Tchula Mayor Yvonne Brown, the Republican nominee challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson in the Nov. 7 general election was quietly asked to leave an event in Vicksburg Friday in which Thompson was the featured speaker, Brown said.

As the seven-term incumbent was set to address this year’s annual meeting of the Communication Workers of America’s Mississippi chapter, Brown greeted Thompson as he entered the Mississippi Room at Battlefield Inn. Minutes later, Brown said, she was approached by the group’s state legislative and political coordinator Ron Tyree.

&#8220He said he was instructed to tell me that some of the delegates felt uneasy with me being there,” Brown said by phone about 2:30 p.m. Friday, roughly an hour after the program was over.

Brown identified one of those delegates as Brenda Scott, president of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees.

Though the luncheon was an invitation-only event, press releases announcing it were sent to various media outlets throughout the state. Brown said she appeared at the event as a guest of Stephen Scales, president of the Corinth chapter of CWA.

Neither Tyree nor Scales immediately returned calls for comment.

Brown, 53, said she thought there was an understanding that she would only observe and not ask questions of Thompson.

&#8220He would have done better by just ignoring me,” she said.

Brown, a two-term mayor of the small Holmes County town of about 2,300, was unopposed for the Republican nomination to run against Thompson, who bested state Rep. Chuck Espy of Clarksdale by a 2-to-1 margin in the Democratic primary June 6.

When contacted Friday afternoon for comment, Thompson’s press secretary, I. Lanier Avant, said from his Washington, D.C., office, &#8220This was not a Congressman Thompson-sponsored event. He was not in charge of allowing or disallowing those in attendance.”

During his speech, Thompson, 58, spoke of his near-perfect voting record on labor issues. He said his support from organized labor was &#8220absolutely critical” in his primary victory over Espy.

&#8220If you want something done right, you gotta get a union person to do it,” Thompson said.

He also touted his stance against free trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement he has voted against.

A supporter of efforts to raise the minimum wage, which has stood at $5.15 since 1997, Thompson said the move by House Republicans to link an incremental hike to a bill which would have also cut inheritance taxes for wealthier Americans helped kill the bill.

&#8220The richest 1 percent would have gotten another tax break,” he said.

The bill, which proposed to raise it to $7.25 incrementally over the next three years, passed the House last week, but fell four votes shy of passage in the Senate.

Raising the minimum wage must be a freestanding bill, Thompson said.

Thompson is a former Hinds County supervisor and Bolton mayor. He was first elected to Congress in a 1993 special election after then-U.S. Rep. Mike Espy resigned to become President Clinton’s first secretary of agriculture.