in the Northeast and then covers the Southwest corner of the state.
First round Campaign Mississippi Republicans decided to hold a convention to nominate one candidate, nervous that a wide field of Democrats could lock out their party from being in a runoff. They endorsed Liles Williams, a businessman from
Clinton, at a nominating convention in April. The Democrats chose not to endorse a particular candidate in the first round. U.S. Senator
Thad Cochran endorsed Williams two weeks out from Election Day. Labor groups in the district largely backed Democratic candidates:
Wayne Dowdy was endorsed by the
Mississippi AFL–CIO and both Dowdy and Britt Singletary were endorsed by the Mississippi Association of Educators. The extension of the Voting Rights Act was one of the main reasons why Dowdy made it through the first round.
The Clarion-Ledger noted that Williams ran up respectable numbers in African American precincts and was in a strong position to gain the votes needed to win. Poll workers in
Hinds County were instructed to ask for the numbers to help purge the voter rolls of inactive voters, but the County Election Commission failed to notify the public about the procedure. Williams was seen as the favorite to win the runoff. Williams ran his campaign sticking closely to President
Ronald Reagan's policies – the 4th district had backed Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. Dowdy opposed the Reagan administration's
tax cuts, specifically citing its cuts to
Social Security and education. Letters bearing Reagan's signature were sent to 85,000 of the district's Republicans to support Williams. President Reagan made a phone call that was piped through to a Republican rally. Addressing a cheering crowd, Reagan told Williams "We're waiting for you up here and need your help." Dowdy criticized Williams as a "rubber stamp" for President Reagan's policies, although Dowdy avoided directly criticizing Reagan himself throughout the campaign. Dowdy instead focused on local issues and couched criticism of Reagan through that lens. Another key point in the campaign was the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Dowdy publicly supported keeping. In the final stretch of the campaign, Williams continued his fundraising advantage.
The Clarion-Ledger and
The Jackson Daily News both endorsed Williams in the closing stretch of the runoff. On Election Day, voters were generally not asked for their social security number as they had been in the primary, although some voters in Hinds County were still asked for their numbers.
Results In what reporters considered an upset,
Wayne Dowdy won a narrow election by just 912 votes. Dowdy credited African American voters for his win, saying they were "very, very helpful". Speculation that some of Senator Ed Ellington's vote in
Hinds County would shift to Williams in a runoff ended up not coming to fruition. Dowdy denied that his victory was a plebiscite on President Reagan's policies, saying that it was a "vote between two candidates" and pushed back on his race's national implications. Dowdy explained that their campaign went to "great lengths not to run against [President Reagan]." The Chairman of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Tony Coelho called the victory a repudiation of "the idea of a Solid South for Reagan." Republicans publicly attributed Williams's loss to the challenges created by Hinson's scandals.
The Washington Post reported, however, that Republicans in DC were concerned about the implications of losing a conservative House seat for the 1982 midterm elections. ==Aftermath==