“Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.”
―Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote
It is a little after 2 p.m. Friday and Shawn O’Hara interrupts the interview as his driver, Pancho Sancho, er, Eli “Sarge” Jackson, gets into the car. The two candidates are criss-crossing the state on the campaign train in advance of Tuesday’s general election.
O’Hara, the third man in the race of the U.S. Senate, and Jackson, who is running for the U.S. House in the Fourth Congressional District, will complete their tour of the state Monday with visits to Tupelo and Columbus before returning to their home base in Hattiesburg.
Their travels have not been without adventure, Last week, for example, Jackson was arrested on a domestic violence charge in Hattiesburg, a charge O’Hara says were trumped up by the “Mississippi Mafia” in a bid to discredit his fellow Reform Party candidate.
“Now where were we?” O’Hara asks.
He proceeds with prompting.
“I’ll give you my 120-word platform,” he says, then commences on a long recitation of the 13 major initiatives he intends to pursue if he should prevail over incumbent Thad Cochran and Democratic challenger Travis Childers.
The ideas run from the spectacular to the divine – eliminate the U.S. Senate, which he estimates would save $3 billion that could be directed to military and veterans; shut down the IRS and implement a flat income tax of 10 percent and a flat corporate tax rate of 10 percent; hire two million currently incarcerated inmates (at $15,000 per year) to rebuild the nation’s roadways and bridges; add six new states (all current U.S. Territories plus Washington D.C.); lift all bans on off-shore drilling and make Mississippi the natural gas capitol of the world by converting all vehicles to propane; lower food prices by helping every citizen to plant their own gardens, a mandate funded by donations; reinstitute Colonel Rebel as the Ole Miss’ mascot (“I like to have at least one fun idea,” he says); encourage and support teachers by making them exempt from student-loan payments or eliminating the payments altogether; pass “equal pay for women” legislation; and finally, get rid of the Homeland Security Department.
If ever there were a Don Quixote of Mississippi politics, it is the 56-year-old O’Hara, who has run for 13 statewide offices since 1991, including governor, state treasurer, U.S. Senate (four times, he challenged Cochran for the seat). He has also run for a seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives and has run four times for mayor of his hometown of Hattiesburg. He has never won, yet for the better part of 25 years, he continues to plunge, head-long and confident, at every political windmill on the landscape.
As you might suspect, he is not given much of a chance Tuesday. In fact, pollsters haven’t even bothered to include him in their polling.
In true Quixote form, O’Hara is not at all discouraged.
He says he can win on Tuesday and lays out the scenario he expects will deliver what would have to be considered the biggest upset in U.S. political history.
First, he says, he will appeal to the 85,000 Democrats he says were denied an opportunity to vote in the famously contentious Republican Primary run-off of June 24. Second, he will attract McDaniel voters, who he believes will vote for him as a “protest vote.”
Finally, O’Hara says when Mississippi Secretary of State estimated the turnout for Tuesday’s vote at 400,000, he was convinced he could win, noting that he amassed almost 285,000 votes in his unsuccessful campaign against Tate Reeves in the state treasurer’s race in 2007.
“Am I the real deal?” O’Hara says exuberantly. “With the help of those disenfranchised Democrats and McDaniel supporters, I can.”
He’s in it to win it, he says. And no matter the outcome, he’ll keep going.
“People ask me, ‘When are you going to quit?'” he said. “I tell them, ‘I’m just getting started.'”
As the original Don Quixote said, “Thou hast seen nothing yet.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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