On August 4, Mississippi held primaries for the statewide executive offices. The state elects its Governor and other statewide offices, and its legislators, on November 3, 2015. The Democratic primary was won by Robert Gray, who didn’t campaign, nor spend any money. He didn’t even vote in the primary. He defeated two other candidates who had campaigned. See this story.
The vote isn’t official, but so far Gray has 51%, enough to avoid a runoff primary. Thanks to Mike Fellows for the link.
Unbelievable, but nice news. A regular fellow beats the establishment.
Was it an open primary?
Yes. All southern states have open primaries except for North Carolina (semi-closed) and Florida (closed). When I say “south” I mean the eleven states that left the union.
In Mississippi, many counties are still under Democratic control. If you want to have a meaningful vote, you have to choose the Democratic primary. In a statewide race, you might reason that the candidates who were actually running sound like a typical Democrat, and vote for the unknown.
The same think happens in Republican-leaning areas.
It happens in Montana too. The “expert” for the Republicans made a big deal of more votes being cast for legislative candidates than in the congressional primaries, but he didn’t know that local races for county commissioner had even more votes cast, because that wasn’t included in the cherry-picked data that he was given to analyze.
Jim Riley: That is the case. The South may have gone GOP for federal and state offices, but they still go Democrat for city and county ones.
Campaigning and spending money are overrated if you have a good name like Robert Gray. With a similar name, I won a statewide Democratic primary in Wyoming last summer without campaigning or spending any money.
I was running for the US House and I spent no money at all and never campaigned and did not go to the public TV debate with the other three candidates. The Democratic US Senate candidate spent close to $100,000, campaigned around the state ceaselessly on an old school bus for ten weeks straight, and took part in his TV debate with his three opponents.
I got 22.9% of the vote and won Teton County. He got 17.5% of the vote and lost every county, finishing behind me in every precinct in the state.
It only confirmed my belief that in a hopeless election where your party can’t win, it’s useless to spend money or campaign.
Hardy beat Grayson in at least one precinct.