Even Sen. Roger Wicker is not conservative enough for much of northeast Mississippi

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker’s loss in his native northeast Mississippi in the Republican primary earlier this month most likely says more about the region than it does about him.

Not surprisingly, Wicker won his reelection bid in the Republican primary by a comfortable margin, garnering 61% of the statewide vote. He lost only nine counties, but all of those counties were within a figurative stone’s throw of his longtime home of Tupelo in Lee County.

In the northeast Mississippi counties, Wicker, who has served as a U.S. senator since 2008, won only two counties against Republican opponent Ghannon Burton, who worked hard to embrace the modern MAGA conservative movement. Wicker won Alcorn County with a plurality vote of 49% to 43% for Burton. Wicker captured Monroe County just to the southeast of Lee County by a slim 47% to 46% margin. State Rep. Dan Eubanks of DeSoto came in a distant third.

Burton won Wicker’s home county of Lee by a 54% to 39% margin and also captured Pontotoc County, where Wicker’s father served proudly as a circuit judge, 58% to 34%.

Granted, turnout in the primary election was down — way down. But outside of northeast Mississippi, Wicker won counties throughout the state where the MAGA movement spurred by President Donald Trump was strong.

It also should be said that Burton, a former military pilot, also is a northeast Mississippian from Tishomingo County. But he went into the campaign as a political novice with no name recognition.

Burton campaigned as a Trump acolyte intent on what he called combating the deterioration of the country. Never mind that Trump endorsed Wicker’s reelection effort. Burton pointed out that Wicker voted to certify the 2020 election, which Burton falsely claimed was stolen from Trump. Wicker also voted to approve President Joe Biden’s infrastructure program that brought literally billions of dollars to Mississippi to address transportation needs, including $1.4 billion to improve broadband access in places like northeast Mississippi.

The irony of that infrastructure vote cannot be ignored — especially in northeast Mississippi.

For years, long after much of the rest of the state had swung to the Republican Party, the proud yellow dog or rural Democrat was still prevalent in northeast Mississippi. After all, northeast Mississippi is where Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt visited in the 1930s to tout the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal program that brought electricity to rural northeast Mississippi. Tupelo proudly brags of being the first TVA city. A historic sign near the center of town commemorates the fact that Tupelo became the first city to receive electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Alcorn County developed the nation’s first electric cooperative, thanks in large part to the TVA.

Yet broadband access, which both Republicans and Democrats claim is as important in the modern era as electricity was in the 1930s, was cited by Burton as a reason to vote against Wicker.

There was a belief at one point that a Democrat could win statewide by capturing northeast Mississippi. After all, four-term Attorney General Jim Hood, the last Democrat elected statewide, was from Chickasaw County in northeast Mississippi and routinely won the area in his elections. Yet when Hood ran for governor in 2019, counting on that northeast Mississippi connection, he was trounced in that part of the state. Hood ran relatively close by doing well in other areas of the state — but not in northeast Mississippi.

In the 2023 governor’s election, the same happened to another northeast Mississippi favorite son. Former Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley of Nettleton ran a close race statewide, but not so close a race in his native northeast Mississippi.

For decades, Wicker has been viewed as a leading conservative who has been a vocal and leading opponent of abortion rights. In 1994, he won a U.S. House seat long occupied by yellow dog Democrat Jamie Whitten. As the Mississippi Senate Public Health chair before then, he started the trend of the Mississippi Legislature passing bills to challenge the concept of a national right to an abortion.

Yet because he voted to certify an election that more than 60 courts said was legitimate, and because he voted to support an infrastructure bill that brought money to neglected regions of the state, he was viewed by northeast Mississippians as not conservative enough.

The 2024 Republican primary puts an exclamation point on the fact that if Democrats intend to win again statewide, they need to find votes somewhere other than northeast Mississippi.

If northeast Mississippians are not going to support rock solid conservative Republican Roger Wicker, they surely will not vote for a Democratic candidate.

As a bit of solace for Wicker, he will almost certainly prevail in his home region in the November general election, when he faces Democratic Senate nominee Ty Pinkins.

Bobby Harrison