Local first-term senator Melanie Sojourner certainly isn’t earning favors with some voters.

On the heels of learning that Sojourner has been playing a good bit of hooky from her responsibility representing local residents in the Mississippi Senate, she’s under fire again.

This time, she’s taking heat for potentially fouling up a possible $6 million project to renovate Natchez’s Margaret Martin Performing Arts Center, a designated Mississippi Landmark.

Former Sen. Bob M. Dearing, the man who Sojourner beat for her seat, claims the reason the $6 million line item was removed from a state bond bill was she voted against the original bill.

Interestingly, only three senators voted against the original bond bill, two of which were Sojourner and her real boss, U.S. Senate hopeful Chris McDaniel. Sojourner has been working on McDaniel’s campaign.

Sojourner defends the vote against the bill by referring to it as the state’s “credit card debt.”

We appreciate what she claims to have been trying to do, but in some ways, she’s simply thrown away her vote.

In the process of trying to make a Tea Party political statement, she may in fact have harmed the chance for state help in the renovation of a building that has been deemed of significant importance, not just to Natchez, but the entire state.

We chalk that up to inexperience on her part, and we hope on future such votes she considers all of the constituents she represents, not merely a small faction.