- JB
- Sammons, Flinn, and Lott at fundraiser
It is hazardous to repeat second-hand stories, but this one comes from a source of the kind that one calls “reliable,” especially when he subject is Republican politics.
To wit: If former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi is quoting current House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio accurately, then George Flinn must be doing something right in his bid for the Republican nomination in Tennessee’s 8th congressional district.
As Lott put it Friday at a fundraiser for Flinn, his former Ole Miss classmate, at the East Memphis home of Jack and Jennifer Sammons, he ran into Boehner at Reagan National Airport in D.C. Friday morning and told the current House Leader where he was headed — to Oxford and to Memphis for the Flinn fundraiser.
“He said, ‘You know what? I hear that guy’s gonna win!'”
Flinn, who was hearing this piece of news for the first time, seemed stunned, but managed to respond, “That’s good. That’s really good!”
“Oh, it’s good,” said Lott.
Flinn has two opponents for the GOP nomination, farmer/gospel singer Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump and Ron Kirikland of Jackson. Kirkland, like radiologist/broadcast executive Flinn, is a physician. The winner of the primary will face Democrat Roy Herron in November.
Lott told reporters that he had counseled Flinn on the fact of a contested primary by saying, “You’d rather not have one, but it’ll make you a better candidate.” The former majority leader said that all incumbents needed to “be careful” in this year of voter unrest, but he thought that Republicans, especially, were well poised to make gains.
On other matters, Lott said that President Obama seems to be finding himself in the same negative fix regarding the BP Gulf oil spill that his predecessor, George W. Bush, experienced regarding Hurricane Katrina. “And the reason is the same in both cases — the difficulty of getting the bureaucracy to get anything done.”
Lott, who maintains residences in both the Washington area and Mississippi, said that in Mississippi only eight applications for emergency loans had been approved by the Small Business Association, out of 108 applications thus far and that nationally the rate of turndowns was more than 60 percent.
