On Again

North Miss. congressional race is on again - Associated Press

Like many other members of the fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House, Childers recently voted against a $700 billion bailout for the financial sector. "It was unfair to ask north Mississippians who didn't do one thing to cause that problem, to ask them to tack on another $2,800 worth of debt on every man, woman, boy and girl to bail out Wall Street," Childers, 50, said by phone between campaign stops late last week. In a separate interview, Davis said that if he had been in Congress, he also would've voted against the financial bailout. He said he would've gone a couple of steps further than Childers, by opposing procedural moves that allowed the bill to come up for votes in the first place. "That's a huge difference there," said Davis, 42.

Childers sponsored a bill seeking to make the District of Columbia expand the rights of its residents to buy and own firearms, including semiautomatic weapons. The bill was backed by the National Rifle Association and opposed by the District's only delegate to Congress. It passed the House 266-152 in September, but is unlikely to be considered by the Senate before this session ends. "We just felt like if they could stop the law-abiding people in D.C. from having a gun, then they could do it in Tupelo, Mississippi - or Batesville, Mississippi, where I am today," Childers said Friday. "We just felt like that D.C. was thumbing their nose at the Supreme Court." Davis said he wonders if the legislation is just "a political game." "Kind of strange, I think," Davis said. "Why are we doing city-specific legislation? If we are going to protect gun owners as a whole, then we should've made the same rules apply nationwide."