There is a big election today for the GOP in Mississippi's 1st-CD:

The increasingly frantic hopes of the GOP rest on Greg Davis, the mayor of the Memphis suburb of Southaven, who is running against Childers to succeed former congressman and now-Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

The lineup of Republican heavy hitters dispatched in the campaign’s final week illustrates the stakes.

President Bush recorded an automated message sent to thousands of districtwide voters. Cheney appeared with Davis on Monday night. Popular Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Wicker campaigned alongside Davis.

Desperate for a win, aides at the NRCC have fired off automated calls from first lady Laura Bush, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Barbour to Mississippi voters to encourage them to turn out.

“In these closing hours, we need to go that extra mile to turn out the vote … and to remind everybody in the 1st District of what’s at stake when they go into the voting booth tomorrow,” Cheney said in his election-eve appearance. “What we need in Washington is a strong conservative congressman from Mississippi — not another Democrat going to bat for Nancy Pelosi.”

But despite the national support — and the fact that this district is one of the safest Republican areas in the nation — Davis is finding himself facing a tougher than expected battle. Childers, a gregarious courthouse official in Prentiss County, has demonstrated widespread appeal among the district’s largely rural population, and has effectively made the race a geographic referendum rather than an ideological one.

In the first round of balloting last month, Childers came within 410 votes of winning the seat outright, leading Davis 49 percent to 46 percent.

A friend working in this race tells me that bad blood between Glenn McCullough and Greg Davis that caused Childers to come out on top in the special election. McCullough's people essentially stayed home. Gov. Haley Barbour, former Sen. Trent Lott and Sen. Roger Wicker have all been working behind the scenes to get McCullough and his people back on board. We'll see tonight if that if they were successful.