Gloves up – Democrats infighting for chance to face Roger Wicker

by Alan Lange

Just when Democrats nationally become buoyed by their chances in mid-term elections, Mississippi Democrats seem to be content to beat each other to pieces in the early stages of the 2018 election cycle.

Democrats in the Wicker race

There’s actually a slew of Democrats vying to square off against the presumed Republican nominee, incumbent US Senator Roger Wicker.  One of the more interesting entrants is venture capitalist and husband of TV star Sela Ward, Howard Sherman.

Sherman instantly dropped a $500K loan into his campaign and hired national heavyweight Joe Trippi and one of the managers for the Doug Jones Alabama, Giles Perkins.  Sherman made an interesting foray into enhancing his name ID through some spots on urban radio statewide.

Meanwhile, the Democrat establishment class has instantly come after Sherman.  Candidate David Baria has been critical of the fact that Sherman donated to Roger Wicker as recently as 2017.

Then Jackson lawyer Sam Begley, who has a history of filing technical residency challenges on behalf of Democratic Party establishment forces, filed a challenge this week against Sherman claiming his real residence was in California.  Begley pushed on both voting and campaign donor files showing that he consistently listed his Los Angeles mansion address.  That challenge was summarily ignored by Bobby Moak.  Begley, not content to get shutdown, fired back further.  It looks like bad feelings are starting to develop.

The sleeper candidate in this contest is Baria’s fellow state Rep. Omeria Scott.  In the Y’all Politics poll conducted a couple of weeks ago, Scott lead a highly fractured Democrat electorate and has the potential to render the infighting and money spending between Baria and Sherman moot.  To this point, she’s not done much visibly to further her campaign, but if that changes, she could well be Wicker’s opponent.

Trial Lawyer Defection from Democrats?

As if that wasn’t enough in the Wicker race for Democrats, trial lawyer and former Democrat gubernatorial nominee John Arthur Eaves, Jr., is actually hosting a high dollar fundraiser for Roger Wicker.  That’s an enormous slap to fellow trial lawyers who seem to generally lining up behind Baria.

To even have a prayer against Wicker, Democrats will have to start mending fences internally and quickly.  June 5^th is not far off, and from the looks of it, there are pieces splintering off in every direction.