Phil, Phil, Wherefore Art Thou

The Republican nomination fight in the Mississippi governor's race is already getting interesting.

Phil Bryant, Mississippi's lieutenant governor, is generally seen as the frontrunner. He has served as lieutenant governor for the past eight years. Before that, he was state auditor -- another statewide race. And I think he may have been a county elected official or a legislator for a short time. The point is that he has been elected to statewide office at least three times and has some experience as a politician on the local level as well. In that time, he has managed to get himself pretty well entrenched with the Mississippi Republican party. So you have got to give him the edge -- he has the name recognition, the experience, the party connections and the statewide network. And he seems pretty smart, at least politically.

I don't know Phil, although I met him once.

He has a presence on the internet and on to some degree social media. But the thing that strikes me and surprises me a bit, given his political saavy, is that he doesn't seem interest in a dialog. He doesn't have a Twitter site, and he is taking a lot of shots on Twitter, particluarly in regard to the redistricting dust-up. The state Senate under Bryant's leadership has rejected the house redistricting plan, and Phil has developed his own plan. It apparently is costing him with the Republicans as well as the Democrats. Check out the Twitter feed. http://twitter.com/#!/search/phil%20bryant. I don't know if he is unaware of the criticism or if he just doesn't monitor Twitter, but this would be a great opportunity to address some of these criticisms. He could link to a web site where he could define and explain his position. It would seem a wasted opportunity.

He has two facebook pages. One is his official Lt. Governor site, which looks to be mostly about lieutenant governor stuff http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1228376235, but the other is his campaign facebook page.He has almost 4,000 likes on it, but again he has a lot of people asking questions and being critical. http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Phil-Bryant/149191811767085?sk=wall , and he doesn't respond. It seems to me to be a huge oversight because Dave Dennis "ain't going to sit on his hands."

Phil also has a web page, a YouTube presence and a Flickr presence. They are all well done and connected to each other and offer opportunities to volunteer and give money, but to me they seem to emphasize the fact that Phil is not engaged in a dialog with voters.

Compare that with Dave Dennis' internet presence. Dave is on Twitter with 445 followers. In the interest of full disclosure, I am following Dave but only because I want to try to see both sides of his conversations. Dave's dialog is on a pretty minimal level, but he is engaged. He hasn't responded to some people who have asked his stands on some issues on Facebook, but he has started to engage voters.

So will any of this make a difference in the primary? Is Phil guessing right that there aren't enough voters plugged in to the internet to make a difference? Will Dave be able to use the internet to put a dent in his name recognition deficiency? Certainly we will all be watching this one.