DeSoto dominates the numbers for GOP 1st District
If you want numbers that define the contest in Tuesday’s Republican primary for the 1st Congressional District seat, try these: 18,329 to 2,727.
That’s the comparison of the turnout in the 2007 GOP primary for state and county offices in DeSoto and Lee counties.
DeSoto County’s population has grown an astonishing 72 percent in the last 10 years as metropolitan Memphis spills southward into Mississippi suburban sprawl. If you’re a politician, the first thing you notice is that it’s a Republican population explosion.
DeSoto has been remade into one of the two or three most reliably Republican counties in the state. That’s the reason Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven and formerly a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, eventually had to declare himself a Republican to survive politically.
It is also the basis of an advantage Davis enjoys in Tuesday’s GOP congressional primary against Glenn McCullough of Tupelo and Dr. Randy Russell of Oxford. Again, look at the numbers: 18,329 Republican primary votes in DeSoto County to 2,727 in Lee County.
NE MS Daily Journal
3/9/8
Magnolia Tribune
