JACKSON — Randy Wadkins, the Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Trent Kelly in north Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District, accuses Kelly of voting “just along party lines” while Kelly emphasizes his effort to build bipartisan bridges.
But maybe the starkest contrast between Kelly and Wadkins is on health care. Kelly still supports the ideas behind the Republican effort to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health care law. Wadkins calls that plan “ridiculous” and says he favors the government paying for health insurance for all Americans.
The 22-county district stretches from the suburbs of Memphis south and east to Tupelo and Columbus. Kelly, 52, a former district attorney, first won election to Congress in 2015 after the death of U.S. Rep Alan Nunnelee and easily won re-election to a full term in 2016. Also on the ballot is Reform Party member Tracella Lou O’Hara Hill.
The 53-year-old Wadkins had raised $154,000 since the start of 2017 and had $51,000 on hand as of Oct. 17, according to Federal Election Commission data. Kelly had raised $850,000 and had $202,000 on hand.
Although Wadkins is clearly an underdog, Democrats have defied the odds before in the recent past. Travis Childers won a special election and then a full term in 2008 before losing to Nunnelee in 2010.
A brigadier general in the Mississippi National Guard, Kelly emphasizes his support for continued higher military spending and his membership on the House Armed Services Committee.
“We have re-energized our military and are funding them to get them caught up from 15 or 16 years of challenges from the war on terror and deployments,” Kelly said.
Wadkins, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Mississippi, says he was driven to run by his frustration with Kelly and President Donald Trump. The cancer researcher said he began building a connection to politics during a 2015-16 fellowship that he spent working for Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis, Tennessee.
“I watched Trent Kelly vote for a year,” Wadkins said. He criticizes the current Congress and its Republican leadership for “voting just along party lines.”
Kelly, though, says he’s strived to work with other members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats.
“I just try to build relationships with people who I think can help,” said Kelly, whose biggest brush with the national spotlight was when a gunman who ultimately shot U.S. Rep Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, took a shot at him on a baseball practice field in June 2017. Kelly wasn’t among the five people shot.
Wadkins said he supports Mississippi expanding Medicaid coverage to low-income adults, something the state’s Republican leadership has steadfastly refused to do. He cites those uninsured adults as the reason many hospitals are struggling financially, with some in danger of closing. Wadkins said the long-term solution is for the government to take over providing health insurance for everyone.
“Ultimately, what you’re going to have to get to is Medicare for all,” he said. “It’s basically the nationalization of health insurance.”
Kelly, though, said he still supports the 2017 House Republican proposal to repeal parts of “Obamacare” as a “good step forward” and predicts there will be more efforts next year. He said his main goal is to make coverage affordable and available and dismisses broad government-paid coverage of the kind Wadkins advocates. “Quite frankly, we can’t afford it,” Kelly said.
Kelly cites corporate tax cuts and efforts to reduce regulation among Republicans’ other top achievements.
Wadkins, though, has a less rosy view of the economy, saying he sees bright young people leaving the state “every year at graduation” and wants to try to use his science credentials to recruit higher-paying employers.
“He didn’t seem to live in the same state I live in,” Wadkins said of Kelly. “I live in a state where jobs are scarce and there’s a lot of poverty.”
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