Mettetal Enters Open HD10 Race

Sen. Nolan Mettetal (R-Sardis) announced last week that he was dropping a re-election bid in the Senate, but kept his options for other offices open. A week later, we learned that he is running for the House in the HD 10 seat being vacated by Democrat Warner McBride.

This is an interesting development. For months, even before McBride decided against a sixth term, Republican Doug Jones was in the race. In fact, when McBride announced he wouldn’t be running, the Mississippi Republican Party sent out a press release promoting Jones- then the only Republican (and only candidate period) in the race.

Jones now has a primary race featuring a more familiar face in Mettetal, a four-term Senator. Although Mettetal has never won election as a Republican. But what also makes this interesting is that voter participation in that primary will likely be very low as most still vote in the Democratic primary. A small number of voters will select the candidate who has to be considered the favorite to win this seat in November.

Which leads me to the Democratic candidate, Jordan Bankhead. Bankhead is an attorney and professor at Ole Miss with his first degrees from UCLA and Cal-Berkeley before moving to Oxford. One Republican in the area described him as a ‘California liberal;’ and you can see his bio at the Citizens for Global Solutions website, a social justice non-profit he is affiliated with.

Further, this isn’t necessarily an Oxford district. Not saying voters will automatically reject someone from Oxford, but I could certainly see geography being another barrier.