When I wrote this column Tuesday afternoon, I didn't know we'd wake up today to the wonderful news that the Jackson Free Press is [winning four Society of Professional Journalists awards][1]. Congrats are especially in order to R.L. Nave who got three different awards, two of them first place, for stellar work in 2012, his first full year at the JFP. And the public-service awards are always our favorite because they are for extensive, difficult team efforts to cover an issue that directly affects our community, and usually with people fighting to keep information away from us. This year's was no exception.

I must give a shout-out to Belhaven student Virgi Lindsey, who interned here last summer. She is simply a bulldog reporter, and she sniffed out important parts of of the voter ID package, broke several stories and help bring national attention to the efforts. Go, Virgi. We're proud of you; not every college student gets to hang a prestigious journalism public-service award on their walls, and you will have one soon.

Again, cheers to our staff. They're the best.

[1]: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/weblogs…

It's gonna be interesting, I'll give y'all that. And either way, it'll be great journalism. That's the selfish response, not the Jackson warrior one. But might as well enjoy that part now. ;-)

We suggest following the @jxnfreepress Twitter feed. Wild, wild west over there, and the numbers keep jumping around although it seems to be settling into Lee-Lumumba-Johnson in that order.

We're hearing that Lumumba had a turnout surge today -- will it put him in the runoff? It well might.

Well, considering that nearly all the major candidates, including Jonathan Lee, accused each other of "voting Republican" at least once, it rather makes it news. If the campaigns and their supporters hadn't talked about, this factcheck would have never happened.

Nope, no evidence that anyone has promised anyone anything; that's not what we were reporting. We're reporting about rather impressive Republican activity in a Democratic primary.

This is my blog post, though, and I do wonder about that kind of stuff. All the time. About people in any party (I dislike all parties). I'm an investigative editor and reporter. We wonder, by definition. And I also wonder in dinner conversations -- and often find out a lot of stuff as a result. So I will continue to do both, and there is nothing bogus about that.

Bottom line: This is important news, folks, and all this attacking-the-messenger ain't gonna change that. If you knew anything about the JFP, you'd know that you're blowing hot air by trying to silence or scold us on this or anything.

kdavis, you're being so dramatic. We're not trying to shock; we are trying to inform. It sounds you just want to keep information to ourselves. Er, no.

R.L. is doing a blog post on Lumumba's report when he gets to it. He had to report on stayed execution first, which is more important.

Things are crazy here today. I was able to post new info above because person helping me with it got it done. We have a long list of analysis we're working on, and it will continue into the runoff.

And, no, it's news when Republicans sink that much money into a Democratic primary regardless of whether there's a Republican primary. Fact.

kdavis, you inspired me to post a bit more information about exactly where some of Lee's biggest donors also contributed money to recently:

Leland Speed
61,550
Harper, Nunnelee, Wicker, RNC, Romney, Giuliani, Haley's PAC, Cochran, McCain

James Creekmore
134,050
RNC, Wicker, Harper, Nunnelee, Palazzo, McCain, Haley's PAC, Cochran

Gloria Walker
125,300
Wicker, Haley pac, rnc, McCain, Romney

Robbie Hughes
113,495
RNC, Harper, Wicker, Nunnelee, Perry, Romney, Gingrich

Agree that not filing report should disqualify you, or filling it out correctly. But there are no teeth in our laws. And we're such a Republican state: just try to get tough campaign-finance laws. Right.

We don't like partisanship, either, jcaudle. But please remember that the elections today are actually PARTY primaries. Thus, it is very relevant news if a candidate in one party's primary is largely backed by members of another party. That's just fact. I'm cool if we away with parties and primaries altogether, but until we do, we will report this kind of news rather than hide it from voters as some would prefer.

[Lumumba's report finally came in][1] this morning. One of our reporters is about to go through it and see what's there.

We agree that candidates should be disqualified from the ballot if they don't file reports on time. They are thumbing their noses at the people's right to know when they do that. Lumumba has been one of the worst offenders this year.

[1]: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/documen…

REporter Tyler Cleveland just called from Callaway; a voter machine was down, and is fixed. And he ran into Harvey Johnson voted there at the same time!