Rep. Gene Taylor, Mississippi Democrat, on May 4:

What I want people to know is this isn’t Katrina. This is not Armageddon. I did this for the Coast Guard many years ago. Yeah, it’s bad. And it’s terrible that there’s a spill out there. But I would remind people that the oil is twenty miles from any marsh. . . . That chocolate milk looking spill starts breaking up in smaller pieces . . . It is tending to break up naturally.

Gene Taylor, now, as quoted in the Biloxi Sun Herald article entitled No skimmers in sight as oil floods into Mississippi waters:

A morning flight over the Mississippi Sound showed long, wide ribbons of orange-colored oil for as far as the eye could see and acres of both heavy and light sheen moving into the Sound between the barrier islands. What was missing was any sign of skimming operations from Horn Island to Pass Christian.
U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor got off the flight angry.
‘It’s criminal what’s going on out there,’ Taylor said minutes later. ‘This doesn’t have to happen.’

The Republican running against Taylor is Steven Palazzo.

Steven Palazzo: Because Mississippi needs a congressman who won’t compare the region’s worst environmental crisis to a kid’s drink.