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By Bill Minor, The Greenwood Commonwealth, 8/14/08

When he won the Mississippi governorship in 1999, Ronnie Musgrove was regarded nationally as a breakthrough Democrat in Southern politics, which for a decade had been trending Republican and electing GOP governors. In fact, Musgrove had ended an eight-year Republican grip on the Mississippi governor's office.

Now, nine years later, Musgrove is out to stage another breakthrough, this time to reclaim for Democrats one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats which for almost a century had been a Democratic fiefdom. Since 1978, however, one or both Senate seats have been in Republican hands.

In the Nov. 4 special election, Musgrove could ride the crest of a Democratic resurgence across the South brought about by an immensely unpopular Republican president who has presided over a sagging economy and launched a seemingly endless and pointless war in the sands of Iraq.

And fortunately for Musgrove, Roger Wicker, his Senate opponent, is more or less only a Republican seat-warmer, accidentally finding himself in the job as the result of a bumbling game of musical chairs orchestrated by GOP Gov. Haley Barbour, the supposed political mastermind.

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