JACKSON, Miss. — Sometimes U.S. politics is about ideas, powered by Jeffersons and Adamses and Reagans. Sometimes it is about strategy, with races determined by the chess-match machinations of Axelrods and Roves.
But every once in a while, the fate of governments is determined by a considerably less eminent character, one usually found lurking in back-alley craps games and on the Las Vegas Strip: Lady Luck.
In Mississippi on Friday, luck smiled on a Democratic state representative, Blaine Eaton II, who had been forced, by state law, to draw straws for his seat after his race for re-election ended in a tie. On Friday afternoon, in a short, strange ceremony here presided over by Gov. Phil Bryant and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, Eaton and his Republican challenger, Mark Tullos, each removed a box from a bag. Eaton opened his box to reveal a long green straw.
And with that, a mathematically improbable tie for the House District 79 seat — each candidate had received exactly 4,589 votes — had been broken, though not by the voters.
Moments after winning, Eaton, who raises cattle and grows timber and soybeans, attributed his win to a farmer's luck. "There's always happiness in a good crop year," he said.
A lawyer for Tullos said that a challenge had been filed with the state House of Representatives. Tullos, a lawyer himself, declined to comment but had said he planned a challenge if he lost the draw. He had cited concerns about the way a county election board handled nine paper "affidavit ballots" filed by voters who believed their names were erroneously left off the voter rolls.
Resorting to a game of chance to break an electoral tie is common in many states, and coin tosses are often used to settle smaller local races. But in few instances had the pot been as rich as this: If Tullos had won, his fellow Republicans would have gained a three-fifths supermajority in the state House, the threshold required to pass revenue-related bills.
At stake, potentially, was hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. The three-fifths requirement has allowed the Democratic minority to block Republican tax-cut proposals in the past on the grounds that Mississippi needs the revenue to finance schools and other services. Republicans, who also control the state Senate and governor's mansion, say the cuts, including a proposal to phase out the state's corporate franchise tax, will jump-start the economy and promote job growth.
District 79 is a rural chunk of farmland and piney woods about an hour's drive east of Jackson. Eaton, 48, had not threatened a challenge if he lost, but, like his opponent, was not happy with the way the race was decided.
"It's wrong — philosophically, morally," Eaton said before Friday's drawing. "It's archaic, it's medieval, and it's wrong. We need a new election."
He repeated the sentiment even after winning and said that he hoped to co-author a bill to change the law that settles some
elections by the drawing of lots.
The mere fact that the election came to this is one of a long string of disappointments for Southern Democrats, who once ran the region as a virtual one-party zone but whose power has collapsed in recent years. In every state south of Virginia, Republicans control the governor's mansion and both chambers of the legislature. In 2011, Mississippi Republicans won a majority in the state House for the first time since Reconstruction, and increased their numbers in voting this month. If Tullos had won, he would have been the 74th Republican in the House out of a total of 122 seats.
Eaton, a gregarious and proudly homespun man met a reporter Wednesday morning at the Huddle House in his hometown, Taylorsville, and tried to make light of the forces of history, and perhaps fate, that appear to be arrayed against him.
"If I lose the coin toss, it's going to be kind of like that Hank Williams Jr. song, 'Dinosaur,'" he said, and he recited a few lyrics: "I should've died a long time before," he said.
Another line: "Excuse me, man, but where's the door?"
If nothing else, the drawing of straws was a fittingly civilized conclusion to a race that was run with exceeding small-town politesse. The men know each other, and both are well known among the voters in District 79, which encompasses Smith County and part of Jasper County.
"I told Bo's wife when I qualified that she'd never hear a bad thing come out of my mouth about her, or her husband, or her family," Tullos said.
Eaton has served in the House for 19 years; occupying a seat formerly held by his grandfather, a pine-belt populist who was also named Blaine Eaton and was known as "the silver-tongued orator of Sullivan's Hollow."
There were no debates in the contest. Eaton passed out fliers noting his Southern Baptist church membership and a "Highest" rating from the National Rifle Association. In person, he spoke passionately about the need to resist corporate tax cuts, and to expand Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health care law, an idea rejected by Bryant.
After the tie, Eaton originally said that he hoped to call a special session and change the law. Later, though he resigned himself to the outcome of Friday's draw.
"Look, my life's a gamble," he said. "I'm a farmer. I depend on the weather and the rain. The statute's clear, but my life is not."
Tullos's law practice is about 20 minutes up the road in the county seat of Raleigh, a small town where many things — a small park, offices, a dental clinic — conspicuously bear his family name. He said he went door to door with a campaign that did not emphasize Republican Party talking points so much as a promise to bring more business to the area. Smith County, he said, lacks a retailer where one can buy a decent pair of shoes.
"I want to go to Jackson, and whenever they start talking about economic development, I want to hold up my hand and say, what about this district?" Tullos, 51, said before Friday's drawing.
Some Democrats wondered whether the Republican-controlled House would be able to impartially judge the matter. On Thursday, Greg Snowden, the Republican House speaker pro tempore, predicted that "every member of the House will treat this with the utmost seriousness."
"It's not a game," he said.