Mississippi holds all its elections for state office in the odd years that are one year before presidential election years. State legislators in both houses have 4-year terms, and they are all due in the same year. Therefore, Mississippi only has legislative elections once every four years, and 2007 is such a year.
Filing has already closed for the primaries. The Constitution Party has nine candidates for the legislature, and the Green Party has two candidates for the legislature. This is the largest number of minor party candidates for the Mississippi legislature since 1923, when the Socialist Party had legislative candidates.
The Constitution Party this year also has one statewide candidate in Mississippi. He is Paul Leslie Riley, for Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce.
In Mississippi, although all qualified parties nominate by primary, no primary is actually held if there are no contests. Therefore, the Green and Constitution Parties won’t actually hold a primary, since in no case are two members of these parties running against each other in the primaries of those parties.
None of Mississippi’s six minor parties have ever had a contested primary. (The Natural Law Party is listed among the six.) These small parties do well to field one candidate for an office.
Mississippi’s first contested Republican primary for a statewide office came in 1978, when U. S. Rep. Thad Cochran defeated state Sen. Charles Pickering for the U. S. Senate nomination. Our first such GOP primary for state offices came in 1979, when there were two Republican candidates each for governor and attorney general. One of the AG candidates put up big billboards simply encouraging people to vote in the open Republican primary.
That 1979 GOP gubernatorial primary was hotly contested. We elect our county officials at the same time as our state officials, and all of the contests for county offices were in the Democratic primary. Thousands of people went to the polls thinking that they would be able to vote in that hot Republican gubernatorial primary and also vote for their county officials. There were many mad, disappointed voters that day.
Part of the residue of the one-party system…
The Mississippi Constitution Party has 11 canidates running in the November 6, 2007 Election.
For more information:
http://www.MississippiCP.com