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Wicker, Cochran win Senate races
Web exclusive from AP
Published Wednesday, November 5
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Story by Emily Wagster Pettus
Associated Press Writer

JACKSON (AP) - Republican Roger Wicker defeated Democratic former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in a special election to fill Trent Lott's old U.S. Senate seat.

Republican Thad Cochran also won a sixth term in the U.S. Senate, easily defeating Democrat Erik Fleming.

Wicker spent 14 years as north Mississippi's 1st District congressman, and Republican Gov. Haley Barbour appointed him to temporarily fill the Senate seat after Lott abruptly retired in December to become a lobbyist.

"A year ago, this would've seemed unlikely," Wicker told cheering supporters at a Jackson hotel.

Wicker and Musgrove are longtime friends who shared an apartment in Jackson in the early 1990s when they were both in the state Legislature. Wicker said Musgrove has a reputation for working hard. "It was clear early on that he came to play," Wicker said.

With 86 percent of precincts reporting, Wicker had 56 percent and Musgrove had 44 percent.

Musgrove's campaign spokesman, Adam Bozzi, said Musgrove would not concede Tuesday night because the campaign wants to see absentee vote totals Wednesday.

Both national parties spent millions of dollars on the Wicker-Musgrove race, and the candidates ran hard-hitting ads that picked apart each other's records.

Wicker called Musgrove a failed governor who left the budget in shambles and allowed jobs to evaporate.

Musgrove said Wicker has been part of a pay-to-play Washington culture that enriched Wicker's campaign donors and former staffers who moved on to private companies that received government contracts.

Cyndi Lee, 48, a homemaker from Pearl, voted for Republican John McCain for president and Cochran and Wicker for Senate.

"After living in this state with Musgrove as governor, there was no way I was voting for him," Lee said after voting at McLaurin Heights United Methodist Church. "Him losing all those jobs — I didn't care for that."

Fannie Wilson, 50, a homemaker from Jackson, is a self-described born-again Christian. She voted for Musgrove, even though she said she had reservations because he divorced his first wife while he was governor.

"Wicker is too conservative for me," said Wilson, who voted at precinct near Jackson State University. "To me, he seems to represent a higher class of white person, and that makes him too conservative."

Cochran had more than 63 percent of the vote. The 70-year-old has been in the Senate 30 years. He's the ranking Republican on the powerful Appropriations Committee and has helped bring billions of dollars to his home state, one of the poorest in the nation.

Fleming had hoped for a boost if Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama increased black voter turnout. But Cochran's appeal cuts across lines of race and party. He has had several black staff members and makes appearances at events that attract diverse crowds.

Mississippi lost significant influence on Capitol Hill when Lott retired to become a lobbyist. He had been in Washington since 1972 — the first 16 years in the House — and was barely a year into his fourth Senate term.

Cochran told The Associated Press he is "very firm" in planning to serve the full six years of the term that starts in January.