Prentiss Walker

Prentiss Lafayette Walker (August 23, 1917 - June 5, 1998) was the first Republican in the 20th century to be elected to the United States House of Representatives from Mississippi.

Private life

Walker was born in Taylorsville in Smith County in south central Mississippi. He attended public schools in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and in Taylorsville and Mize, also in Smith County. In 1936, he attended Baptist-affiliated Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi. During World War II, he served in the United States Army. After his military duties, he worked as a chicken farmer in his native Smith County. He was the president of Walker Egg Farms, Inc., in Mize, and from 1937 to 1963, the owner of Walker’s Supermarket. In 1960, Walker served on the executive committee of the State Game and Fish Commission under Governor Ross Barnett.

Political career

Walker's House victory in 1964 was the first Republican breakthrough in Mississippi since Elza Jeffords served a term in Congress from 1883 to 1885. He unseated 11-term incumbent W. Arthur Winstead by some seven thousand votes—an 11-point margin.

Walker's victory is considered to have been heavily influenced by the campaign of Barry Goldwater, who carried Mississippi in the 1964 presidential election with an unheard-of 87 percent of the vote. Goldwater carried many of the counties in the district with 90 percent of the vote; one of them, Noxubee County, gave him a staggering 96.6 percent of the vote, tied for his best showing in the nation.^[1]

Walker gave up his House seat after only one term in 1966 to challenge U.S. Senator James O. Eastland. He ran well to Eastland's right, accusing him of being too friendly to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and of not doing enough to block integration-friendly judges in his position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. With 105,652 votes, Walker lost by 27-65 percent. Years later, Wirt Yerger, the chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party at the time, said that Walker's decision to relinquish his House seat after one term for the vagaries of a Senate race against Eastland was "very devastating" to the growth of the state GOP.^[2]

In 1968, Walker tried to retake his House seat. He lost to the Democrat who had succeeded him, Sonny Montgomery, by 30-70 percent. Walker ran for the Senate against Eastland in 1972 as an Independent and drew about 14,000 votes.

Reagan anecdote

At a Republican fundraiser at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson on June 20, 1983, U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan told the following anecdote:

Former Congressman Prentiss Walker, who I understand is here today, tells a story about his first campaign. He dropped in on a farm and introduced himself as a Republican candidate. And as he tells it, the farmer's eyes lit up, and then he said, "Wait till I get my wife. We've never seen a Republican before."

And a few minutes later he was back with his wife, and they asked Prentiss if he wouldn't give them a speech. Well, he looked around for kind of a podium, something to stand on, and then the only thing available was a pile of that stuff that the late Mrs. Truman said it had taken her 35 years to get Harry to call "fertilizer."

So, he stepped up on that and made his speech. And apparently he won them over. And they told him it was the first time they'd ever heard a Republican. And he says, "That's okay. That's the first time I've ever given a speech from a Democratic platform."

Works cited

• G.O.P. THREATENED IN SOUTH BY LOSS OF BACKLASH VOTE, October 9, 1966; ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times (1851 - 2003)

References

External links

• Prentiss Walker at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Sid Salter: Smith County congregation sends a Republican delegate every 40 years