The runoff election was won by Attorney General William Allain, who defeated former Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Gandy.

In the campaign, the private detective Rex Armistead, formerly with the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, helped to spread rumors that Allain had sexual intercourse with two African-American male transvestites.

[7] Gil Carmichael, who defeated Bramlett for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in a very close race in 1979, ran in 1983 for lieutenant governor as a low-budget independent candidate in an apparent attempt to gain a larger share of the African-American vote against the incumbent Democrat Brad Dye, who prevailed with 464,080 votes (64.3 percent) to Carmichael's 257,623 (35.7 percent).

Bramlett, spending over $1.1 million total (and outspending Allain as well)[8] outpolled Carmichael by just over 31,000 votes when both were on the ballot as de facto ticket mates.

[11] The allegations and the 1983 campaign have been covered in several works, including William Franklin West's 1995 master's thesis, The Case of the Reluctant Story: The Allain Sex Scandal; a chapter in Jere Nash and Andy Taggart's Mississippi Politics; and several pages in John Howard's 199 book on gay history in Mississippi, Men Like That.