By Rachel Kapochunas and Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has announced that GOP Rep. Roger Wicker will fill the Senate seat of Trent Lott, who resigned earlier this month.

The Republican governor announced his selection of Wicker in a pair of press conferences Dec. 31. Wicker will move to the Senate after 13 years representing the state’s northern 1st District, setting a special election in motion for that House seat, and also plans to run for the full term.

Barbour, speaking first from Jackson and later in Gulfport, said Wicker shared Lott’s conservative values and views, which the governor considered major criteria for an appointee.

Wicker called it “a distinct honor” to succeed Lott, “truly one of the giants of Mississippi political history.”

Noting his own ability to work across the aisle, Wicker said he hopes to burnish his bipartisan reputation in the Senate while focusing on economic development, Hurricane Katrina recovery, national security and health care.

He also said he will swing into “full campaign mode” Jan. 2, intending to work in campaign time before the Senate reconvenes.

Barbour said he made the decision to appoint Wicker on Saturday.

Wicker, 56, became the clear front-runner for the appointment on Friday after Rep. Charles W. “Chip” Pickering Jr. , the other Republican in Mississippi’s four-member House delegation, announced he had asked Barbour to remove his name from consideration. Pickering had announced in August that he would not seek re-election to the state’s 3rd District, citing a desire to spend more time with his family and enter the private sector, but throughout his congressional career he had also publicly expressed a desire to serve in the Senate.

Wicker was first elected to the House in 1994 and served as president of the huge freshman class that helped usher in the first Republican majority in the House in four decades. In his first term, Wicker secured a seat on the influential House Appropriations Committee; he continues to serve there, working to secure federal dollars to his mostly rural district. Wicker sits on the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee and is the ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over military construction and veterans’ affairs.

Wicker will likely be sworn in soon after the Senate reconvenes Jan. 22 to serve until a special election can be held to choose a permanent successor. Barbour said that election will be held Nov. 4, coinciding with the statewide general election and the presidential election.

Some Democrats have cried foul over the Nov. 4 date, claiming it violates a state election law that says a special election must be held within 90 days of the appointment. The Democratic Secretary of State office “agrees” with the Nov. 4 date, but Democratic state attorney general Jim Hood has vowed to legally contest it and the state Democratic Party has expressed a desire to challenge a Nov. 4 election as well.

Democrats also dispute a Nov. 4 election because it offers the interim Republican senator nearly a year of experience in office by the time he runs for the special election.

Lott, the former Senate majority leader, resigned Dec. 18 for “personal reasons” after 19 years in the Senate. Even in a special election, his seat is likely to remain in Republican hands. A Mississippi Democrat has not been elected senator since 1982, when veteran Democratic Sen. John Stennis defeated Barbour.

CQ Politics rates the race Republican Favored.

But Democrats say several candidates could keep the seat in play, including former Govs. Ronnie Musgrove or Ray Mabus. The party lost a potential top-flight candidate when former Democratic state Attorney General Mike Moore announced he would not run for Senate.

State law also requires the governor to call for a special election for the 1st District within 60 days of Wicker’s vacating it. Barbour will be required to choose an election date at least 40 days from the time he ordered the special election. Candidates will be required to file for that race at least 20 days prior to the election.

The northern 1st District takes in Tupelo and Southaven and has a strongly conservative lean though it was once a conservative Democratic stronghold — Democrat Jamie Whitten represented it for more than 53 years (1941-95), the longest House tenure in history. Republican presidential candidates have dominated the ballot in recent years and Wicker has turned the district into a personal stronghold, topping 60 percent of the vote in each of his seven general election campaigns.

Democrats say they stand a fighting chance for overtaking the seat without Wicker on the ballot. Marty Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, told CQ Politics that Democrats may be able to tap into much “latent Democratic support” in northern Mississippi.

Potential Republican candidates include Southaven Mayor Greg Davis and former Tupelo mayor Glenn McCullough, former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority Board.