious part of the law is in the case where the vacancy occurs after the general election (in November or December).  Given the apparent principles in the rest of the vacancy law, is it really credible that the legislature wanted a quick special election in these case?  So even if you read the law to require a quick election if the vacancy occurs late in a year, can that really be what the legislature intended?

There have been 4 senatorial vacancies in Mississippi since the 17th Amendment was ratified.

Trent Lott, resignation December 18, 2007.

James O. Eastland, resignation December 27, 1978.  Thad Cochran had already been elected to the term beginning on January 3, 1979; and was appointed to fill the vacancy, so this resignation was simply to give Cochran a few extra days seniority,

Theodore G. Bilbo, death August 21, 1947.  Bilbo had been re-elected in 1946, but never took the oath of office in 1947, so presumably had been in ill health.  John Stennis was elected on November 4, 1947 to fill the remaining 5+ years of the term, and then was re-elected for 6 additional full terms.  No one was appointed to fill the vacancy, prior to Stennis' election.

Pat Harrison, death June 22, 1941.  James O. Eastland was appointed to fill the vacancy, but was not a candidate in the special election on September 23, 1941, when Wall Doxey was elected.  Eastland was then elected in November 1942 to a full term and was re-elected 5 more times.

So it has been 60 years since there was a vacancy with significant time remaining on the term.  In that case, the general election was only a couple of months after the vacancy, though the seat had been effectively vacant for most of 1947. 

The previous vacancy, in 1941, was filled in a special election 3 months after the vacancy occured.  But 1941 was not a general election year in Mississippi (the governor was elected in 1939).  The law may have changed since then, but the timing of special election appears to be consistent with the current law.

[Joe Republic]

So you don't want credibility at all. Gotcha.

And lol @ Harry, again.

Not from you, no.  And I do believe in free and fair elections, MasterJedi.  Its the GOP that doesn't - hence when they are disadvantaged the playing field is rebalanced. 

Then you obviously don't know about New Jersey 2002, or in fact, any of the many, many cases of rigged elections instigated by the Democrats over the years.

Take your hackery elsewhere, kthx.