Mississippi Today
Brandon Presley’s ominous prediction in 2003 car ride is still haunting Mississippi Democrats
In 2003, incumbent Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove flew into Tupelo to campaign in the final days before the November general election.
Among those meeting Musgrove at the Tupelo Municipal Airport was 26-year-old Brandon Presley, the mayor of nearby Nettleton.
Presley was there to host Musgrove as he campaigned in the area. At the airport, a Musgrove staffer asked a reporter traveling with the governor to report on the campaign if he would mind riding in the car with Presley because a New York Times reporter wanted some alone time with Musgrove.
The reporter, who had been traveling with Musgrove daily during the final days of the campaign, did not object to the request. On the ride from the airport to the first stop — a Nettleton furniture plant — Presley entertained the reporter and others in the car, mimicking first the high-pitched Southern drawl of Musgrove followed by the deep Southern drawl of Haley Barbour, the 2003 Republican nominee for governor.
Later, leaving the furniture plant for the next destination, a Musgrove campaign staffer said the New York Times reporter was finished with his interview and the Mississippi reporter could ride with Musgrove to the next destination.
“That’s all right. I will ride with Brandon,” the reporter replied.
Besides his comedy routine, Presley also provided political commentary that October day. He said the 2003 governor’s election would be a watershed event. If Barbour, a Yazoo City native who had made his name as a Washington lobbyist and national political operative, won the election, Presley surmised, it would usher in a period of dark days for Mississippi Democrats.
Presley predicted that if Musgrove lost that election, it would be many years before a Democrat would win a Mississippi governor’s race. Presley said Democrats could not lose the rural white vote in areas like where he lived in northeast Mississippi and still win statewide.
The 26-year-old mayor proved that day to be both a good comedian and a keen political observer.
Musgrove lost the 2003 election in what was until 2023 the most expensive in state history. That 2003 election still is a high watermark for turnout in a Mississippi’s governor’s election.
Since then, a Democrat has not resided in the Governor’s Mansion. In 2003 as Presley made his observation, so-called rural white Democrats from northeast Mississippi dominated the Legislature, but they began to slowly be replaced by Republicans taking advantage of the modern, sophisticated campaign strategy Barbour brought back from D.C. to his native Mississippi.
Today, Sen. Hob Bryan of Amory, whose district includes Presley’s hometown of Nettleton, is the only rural white Democrat left in northeast Mississippi. Bryan won reelection on Nov. 7 and remains the only Democrat in the Legislature representing a white majority district.
It would have been ironic if Brandon Presley, a four-term public service commissioner from northeast Mississippi, would have been the first Democrat to win the office of governor since he made his foretelling observation during that watershed 2003 campaign. As it turned out, Presley, like another northeast Mississippi native, former state Attorney General Jim Hood, fell short in their quest to become the first Democratic governor elected since 1999. And just like Musgrove way back in 2003, both Hood in 2019 and Presley this year lost by about 5 percentage points.
And also like Musgrove in 2003 and Hood in 2019, Presley lost northeast Mississippi, where Musgrove was campaigning on that bright, cloudless October day.
In his 1999 victory, Musgrove won northeast Mississippi — once known as home of the so-called Roosevelt Democrats who believed government had a role to play in lifting up communities economically. At one time, a Democrat could capture statewide office by winning in northeast Mississippi and in the majority-Black areas of the state.
But Democrats can no longer piece together such a winning alliance. That coalition, as it turns out, was slipping away in 2003 when Musgrove and Presley traveled through Tupelo and down state Highway 6 to Nettleton.
Don’t be surprised if Presley tries again to end that 2003 self-fulfilling prophecy.
“I am not walking off the political stage,” he said this week, not ruling out another run for governor in 2027.
But at least for the next four years, his 2003 prediction remains true for Mississippi Democrats.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Central, south Mississippi voters will decide judicial runoffs on Tuesday
Some Mississippi voters head to the polls Tuesday to decide who should represent them on the state’s highest courts.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Absentee voting has begun, and in-person absentee voting at county circuit clerk’s offices ends at noon on Saturday.
In the Jackson Metro area and parts of central Mississippi, incumbent Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens will compete against Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Neshoba County. In areas on the Gulf Coast, Jennifer Schloegel and Amy St. Pé will face each other for an open seat on the Court of Appeals.
Candidates for judicial offices in Mississippi are technically nonpartisan, but political parties and trade associations often contribute money to candidates and cut ads for them, which has increasingly made them almost as partisan as other campaigns.
In the Central District Supreme Court race, GOP forces are working to oust Kitchens, one of the dwindling number of centrist jurists on the high Court. Conservative leaders also realize Kitchens is next in line to lead the court as chief justice should current Chief Justice Mike Randolph step down.
Kitchens is one of two centrist members of the high court and is widely viewed as the preferred candidate of Democrats, though the Democratic Party has not endorsed his candidacy.
Kitchens, first elected to the court in 2008, is a former district attorney and private-practice lawyer. On the campaign trail, he has pointed to his experience as an attorney and judge, particularly his years prosecuting criminals and his rulings on criminal cases.
In an interview on Mississippi Today’s ‘The Other Side’ podcast, Kitchens said his opponent, who primarily practices real estate law, would be at a “significant disadvantage” because the state Supreme Court often reviews criminal cases and major civil lawsuits that are sent to them on appeal.
“I’m sure she has an academic knowledge about the circuit courts that she perhaps learned in law school or perhaps has been to some seminars, but she does not have the hands-on trial experience that I have,” Kitchens said. “And that’s so important to the work that I do.”
Branning, a private-practice attorney, was first elected to the Legislature in 2015. She has led the Senate Elections and Transportation committees. During her time at the Capitol, she has been one of the more conservative members of the Senate leadership, voting against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem, voting against expanding Medicaid to the working poor and supporting mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime.
While campaigning for the judicial seat, she has pledged to ensure that “conservative values” are always represented in the judiciary, but she has stopped short of endorsing policy positions — which Mississippi judicial candidates are prohibited from doing.
Branning declined an invitation to appear on Mississippi Today’s podcast.
“Mississippians need and deserve Supreme Court justices that are constitutionally conservative in nature,” Branning said in a recent interview with radio station SuperTalk Mississippi. “And by that, I mean justices that simply follow the law. They do not add or take away.”
The two candidates have collectively raised around $187,00 and spent $182,00 during the final stretch of the campaign, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Secretary of State’s office.
Since she initially qualified in January, Branning has raised the most amount of money at $879,871, with $250,000 of that money coming from a loan she gave her campaign. She spent around $730,000 of that money. Several third party groups have supported her campaign.
Kitchens has raised around $514,00 since he qualified for reelection. He’s spent roughly $436,000 of that money, and some of his top contributors have been trial attorneys.
For the open Court of Appeals seat, Schloegel and St Pe, two influential names on the Gulf Coast, are working to turn out their voters in a close election.
Schloegel is a Chancery Court judge in Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties. St. Pé is an attorney in private practice, a municipal court judge in Gautier, and a city attorney for Moss Point.
Schloegel has raised roughly $214,000 since she qualified, and has spent almost that same amount of money this election cycle. St. Pé has raised around $480,000 this year and spent approximately $438,067 during that timeframe.
Whoever wins the race, it ensures that a woman will fill the open seat. After the election, half of the judges on the 10-member appellate court will be women, the most number of women who have served on the court at one time.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
Nov. 22, 1961
Five Black students, made up of NAACP Youth Council members and two SNCC volunteers from Albany State College, were arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Trailways station in Albany, Georgia.
The council members bonded out of jail, but the SNCC volunteers, Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall declined bail and “chose to remain in jail over the holidays to dramatize their demand for justice,” according to SNCC Digital Gateway. The president of Albany State College expelled them.
Gober became one of SNCC’s Freedom Singers and wrote the song, “We’ll Never Turn Back,” after the 1961 killing of Herbert Lee in Mississippi. The tune became SNCC’s anthem.
After her release from jail, Gober joined other students, and police arrested her and other demonstrators. Back in the same jail, she sang to the police chief and mayor to open the cells, “I hear God’s children praying in jail, ‘Freedom, freedom, freedom.’”
Albany State suspended another student, Bernice Reagon, after she joined SNCC. She poured herself into the civil rights movement and later formed the Grammy-nominated a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock to educate and empower the audience and community.
“When I opened my mouth and began to sing, there was a force and power within myself I had never heard before,” a power she said she did not know she had.
Other members of the Freedom Singers included Cordell Reagon, Bernice Johnson, Dorothy Vallis, Rutha Harris, Bernard Lafayette and Charles Neblett. On the third anniversary of the sit-in movement in 1963, they performed at Carnegie Hall.
“This is a singing movement,” SNCC leader James Forman told a reporter. “The songs help. Without them, it would be ugly.”
Today, the Albany Civil Rights Institute houses exhibits on these protesters, Martin Luther King Jr. and others who joined the Albany Movement.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
IHL deletes the word ‘diversity’ from its policies
The governing board of Mississippi’s public universities voted Thursday to delete the word “diversity” from several policies, including a requirement that the board evaluate university presidents on campus diversity outcomes.
Though the Legislature has not passed a bill targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the changes “in order to ensure continued compliance with state and federal law,” according to the board book.
The move comes on the heels of the re-election of former President Donald Trump and after several universities in Mississippi have renamed their diversity offices. Earlier this year, the IHL board approved changes to the University of Southern Mississippi’s mission and vision statements that removed the words “diverse” and “inclusiveness.”
In an email, John Sewell, IHL’s communications director, did not respond to several questions about the policy changes but wrote that the board’s goal was to “reinforce our commitment to ensuring students have access to the best education possible, supported by world-class faculty and staff.”
“The end goal is to support all students, and to make sure they graduate fully prepared to enter the workforce, hopefully in Mississippi,” Sewell added.
On Thursday, trustees approved the changes without discussion after a first reading by Harold Pizzetta, the associate commissioner for legal affairs and risk management. But Sewell wrote in an email that the board discussed the policy amendments in open session two months ago during its retreat in Meridian, more than an hour away from the board’s normal meeting location in Jackson.
IHL often uses these retreats, which unlike its regular board meetings aren’t livestreamed and are rarely attended by members of the public outside of the occasional reporter, to discuss potentially controversial policy changes.
Last year, the board had a spirited discussion about a policy change that would have increased its oversight of off-campus programs during its retreat at the White House Hotel in Biloxi. In 2022, during a retreat that also took place in Meridian, trustees discussed changing the board’s tenure policies. At both retreats, a Mississippi Today reporter was the only member of the public to witness the discussions.
The changes to IHL’s diversity policy echo a shift, particularly at colleges and universities in conservative states, from concepts like diversity in favor of “access” and “opportunity.” In higher education, the term “diversity, equity and inclusion” has traditionally referred to a range of efforts to comply with civil rights laws and foster a sense of on-campus belonging among minority populations.
But in recent years, conservative politicians have contended that DEI programs are wasteful spending and racist. A bill to ban state funding for DEI in Mississippi died earlier this year, but at least 10 other states have passed laws seeking to end or restrict such initiatives at state agencies, including publicly funded universities, according to ABC News.
In Mississippi, the word “diversity” first appeared in IHL’s policies in 1998. The diversity statement was adopted in 2005 and amended in 2013.
The board’s vote on Thursday turned the diversity statement, which was deleted in its entirety, into a “statement on higher education access and success” according to the board book.
“One of the strengths of Mississippi is the diversity of its people,” the diversity statement read. “This diversity enriches higher education and contributes to the capacity that our students develop for living in a multicultural and interdependent world.”
Significantly, the diversity statement required the IHL board to evaluate the university presidents and the higher learning commissioner on diversity outcomes.
The statement also included system-wide goals — some of which it is unclear if the board has achieved — to increase the enrollment and graduation rates of minority students, employ more underrepresented faculty, staff and administrators, and increase the use of minority-owned contractors and vendors.
Sewell did not respond to questions about if IHL has met those goals or if the board will continue to evaluate presidents on diversity outcomes.
In the new policy, those requirements were replaced with two paragraphs about the importance of respectful dialogue on campus and access to higher education for all Mississippians.
“We encourage all members of the academic community to engage in respectful, meaningful discourse with the aim of promoting critical thinking in the pursuit of knowledge, a deeper understanding of the human condition, and the development of character,” the new policy reads. “All students should be supported in their educational journey through programming and services designed to have a positive effect on their individual academic performance, retention, and graduation.”
Also excised was a policy that listed common characteristics of universities in Mississippi, including “a commitment to ethnic and gender diversity,” among others. Another policy on institutional scholarships was also edited to remove a clause that required such programs to “promote diversity.”
“IHL is committed to higher education access and success among all populations to assist the state of Mississippi in meeting its enrollment and degree completion goals, as well as building a highly-skilled workforce,” the institutional scholarship policy now reads.
The board also approved a change that requires the universities to review their institutional mission statements on an annual basis.
A policy on “planning principles” will continue to include the word “diverse,” and a policy that states the presidential search advisory committees will “be representative in terms of diversity” was left unchanged.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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