SURPRISES?:

Mississippi Incumbent Surprises His G.O.P. Opponent (DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, 10/17/03, NY Times)

With his money, national Republican connections, political savvy and personal charm, Haley Barbour looked to many people last winter like a sure bet to be elected governor of Mississippi this year.

That was especially true because the Democratic incumbent whom he was challenging had presided over the weakest state economy in years in a region where President Bush is particularly popular and at a time when anti-incumbent sentiment seems to be increasing.

But the handicappers underestimated Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. He raised nearly as much money as Mr. Barbour, conserved most of it for the last few weeks before the November election and proved to be a relentless campaigner.

Now, although no polls have been published, the candidates and political experts agree that the race is extremely tight. [...]

Although Mr. Barbour, who began television commercials in February, had $977,000 left in his accounts, Mr. Musgrove squirreled away his money and had $3.4 million remaining for the last five weeks of the campaign. That disparity can be explained by the fact that Mr. Barbour had already paid for all his television time through Election Day, and Mr. Musgrove had not. But in terms of money, the governor is clearly competitive.

It's been difficult to find much on-line about the odd year governors races -- other than CA and the LA, once Bobby Jindhal won the primary -- but every story I ever found said that the three races -- LA, KY, MS -- would be very tight and that either party could sweep or they could split them a variety of ways. But this story suggests that Mr. Barbour -- who's running his first statewide race in twenty years and who had to win a primary and is running against an incumbent -- has had a tougher time than expected. The depiction of the race as one Barbour should be winning fairly easily seems counterfactual, as reflected in Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 17, 2003 12:45 AM