TUPELO – U.S. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor said Wednesday that north Mississippi”s congressional seat is a “majority maker” for the GOP and he”s urging voters to turn out next Tuesday for the party”s nominee, Alan Nunnelee.
Cantor, of Virginia, told 200 people at a Nunnelee fundraising luncheon in Tupelo that Nunnelee supports limited government. Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee spoke Wednesday at a Nunnelee breakfast in Southaven. Each event was $100 a ticket.
Nunnelee is challenging Democrat Travis Childers, who has held Mississippi”s 1st District seat since a May 2008 special election.
Republicans this year are targeting Childers as a potentially vulnerable Democrat in a district that voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
Cantor said that Nunnelee has balanced the Mississippi budget as chairman of the state Senate Appropriations Committee.
“He gets the fact that the state government in Jackson has to work for you and not the other way around,” Cantor said.
Cantor and Nunnelee spoke in front of a sign with the slogan “Fire Pelosi,” a reference to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
Childers was campaigning Wednesday in Grenada, Yalobusha, Panola and Tate counties.
Childers campaign spokeswoman Dana Edelstein said in a written statement responding to the Nunnelee events that Nunnelee “is depending on out-of-touch Washington politicians to run his campaign, so why would north Mississippians expect anything different from him if he were elected to Congress?”
U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio campaigned for Nunnelee last week in Southaven.
“Travis Childers has consistently fought to be an independent voice for north Mississippi,” Edelstein said.
Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Childers two weeks ago at a get-out-the-vote rally on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford.
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