Where political observers might see Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District as a Democratic safe haven for the incumbent, challengers seeking the seat see a sliver of opportunity.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is entering the 2010 race for a ninth term in a safer position than many Democrats in Congress. By most accounts, the 23-county district, which includes Warren, should be an easy notch in the Democratic belt in the November midterm elections. One analysis, by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, rates the race a solid Democratic hold based partly on voting patterns in the past two presidential cycles, where the vote was 12 percentage points higher, in favor of the Democratic nominee, than the nation as a whole.

Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, even had success in Warren County in 2008 for the first time since succeeding Mike Espy in 1993, winning primary and general election majorities in the River City.

Thompson, despite several interview requests, has been unavailable for comment. Among his votes this year were his support of President Barack Obama’s comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s health care system and a vote for the $6 billion “Cash for Caulkers” program, an incentive plan to encourage people to make their homes more energy-efficient.

Midterm elections in the first term of a presidency are historically tough for the party in the White House — four of the past five presidents have seen their party lose House seats following their first midterm. Even in a district dominated by Democratic voters in Jackson and in the Delta counties, GOP candidates have dipped into the nationwide tea party movement to cobble together enough support to begin looking to November.

Thompson is being challenged by three Republicans who will face off in a June 1 primary.

Bill Marcy, Richard Cook and George Bailey all have had unsuccessful runs for office. Two — Cook and Bailey — live in the district, while Marcy lives in Meridian. The Constitution requires congressmen be 25 years old, a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, and an inhabitant of the state they represent — not the actual district.

Marcy, 64, a former Chicago police officer who worked in hotel and hospital security in Miami for more than 20 years before moving to his parents’ hometown, has run for state House and Senate seats and the mayor’s office in Meridian. Cook, 51, a teacher at Peeples Middle School in south Jackson, won 31 percent of the vote against Thompson in 2008. And Bailey, 65, a Texas-born minister in Clinton, ran for the GOP nod for governor in New Mexico in 2006.

“Bennie’s got a problem,” said Marcy, who speaks strategically about being a rarity in the Republican Party — a black candidate. “He’s got to hold on to 100 percent of the black Democratic vote to win. If he lets 10 percent slip through his fingers, we have a horse race. If 12 percent of the black vote slips between his fingers, we win.”

At a rally in Vicksburg Friday evening, Marcy said, Thompson has engaged in “pay-to-play politics, like they do in the City of Chicago.”

He also doesn’t pass up a chance to mention a pending ethics inquiry into whether hearings on identity theft held by the Homeland Security Committee in July 2009 were an attempt by Thompson to induce campaign contributions from the industry.

Marcy has described himself as a “JFK conservative”, referring to tax cuts enacted during the early 1960s, when espousing an anti-tax, libertarian-like stance on economic issues. Like his primary opponents, Marcy doesn’t completely abhor last year’s stimulus bill, just the size of the massive public works legislation.

“There are better uses of dollars than others,” Marcy said. “The federal government has exceeded its constitutional mandate. The framers didn’t want government to run health care, they wanted government to provide an army, keep the states from fighting, have a currency we can depend on. There’s only one government — limited government.”

All three have accused Thompson of shutting out access, but for political contributors. But Marcy hasn’t limited attacks to Democrats.

At Friday’s rally, attended by a couple of dozen people, Marcy pretended to speak to a cardboard cutout of U.S. Sen. John McCain with a photo of Thompson taped over the 2008 presidential candidate’s face. While not mentioning the Arizona Republican’s own tough primary challenge from within the GOP this year, Marcy panned McCain’s reputation for compromise while praising his military service.

“McCain has a tendency to walk across that aisle and talk to Democrats,” Marcy said.

Bailey, who is also black, has given a few speeches that have taken on the feel of sermons, tapping into broad themes of moral values and other issues.

“People in the district shouldn’t have to be talked down to,” Bailey said. “(Thompson) feels like this office just belongs to him.”

Cook was born in Los Angeles and moved with his family to Corinth, Miss., in 1971. The gifted-and-talented program teacher who splits his time coaching the chess team at Peeples prefers a softer tone and approach in his support of tea party activists statewide.

“I’m for the individual — I want everyone to be pulled up,” Cook said in an interview. “If I get that Washington mindset where I forget where I come from, (the tea party) can take me out back and remind me. ”

Defense spending and education should be the federal government’s primary focus, Cook said.

“A lot of Republicans forgot what they stood for over the last several years, and they began spending too much money,” Cook said. “Capitalism is what makes this country move, not government.”