From the Clarion Ledger:
Former U.S. Rep. Ronnie Shows told The Associated Press on Saturday that he will run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Trent Lott.
Shows, a Democrat who was ousted from Congress by Republican Rep. Chip Pickering in 2002 after Mississippi lost a House seat, joins former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker in the race.
Shows said Pickering’s decision not to run for the Senate seat pushed him into re-entering political life.
“It just opened the door for me that I didn’t think was there before,” Shows said. “I think this opportunity doesn’t come by very often – to have an open Senate seat – and it’s something I feel ready to do. And I think I can win.”
As you might know, Shows lost his seat due to redistricting. I have to say that I wish he’d seek his old seat again, given that Pickering is now retiring.
Of greater concern, though, is the fact that the MS-Sen-B special will be a Louisiana-style jungle election (ie, all candidates run together in a single race, with, I believe, the top two vote-getters going into a runoff if a certain threshold is not met by the first-place finisher). With two Dems vs. one Republican, it seems like this race just got a lot harder to pull off. At the very least, we now certainly can’t win in the first round. We need to hope that either a bunch more Republicans get in, or that Shows or Musgrove changes his mind.