Roger Wicker's Bold Move

Here is a fascinating story. GOP U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, currently locked in a tight race with Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, is employing a major gamble in his campaign to win a full term in the Senate. Wicker is up with a radio commercial featuring several black Mississippians who tout their support of Barack Obama and Roger Wicker. Here's a partial transcript:

"I'm supporting Barack Obama for president and Roger Wicker for US Senate," an African-American woman says in the ad. “In the debate. [Musgrove] wouldn’t even say Barack Obama’s name. He’s disrespecting us and taking our vote for granted,” she says.

Another African American says of Wicker: “He represents us and he doesn’t take our vote for granted. He’s asking for our vote. Ronnie Musgrove refuses to say he supports Barack Obama.

This is amazing, and it says a great deal about the state of the race, at least in the Wicker campaign's eyes. As we have discussed before, Mississippi is a strange, and very polarized state. Whites, who make up 63 percent of the state, typically vote heavily for Republican candidates in federal races, often upwards of 80 percent. Conversely, blacks, who make up 37 percent of the state, overwhelmingly support Democrats, many times with over 90 percent of the vote.

For a Democrat to win in Mississippi, therefore, he or she needs to win the black vote overwhelmingly, but find a way to win a quarter or more of the white vote. While this may not seem like a big deal, there is a reason Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982. It is very hard.

Enter Ronnie Musgrove's very arduous political tightrope act. To win this year, Musgrove needs 90+ percent of the black vote, and around 24-25 percent of the white vote. Higher black turnout naturally would not hurt his cause. At this moment, with the election less than two weeks away, Musgrove appears well-positioned to do this, and thus pull out an improbable upset. While the last R2K poll had him down 47-46, it had him winning 24 percent of the white vote, and had him up in the black vote 83-5. Assuming undecided voters break like the rest of the decided voters -- and, according to R2K, 12 percent of blacks are undecided -- Musgrove will hit over 94 percent of the black vote. If he can get his one quarter of whites, this will be enough to win.

Roger Wicker sees these numbers. All of the polls have been ultra-tight here, but more importantly, Musgrove is achieving his two-prong test so far. Wicker knows that Musgrove is on pace to easily get 90 percent and perhaps more of the black vote. Assuming a huge turnout for Obama, which is quite likely, Wicker knows like we know that he could be in huge trouble.

As a result, he has gone on the air with a big gamble in order to try to chip away some of Musgrove's dominance with the black vote. Wicker knows that Musgrove can't identify too closely with Barack Obama or risk losing the white voters he needs. In a way, Musgrove has to take reliable Democratic support for granted by keeping Obama at arms length. This was evident in the only Senate debate: Musgrove reaffirmed that he will vote for Obama, but he kept the discussion away from the presidential contest.

As the ad makes clear, Wicker is trying to exploit this apprehension by the Democrat by using it against him to turn black voters against him. If Wicker can get even a small percentage to leave Musgrove, it would enough to turn a tight race.

Of course, there are risks here for Wicker too. Just as Musgrove has to be careful about associating too closely with Obama's coattails, Wicker risks bothering his conservative white base by associating with Obama. Mississippi may be tighter in this year's presidential contest than years past, but Obama will still not win here, and according to the R2K poll, he is only garnering 15 percent of the state's large white vote (with McCain getting 78 percent, and just four percent undecided). That says it all. So, this is a big gamble for Wicker.

It is important to point out that Wicker has said in the past that he was working to make inroads in the state's black communities. Whether or not that was true or just political posturing, it is clear that the Senator has not achieved any groundswell of support in those communities. Indeed, if R2K's polls have given any indication, Wicker has been slowly bleeding black support as the election has progressed. Garnering just 5 percent of the vote at this stage is not a good place to be. Therefore, there is some question that if he could not accomplish the goal all year, how will he do it in the last two weeks?

Why did Wicker take this risk? I think it is pretty obvious that Wicker is looking at the same data that we have been seeing and talking about, and his campaign is very nervous. If the R2K poll was accurate, Musgrove is poised to win if he holds what he already has, and this is to say nothing if black turnout explodes. Wicker is in a tough spot in a tough national environment.

Still, this might be a worthwhile gamble. As we discussed, Musgrove has consistently gotten between 23 and 26 percent of the white vote the entire cycle. Wicker's team may figure that this is a base vote that won't change -- and after many attacks, it hasn't all year -- and that perhaps stealing away five percent of the black vote is more doable. After all, they may reason, before this last R2K poll, the black was 18 percent undecided, so there might be a sector of the state's black population which has been uneasy with Musgrove. This is a fair argument, and indeed, we have guessed that some blacks may not have warmed to Musgrove this year. However, at the same time, it is worth noting that this latest poll showed an identical 12 percent black undecided in the presidential race too, indicating the presence of a possible reverse Bradley Effect.

On balance, I think this is a gutsy move for Wicker, and I politically applaud it. He's in a rough race, and you can't win if you don't take a chance here or there. Wicker simply cannot get re-elected if Musgrove gets 94 percent of the black vote, as turnout will be very high this year. Plus, this is on radio, and I would be very surprised, no, make that shocked if Wicker put it on tv unless his poll numbers show drastic black movement in the next week. Still, the ad also shows that Wicker is uneasy, and that Musgrove has, at least up to this moment, been poised to win this contest.