Senator Haley Barbour (?)

[underpants]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haley_Barbour

Lobbying career
In 1991, Barbour helped found Barbour Griffith & Rogers, LLC <4>, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm, with Lanny Griffith and Ed Rogers, two lawyers who formerly worked in the George H. W. Bush administration. In 1998, Fortune magazine named Barbour Griffith & Rogers the second-most-powerful lobbying firm in America. <5> In 2001, after the inauguration of George W. Bush, Fortune named it the most powerful. <6> The firm has made millions of dollars lobbying on behalf of the tobacco industry.<7>


Vioxx Case
Plaintiffs' lawyers in next year's federal Vioxx trials subpoenaed Haley Barbour, the former lobbyist whose clients included major drug companies. The suits include an estimated 45,225 plaintiffs, and Merck has agreed to let another 14,450 sue after their statute of limitation expires. Suits may center around plaintiffs who had strokes or heart attacks after taking the painkiller. <8> On Friday November 9th, 2007, Merck agreed to pay $4.85 billion to settle most claims. <9>


RNC Chairman
In 1993, Barbour became chairman of the Republican National Committee. In 1994, during his tenure as RNC chair, Republicans captured both houses of the United States Congress, taking the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years.<10><11> In 1997, Barbour ceased being chairman of the RNC.


1982 campaign
In 1982, Barbour was the Republican candidate for United States Senate but lost to incumbent Democrat John C. Stennis. <12>

During this failed bid for Senator a controversy arose at a campaigning stump. According to the New York Times, in the presence of the press an aide was complaining to Barbour that "coons" were going to be at a campaign stop at the state fair. Barbour warned the aide, in front of reporters, that if the aide persisted in racist remarks, he would be "reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks." <13>


2003 campaign
After two decades in Washington, D.C., Barbour announced in 2003 his intention to run for governor of Mississippi. On August 5, 2003, he won the Republican gubernatorial primary over Canton trial attorney Mitch Tyner.

A photograph of Barbour with members of The Council of Conservative Citizens members appeared on their CCC webpage, and some commentators and pundits demanded that Barbour ask for his picture to be removed from the site, but Barbour refused. The CCC was in the past a proponent of segregation. Barbour stated that ""Once you start down the slippery slope of saying,'That person can't be for me,' then where do you stop?... I don't care who has my picture. My picture's in the public domain." Barbour's Democratic opponent, Governor Musgrove, declined to be critical, stating that he had also attended Blackhawk rallies in the past, and would have done so that year except for a scheduling conflict.<14>

Barbour defeated incumbent Democrat Ronnie Musgrove in the general election on November 4, 2003, with 53 percent of the vote to Musgrove's 46 percent. Barbour became just the second Republican governor elected in Mississippi since Reconstruction, the first being Kirk Fordice. <15>


2007 re-election
See also: Mississippi gubernatorial election, 2007
Barbour announced on February 8, 2007 that he would seek a second term as Governor of Mississippi. He announced the beginning of his re-election campaign at a series of meetings across the state on February 12, 2007. During his campaign, Barbour signed the Americans for Tax Reform "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" and vowed not to institute any new taxes or raise any existing ones. <16>

He defeated Frederick Jones in the Republican primary on August 7 and Democrat John Arthur Eaves, Jr. in the November general election.

Governor Barbour received many Democratic endorsements, including Xavier Bishop, Mike Espy, Brad Dye, and Bill Waller.<17> Bill Waller and Brad Dye are conservative Democrats who served as Governor and Lt. Governor of Mississippi. Xavier Bishop is a long-time Democrat activists and the black Democrat Mayor of Moss Point. Mike Espy is a former Democratic Congressman from the 2nd District of Mississippi and served as Secretary of Agriculture under President Bill Clinton. He noted Governor Barbour's competency and character as reasons for his endorsement. <2>

[Cooley Hurd]

1. He probably misses the DC hookers...

;)

[flordehinojos]

2. the white house is already full of bush stink ... harbour stink at the senate might just whiff under

the radar.