page_title: Wayne Dowdy
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Wayne Dowdy / Political career
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Wayne Dowdy, former Congressman from Mississippi and later was Chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party.
context_page_description: Charles Wayne Dowdy is an American politician, lawyer and jurist from Mississippi. He was first elected in a 1981 special election and served four terms in the United States House of Representatives. He later served as chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party.
context_section_description: On July 7, 1981, Dowdy was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat in a special election for the 4th District. In this election the Democrats recaptured a Southern district from the Republicans, in a period when the white electorate in the South was shifting to the Republican Party. Dowdy carefully managed to avoid drawing strong Republican challengers in the general election or African-American opponents in the Democratic primary.
  He won re-election narrowly in 1982 and 1984, with 53 percent and 55 percent of the vote, before being re-elected with 72 percent of the vote in the 1986 elections. He was notable for being a rather progressive Democrat by Mississippi standards of the time in a district with a 37 percent African-American population; in 1982 he voted for renewal of the Voting Rights Act.
  In 1988, when John Stennis retired from the Senate, Dowdy won the Democratic nomination. His opponent was Republican Congressman Trent Lott. Dowdy was unable to implement his rural strategy and lost to Lott by a 54 percent-45 percent margin. He was severely hampered by George H.W. Bush carrying Mississippi with a 59 percent to 39 percent margin. He also lost badly in Lott's congressional district, taking only 30 percent of the vote.
  Dowdy attempted to stage a comeback against Governor Ray Mabus in the 1991 Democratic gubernatorial primary, but lost with 41 percent of the vote.
caption: Dowdy during his final term in congress.
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