Reply #11: Friend of mine from that area said this: [View All]

Davis was so vicious in the Repub primary that his opponents refused to endorse him and many who voted for the other Repubs refused to support him. He plays very, very dirty and will do anything. Childers would do well to hire a food taster and someone to check his car before he gets in it.

I'm not surprised Childers won that seat. He's very popular in his home county. He also owns a well-run assisted living facility and a nursing home (in my home town) that serve a multi-county area. People are very proud of those facilities and think well of him for taking the risk and putting up the money to establish them. Davis made people in the area FURIOUS when he ran totally spurious accusations that Childers was starving and mistreating residents of the nursing home. People knew it was a lie, and they took it as a personal attack on local institutions.

Davis and the Repubs will pull out all the stops to get that seat back in November. They'll do anything. The Dems had better be prepared to defend it HARD. To protect himself, Childers will have to be very conservative for his first few years and probably will vote against the Dems more than he votes for them. Every vote he casts will be potential for the Repubs to throw him out of office. (Of course, Davis is very conservative himself--he won't need much urging to vote conservative.) Having Obama at the top of the ticket will be a disadvantage for him, but people in that area are used for crossing over and voting for Dems for local offices. Unlike here, the Dems still hold a lot of town and county offices.

Davis is particularly a creep, and Southhaven is a particularly creepy, sordid, bigoted little place. The town is nothing but a haven for white people from Memphis who can't stand black people. I haven't heard much about it for a number of years, but it used to be vilely racist, Christianist, and authoritarian--a cesspool even by deep south standards. I wouldn't vote for anyone who could be elected mayor of Southhaven.

And, she said:
An interview with the down but not defeated Repub opponent. Davis was so vicious in the Repub primary that his opponents refused to endorse him and many who voted for the other Repubs refused to support him. He plays very, very dirty and will do anything. Childers would do well to hire a food taster and someone to check his car before he gets in it.
-----------------------------------------