BREAKING: Sen. Nolan Mettetal (R) qualifies to run in HD 10

State Senator Nolan Mettetal, a Republican from Sardis, has qualified to run for the state House in District 10, the seat held by Rep. Warner McBride (D) who recently announced his retirement.

Mettetal has served in the state Senate since 1996. He has chaired the Public Utilities committee and has served on the Finance, Highway and Transportation, and other committees while in the Senate.

Mettetal will face fellow Republican Doug Jones in August 2nd primary.

More on this as it develops.

** UPDATE:

MajorityinMS offered this analysis after we broke the news above:

“This is an interesting development. For months, even before McBride decided against a sixth term, Republican Doug Jones was in the race. In fact, when McBride announced he wouldn’t be running, the Mississippi Republican Party sent out a press release promoting Jones- then the only Republican (and only candidate period) in the race.

“Jones now has a primary race featuring a more familiar face in Mettetal, a four-term Senator. Although Mettetal has never won election as a Republican. But what also makes this interesting is that voter participation in that primary will likely be very low as most still vote in the Democratic primary. A small number of voters will select the candidate who has to be considered the favorite to win this seat in November.”

MIM is correct… This will be a primary to watch.

We here at FireMcCoy are proud of Doug Jones for signing the Conservative Speaker Pledge. We would urge Mettetal to follow suit so the voters in HD 10 know where he stands in terms of the next Speaker.

MIM ended their analysis by pointing out that there is a Democrat in the HD 10 race, Jordan Bankhead. As MIM wrote, “Bankhead is an attorney and professor at Ole Miss with his first degrees from UCLA and Cal-Berkeley before moving to Oxford. One Republican in the area described him as a ‘California liberal’…” We would agree.