Family Values Rule In Miss.

Two candidates who carefully touted family values will face each other in the campaign to succeed Gov. Kirk Fordice, whose extramarital affair rocked the state and stole headlines all summer.

Lt. Gov. Ronnie Musgrove easily won Tuesday's eight-person Democratic primary while Mike Parker, a former congressman, pulled off a surprise by avoiding a runoff in the six-man GOP contest.

Both campaigns were often overshadowed by Fordice, the state's first GOP governor since Reconstruction, who is barred from seeking a third term. He vacationed in France this summer with his junior high sweetheart and later announced that he would divorce his wife of 44 years and marry the woman.

Virtually all the primary candidates made a point of boasting about their strong marriages, happy children and small-town values.

Â"The people of this state have been begging for a long time for the politicians of this state to run a clean campaign,Â" Parker, 49, told cheering supporters at his victory party in Jackson.

Parker, whose humorous ads featured armadillos, said Mississippians Â"are fed up with people who try to jerk your emotions.Â" He said clean campaigns are Â"what we've always done, that's what we've done this time, we're going to keep that up.Â"

Even Fordice got in the act, showing up at Parker's victory rally with a hand-held fan sporting the picture of an armadillo.

Musgrove, 43, said voters responded to his campaign on such issues as education, health care and better paying jobs.

Â"We ran our race the way we said we would from the beginning, talking about the issues,Â" he said. Â"We're ecstatic that the people felt our message was their message because it is.Â"

Musgrove won the nomination outright by getting more than half the vote. Other Democrats on the ballot included a white supremacist and a woman whose campaign was marred by her prosecution for a fourth drunken-driving charge.

In the GOP race, Parker narrowly avoided a runoff with former Lt. Gov. Eddie Briggs, who lost to Musgrove in 1995.