JACKSON – (AP) For nearly two decades, Democrat Bennie Thompson has represented Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses some of the poorest counties in the nation.
Thompson says he has helped promote development through federal grants and other programs.
However, Heather McTeer, his opponent in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, says the incumbent has done too little and it’s time for a change.
McTeer, 36, is an attorney and recently completed her second term as Greenville’s mayor. She says she wants to help create jobs in the district that stretches along the Mississippi River, through the farmlands and small towns of the Delta and into the capital city of Jackson.
“People understand that if we continue to do the same thing over and over again, electing the same leadership but expecting something different to happen, that’s the essence of insanity. And people are not crazy,” McTeer said after reading to children at a south Jackson elementary school.
Thompson, 64, is the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee and senior member of Mississippi’s four-man U.S. House delegation. He won a special congressional election in 1993 to succeed fellow Democrat Mike Espy, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton as U.S. secretary of agriculture. Before going to Congress, Thompson had been a Hinds County supervisor and mayor of his hometown, Bolton.
Speaking recently to a standing-room-only community forum at the Koinonia coffee house near the Jackson State University campus, Thompson said he spends a good bit of his time on Homeland Security.
“It’s a full-time job,” he said. “There are a lot of bad people who are trying to, still, do harm to us.”
Thompson also pitched himself as a regular guy who likes to spend time with his grandchildren when he’s not in Washington trying to bring home federal funds for roads, bridges and water systems in the district.
“I have always maintained an open-door policy. I am kind of a country boy at heart. I hunt, I fish, I plant a garden, I cut my own grass. I do a lot of unorthodox things. But I love representing the people, and I love making the system work on behalf of the people,” he said. “I still have the energy. I have probably been about 2,000 miles this week. Miles to go before the day is gone.”
The last time Thompson faced a well-connected and well-funded Democratic primary challenger was in 2006, when he easily defeated Mike Espy’s nephew, state Rep. Chuck Espy of Clarksdale.
Thompson has dwarfed McTeer in fundraising. The latest campaign finance reports show Thompson sitting on more than $1.6 million as of Feb. 22, much of which he had before McTeer entered the race. He listed no campaign debts. McTeer’s finance report shows she had $33,093 as of Feb. 22, and that she had loaned $140,000 to her own campaign. She had repaid $1,000 of the loan, leaving the debt at $139,000.
Marvin King, a political science professor at the University of Mississippi, said McTeer faces a tough election Tuesday because Thompson has had many years to bring federal money back to the district and to build a political network.
“Generally, you just don’t see incumbents lose in primaries,” King said.
McTeer grew up in Greenville with a mother who was a kindergarten teacher and a father who was a civil rights attorney. She had an easy rapport with first- and second-graders at Jackson’s Lee Elementary as she participated in a “Read Across America” day.
“Tell me what’s your favorite Dr. Seuss book?” McTeer asked.
One girl called out: “Cat in the Hat!” A boy chimed in: “Sam I Am!”
“I love Sam I Am,” McTeer said, smiling. “’Green Eggs and Ham.’ I love that book.”
Federal Election Commission records show McTeer donated $250 to Thompson’s campaign in 2008. McTeer, who was Greenville mayor from 2003 until late 2011, said she decided to challenge the congressman this year because the district seems stagnant.
“I could not sit and say it’s all right for us to continue to be at the bottom with respect to education and, even worse than that, to have no plan of action of what we are going to do. I couldn’t sit on the sidelines and say it’s all right for people to be dying,” said McTeer, who has run half and whole marathons during the past six years.
“We have the highest rate of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, childhood obesity in the nation,” she said. “Yet we have no plan of action in this district other than to say we’re just going to continue to support Medicare and Social Security. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
McTeer said Thompson has done too little to help create an environment where businesses would want to create jobs.
Thompson said he has worked to lure jobs to the district, including a Lockheed Martin technology support center, which opened this past October in Clinton. The company said the facility would create about 350 jobs, with workers serving several federal customers for the Maryland-based defense contractor. The center is located in a large building near Interstate 20 that had been corporate headquarters of WorldCom, the telecommunications company that went into bankruptcy in 2002.
In April, Thompson announced the Lockheed Martin deal hours before the company did, saying he had challenged the company two years earlier “to examine the potential that the 2nd Congressional District possesses as a possible location for future business.”
Johnnie Patton of Jackson, a pharmacist, businesswoman and member of the Democratic National Committee, said she supports Thompson for re-election because of his experience.
“Bennie knows the players in Washington,” Patton said. “Why swap out a person who really has the know-how with someone new?”
Kimberly Jones Merchant, an attorney who has lived in Greenville for 15 years, said she supports McTeer because McTeer brought significant changes to the city, including a road reconstruction program that’s still under way.
“Through her eight years as mayor, she spent a lot of time going to D.C. lobbying for funds to help the city,” Merchant said. “That’s what’s necessary to bring the money.”
Although Merchant has voted for Thompson in the past, she said it’s time for a change. Merchant said McTeer is experienced and well-connected: “I understand what she’s done and what she can do.”
The winner of the Democratic primary advances to the Nov. 6 general election to face Republican Bill Marcy of Vicksburg and independent Cobby Mondale Williams of Canton.
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