Dao continued cheerleading: “If Mr. Chandler, considered the underdog, can ride voters’ anxieties about unemployment to victory, it could give the Democrats momentum in their seemingly uphill quest to unseat the president, Democrats and political analysts assert.”
Republican Ernie Fletcher won decisively (55%-45%) capturing the Kentucky statehouse for the Republican Party for the first time since 1967.
David Rosenbaum’s October 15 dispatch on the Mississippi governor’s race pitting Republican Haley Barbour versus incumbent governor Ronnie Musgrove similarly positioned the incumbent Democrat as the scrappy underdog: “With his money, national Republican connections, political savvy and personal charm, Haley Barbour looked to many people last winter like a sure bet to be elected governor of Mississippi this year. That was especially true because the Democratic incumbent whom he was challenging had presided over the weakest state economy in years in a region where President Bush is particularly popular and at a time when anti-incumbent sentiment seems to be increasing. But the handicappers underestimated Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. He raised nearly as much money as Mr. Barbour, conserved most of it for the last few weeks before the November election and proved to be a relentless campaigner. Now, although no polls have been published, the candidates and political experts agree that the race is extremely tight.” The headline to Rosenbaum’s story: “Mississippi Incumbent Surprises His G.O.P. Opponent.”
The Times’s “cocooned” readership was no doubt surprised to find that Republican Haley Barbour won 53%-45%, becoming only the second Republican governor elected in Mississippi in modern times.
10) Pulitzer Punts on Duranty’s Prize, Satisfying Sulzberger: The Pulitzer Prize board’s November decision not to revoke Stalinist Times reporter Walter Duranty’s 1932 prize led relieved Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to say: “We respect and commend the Pulitzer board for its decision on this complex and sensitive issue.” Before the decision, Sulzberger had ludicrously claimed that returning the prize might itself evoke the “Stalinist practice to
airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories.”