Ag Comm race: The Musgrove doctrine for Spell?

Regardless the outcome, Agriculture Commissioner Lester Spell trailed all Republican statewide candidate in the general election and his race is going down to the wire against two candidate who had no money, no financial backing from their parties and no political "coattails" to ride.
Spell will either be re-elected by a razor-thin majority or his race will be decided by the House. In 1999, the Democrat-controlled House elected Democrat Ronnie Musgrove governor because they said the man with the most votes should win when no candidate gets a majority.
Will the Democrat-controlled House maintain that same posture if Republican Spell gets the most votes in a plurality victory? If they don't, they will have some explaining to do.
It's no secret I didn't vote for Lester Spell and wouldn't have whether he ran as a Democrat or a Republican. He hasn't been a good manager of the agency. A failed goat plant, a failed beef plant, agency funds lost in the goat plant failure and state funds lost in the beef plant failure. Plus, he wasn't man enough to acccept responsibility for his role in the beef plant's failure.
The fact that he tried to blame it on Mississippi State University was particularly galling to me and should be to MSU alumni everywhere.
But if Spell leads the plurality tonight without winning the majority of the vote, he should be declared the winner by the House. If the House doesn't abide by the policy they invoked in 1999, they will be hypocrites of the higher order. If the man who gets the most votes win was a good policy for Democrat Musgrove, if should be a good policy for Republican Spell in 2007.