Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--The Mississippi State student organization that sponsored a gubernatorial debate earlier this month is holding a similar event Tuesday [Oct. 23] for another statewide office.
The university's Stennis-Montgomery Association is announcing a 7 p.m. debate among the three candidates vying for the Office of the Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce.
To be held in the McComas Hall main theater, the program will have 200 of the facility's approximately 500 seats reserved for interested members of the general public.
The candidates include:
--Democratic Party candidate Rickey L. Cole of Utica, founding president of the Mississippi Policy Forum and a former Mississippi Democratic Party chairman;
--Incumbent Republican commissioner Lester Spell, a former Richland veterinarian and mayor; and
--Constitutional Party candidate P. Leslie Riley Jr., a Pontotoc small businessman.
As she did with the Oct. 4 campus debate between Republican Gov. Haley Barbour and Democratic challenger John Arthur Eaves, S-MA president Lori Ann Holland, a senior political science major from Starkville, will moderate the debate. Questions will be posed by two journalists [Ed. note: names not yet available for release].
Created to encourage student involvement in the political process, the Stennis-Montgomery Association honors two of Mississippi State's most prominent alumni and members of the United States Congress: Sen. John C. Stennis and Rep. G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery.
The university's Stennis Institute of Government is assisting with the debate.
For more information, contact Holland, Stennis Institute executive director Marty Wiseman or senior policy analyst Lydia Quarles at 662-325-3328.
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Media seating information will be provided in an advisory later this week.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.