Flowers wins GOP runoff, to face Thompson in November

The field is set for voters to decide in the Tuesday, Nov. 8 general election who will represent them from Mississippi’s Second Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.

Brian Flowers defeated Ronald Eller in the Republican Party primary runoff election held Tuesday, June 28.

In Franklin County, Flowers pulled in 333 votes (71.46 percent) while Eller finished with 132 votes (28.33 percent).

In addition, there were four affidavit ballots cast with three of those accepted and all of them going to Flowers.

Franklin County Circuit Clerk Warren Walker said turnout for the single race on the ticket was sparse with 8.19 percent of registered voters casting an in-person, absentee or affidavit ballot.

With that light turnout, polling places closed at 7 p.m., with all 14 Franklin County election boxes reporting shortly after 8 p.m., last Tuesday night.

Affidavit ballots were reviewed Wednesday by county election commissioners.
Flowers went on to claim the Republican victory with 57.99 percent (6,044 votes) of the ballots cast from throughout the Second Congressional District, which stretches along the western portion of the Magnolia State.

Eller netted 4,378 votes or about 42.01 percent of all runoff ballots cast in the district.

Flowers advances to represent the Grand Old Party in the Tuesday, Nov. 8 race against incumbent Democrat Bennie Thompson, who has held the post since April 20, 1993.

Flowers proved to be the top vote-getter in the four-person Tuesday, June 7 Republican primary field, but failed to get a majority and was forced into last week’s runoff with Eller.

On the Democrat primary ticket in early June, Thompson easily defeated his lone challenger, Jerry Kerner, by a 38,662 (96.2 percent) to 1,516 (3.8 percent) margin.

The upcoming general election will mark the second time Flowers will face Thompson for the Second District Congressional seat.

In the 2020 race, Thompson edged Flowers in a 196,224 (66 percent) to 101,010 (34 percent) victory.

Thompson, a former educator, was initially elected to Congress to replace Mike Espy and has served 13 terms in the U.S. House.

He was a former alderman and mayor in the town of Bolton from 1969 to 1979 and served as a member of the Hinds County Board of Supervisors from 1980 through 1993.

Thompson is presently Mississippi’s lone Democrat in the U.S. House.

Flowers, who is a native of Fayetteville N.C., and a current resident of Clinton, served in the U.S. Navy from 1998 to 2008 and has worked as a senior mechanical planner for Entergy and a FLEX marshal with the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Port Gibson.

As redrawn by the Mississippi Legislature earlier this year, the Second Congressional District, which encompasses all of Franklin County, runs parallel to the Mississippi River from near Tunica southward to the Louisiana state line.