NESHOBA COUNTY, Miss. (WJTV) – Candidates came out hot on Wednesday at the Neshoba County Fair, throwing jab after jab on stage.
Most of the back and forth was between the candidates for attorney general and lieutenant governor.
State Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-Miss.) tried to get incumbent Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann (R-Miss.) to debate him on the fairgrounds.
“Lieutenant governor, lieutenant governor, can we have a debate today? Would it be okay if we did a debate today? Can we do a debate today? Please, let the people hear your positions,” McDaniel stated.
Those were not the only words shared between the two leading candidates for lieutenant governor.
McDaniel criticized Hosemann’s record, alleging that Hosemann is not a true conservative. Hosemann responded for the first time publicly to many of those allegations.
“It’s fair game to talk about his adheres to Democrat principles. It’s fair game to recognize that he has more in common with people like Mitt Romney than he does Ronald Reagan. And that’s a problem Now, how do we know this? Since he’s been lieutenant governor, I served with only 16 Democrats. For some reason, he appointed 13 of those Democrats to powerful chairmanships,” said McDaniel.
“There are 45 committees in the Mississippi Senate. They’ve been talking about appointing, I only had 36 Republicans. Send me more Republicans. So, we had to appoint some people to committees. We ran out of Republicans. We had to appoint some people to committees like the Federal Commerce and libraries and housing. Y’all ever heard any bills coming out of there? I don’t think so,” said Hosemann.
The incumbent lieutenant governor also dismissed McDaniel’s claim that Hosemann was the vice president of an abortion clinic.
“You can yell, you can scream, you can use your friends in the media to cover up for you. It’s a verifiable fact that from 1976 to 1990 he was the vice president of an abortion clinic,” stated McDaniel.
“In like 1976 or 1978, I can’t even remember it was 50 years ago, I represented them in some tax matters. In 1981, I quit representing them. You look at this, there’s no discussion about the issues, the real issues,” said Hosemann.
On Thursday, more fireworks are expected on the stage. Governor Tate Reeves (R-Miss.) and Brandon Presley (D-Miss.) are both expected to speak.