Mississippi Today
Analysis: Democrats have a ceiling, Republicans keep their lock on Coast and DeSoto County
A pattern has developed for statewide Democratic candidates in Mississippi: They hit a ceiling of about 47% of the vote, no matter how hard they campaign or how much money they spend.
And populous DeSoto County and the Gulf Coast appear impenetrable for a Democrat. Even Northeast Mississippi, once a “yellow dog” stronghold, is becoming that way.
While election results still are trickling in, it appears that in Tuesday’s election for governor Democrat Brandon Presley performed at about the same level as Jim Hood did in 2019, despite raising and spending about at least $5 million more on his campaign.
RESULTS: Mississippi’s general election 2023
Hood, a four-term state attorney general from northeast Mississippi, lost to Gov. Tate Reeves in 2019. And Presley, a four-term public service commissioner from northeast Mississippi, lost to Reeves on Tuesday. And that aforementioned pattern is not confined to just the governor’s elections. In 2020, Democrat Mike Espy lost to Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in an outcome that was eerily similar.
Democrats in those races bumped up against the 47% mark against their Republican foes, making the election close enough to be interesting. But close losses in elections do not reap many rewards.
The trend endured by Democrats in recent elections actually began in the watershed 2003 gubernatorial election, when many observers say that Haley Barbour, a Washington lobbyist and political operative from Yazoo City, brought modern campaigning to Mississippi and upended incumbent Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.
In that election, Musgrove lost 53% to 46% (there was an independent siphoning a few votes) in what is still the highest general election turnout in a state election in Mississippi history.
While Democratic presidential candidates have garnered more votes, it appears that in an election for a statewide office, Hood in 2019 is still the top vote-getter for a Democrat. He garnered 414,368 votes in 2019. In an incomplete and unofficial tally Wednesday morning, Presley was at 370,000, although thousands more votes are likely to be added over the next few days.
Republican Phil Bryant garnered the most votes for governor in the modern era with 544,851 votes against Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree in 2011.
In three races after the 2003 contest, Democrats fielded candidates with limited funding and not much statewide recognition. This dry spell culminated with Robert Gray, a truck driver who had never run a campaign and was not even in state to vote for himself in his victorious Democrat primary, being the nominee in 2015.
But in 2019, Hood, who had won four statewide campaigns for attorney general, gave Democrats hope. And Democrats went into this Tuesday’s election with optimism, hoping the charismatic and surprisingly well-funded Presley could build on Hood’s performance from 2019. After all, Presley, thanks in large part to the Democratic Governors Association, was able to outmatch Reeves’ fundraising prowess — a rare feat for a Democrat in Mississippi. And in 2019, Hood did win some majority white counties, which also provided hope for Democrats.
Hood, for instance, was the first Democrat since 1987 to win Madison County, a Jackson suburb. Hood also won Lafayette and Oktibbeha — two predominantly white counties, but homes of major universities that include a higher percentage of college-educated residents who are more likely to vote Democratic. On Tuesday, Presley lost Lafayette and Madison, albeit by narrow margins. He kept Oktibbeha in the Democratic column. He also picked up Lowndes, a county with a plurality white population that Hood did not win in 2019.
But in the end, the differences in the losses for Hood and Presley — just as the loss by Musgrove way back in 2003 — were differences without much distinction.
Some additional takeaways from Tuesday’s gubernatorial election:
- Hinds County is fast becoming statewide Democrats’ last and only populous stronghold. Reeves took back Madison County on Tuesday after Hood won it in 2019. Take away Hinds County’s large Democratic vote, and a statewide Democrat stands no chance with today’s Mississippi electoral maps.
- It would appear record levels of spending by both Reeves and Presley resulted in only mediocre voter turnout. Spending totals by the campaigns will likely top $20 million, and outside interests poured in millions more. Much of this went to mudslinging ads. This did not appear to motivate voter turnout greatly on either side.
- The Trump effect is still there, but to what extent? Democratic and Republican polling leading up to the election showed the Reeves-Presley race much tighter than it played out, and Republicans were extremely worried about anemic turnout. But Reeves got a late endorsement by former President Donald Trump. Trump remains popular in Mississippi, and it’s certain this helped Reeves, but the extent will likely never be known.
- A Democratic candidate could use help from a third-party one. Given that 46%-47% ceiling, pushing to a runoff might offer a Democrat a better chance. Many politicos believed Presley’s best chance at survival Tuesday night was for little-known independent Gwendolyn Gray (who had dropped out but was still on the ballot) to siphon votes from Reeves and force a runoff between the Republican and Democrat. But that math required Gray to pull around 3% of the vote, and take it mostly from Reeves. Instead, Gray earned 1.4%, and appeared to take quite a few votes from Presley as well — perhaps in protest to negative campaigning.
- The Coast remains ruby red. Presley campaigned hard on the Coast, attempting to turn out Black voters particularly in Harrison and Jackson counties and a fairly sizable union shipyard vote. But Reeves still ran the tables there, picking up a nearly 19,000 vote margin, only slightly smaller than his Coast take in 2019.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Gov. Reeves announces $110 million in economic development efforts
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday announced that state agencies are disbursing over $110 million toward economic development, infrastructure upgrades and workforce development around the state.
The funding for the projects is coming from the state Legislature, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission and the federal government.
“We’ve secured billions in new private-sector investment and created thousands of jobs across the state,” Reeves said. “The funding we announced today will go a long way toward continuing Mississippi’s economic momentum and will help create more high-paying job opportunities for Mississippians across the state.”
The bulk of the spending will go toward developing and improving industrial sites, which are often used to entice manufacturing companies to locate or expand operations in the state. If these sites have adequate infrastructure near them, companies are more likely to locate there.
Despite new investment in the state, Mississippi continues to grapple with one of the lowest rates in the nation of people who are actively seeking work or employed, at 53.9%.
State Economist Corey Miller said at a legislative hearing last week that one of the reasons Mississippi is also experiencing a relatively low unemployment rate of 2.8% is because people have stopped looking for jobs.
Reeves said on Wednesday that Mississippi may have a low percentage of people looking for jobs because the state has a relatively low cost of living and some families can afford to have only one income.
“If an individual doesn’t want a job, the government ain’t going to force them to get a job,” Reeves said. “And that’s just a reality.”
Still, the governor believes Mississippi can improve its labor force participation rate by improving education and providing people with better work skills.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Groups seek a new hearing on a Mississippi mail-in ballot lawsuit
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel incorrectly interpreted federal and state laws when it ruled that Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that are cast and postmarked by Election Day but arrive a few days later, two groups argue as they seek a new hearing.
Attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans are asking the entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling that a portion of the court issued Oct. 25.
The ruling did not affect the counting of ballots for the Nov. 5 election because the three-judge panel noted that federal court precedents discourage court actions that change established procedures shortly before an election.
However, the case could affect voting across the U.S. if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.
The attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans argue in court papers filed Friday that the panel of judges “incorrectly suggested that post-election day ballot receipt deadlines are a recent invention.”
“In fact, the practice of counting ballots cast by election day but received afterward goes back to the Civil War, when many states permitted soldiers to vote in the field before sending their ballots to soldiers’ home precincts,” attorneys for the two groups wrote.
Many states have laws that allow counting of ballots that are cast by Election Day but received later, the attorneys wrote.
“Far from making any attempt to preempt these laws, Congress has acknowledged and approved of them for more than five decades,” they wrote.
The three-judge panel of the conservative appeals court reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi’s election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others.
Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, wrote on his election law blog that the ruling by the appeals court panel was a “bonkers opinion” and noted that “every other court to face these cases has rejected this argument.”
Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.
The list of states that allow mailed ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day includes swing states such as Nevada and states such as Colorado, Oregon and Utah that rely heavily on mail voting.
In July, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit over counting mailed ballots in Nevada. The Republican National Committee has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to revive that case.
Guirola wrote that Mississippi’s law does not conflict with federal election laws. The suit challenging the Mississippi law argued that the state improperly extends the federal election and that, as a result, “timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.”
Guirola disagreed, writing that “no ‘final selection’ is made after the federal election day under Mississippi’s law. All that occurs after election day is the delivery and counting of ballots cast on or before election day.”
Although the Mississippi challenge was led by Republicans and Libertarians, there is bipartisan support for the state’s practice. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch is defending the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Michael Watson, in the lawsuit. Both are Republicans.
Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Surely, Shorty Mac would have an opinion on the LSU tiger controversy
There’s been quite the controversy next door in Louisiana where, at Gov. Jeff Landry’s insistence, a live tiger was on display in Tiger Stadium last Saturday night at an LSU football game for the first time in eight years.
Tiger or not, Alabama pummeled LSU 42-13. Since then, Landry has defended the renting a tiger named Omar Bradley from a Florida exotic zoo to put on display at the game.
Mike the Tiger — actually, this was was Mike VI — died in 2016, and LSU decided to end the practice of having a live tiger present at football game. It was part of the lore of Tiger Stadium and it could be intimidating for opposing players: a huge, growling Tiger parked right outside the visitor’s locker room. Usually, there was a microphone in the cage.
Take the case of the late, great Thomas “Shorty” McWilliams, Mississippi State superstar of the mid-1940s, who played as an 18-year-old freshman for the first time at Tiger Stadium on Oct. 21, 1944. Old as I am, I am too young to have ever seen McWilliams play, but I wish I had. My daddy told me he was the best player he ever saw, and he saw thousands in a life of following football. I know this: The man they called “Shorty Mac” was the only four-time All-SEC player in league history, and it’s difficult to imagine in today’s college football landscape there’ll ever be another one.
What follows is the story, told firsthand by Shorty Mac, when he was interviewed in 1995 by the good folks at Communications Arts who were putting together exhibits for the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum. To set the stage, McWilliams was punting out of the end zone, near the visitor’s locker room at Tiger Stadium, in pregame warm-ups.
We’ll let Shorty Mac take it from there: “Unbeknownst to me, they rolled up Mike the Tiger in that cage right behind me. I didn’t know he was there and that 500-pound tiger roared. Oh, he roared at the top of his lungs. It scared me so bad. It scared the (bleep) out of me. I ruined myself. I had to play the whole game in those pants.”
You can watch and listen to McWilliams tell that and other stories on the football kiosk at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum. Now then, here’s the rest of the story from that night in Baton Rouge. Shorty Mac apparently recovered nicely from that pregame scare. He scored both touchdowns in a 13-6 Mississippi State victory over Coach Bernie Moore’s Tigers, who included a young quarterback named Y.A. Tittle, later one of the great NFL stars of the 20th century. Afterward, Moore told reporters the only way to stop McWilliams “is to not schedule Mississippi State. He killed our defense.”
McWilliams was the game’s leading rusher and passer. Indeed, he led the SEC in scoring with 84 points as a freshman. McWilliams played the 1945 season at Army, then returned to State to play his final three seasons of college football.
Back to the present: Gov. Landry, speaking Monday night, said he regretted that the live tiger was the only tiger who showed up for the Alabama game, which was every bit as one-sided as the final score indicates. As reported in The Athletic, Landry said, “I had more people come up to me saying they remembered Mike the Tiger more than some of the great plays in Tiger Stadium… It’s about tradition. At the end of the day, the woke people have tried to take tradition out of this country. It’s tradition that built this country.”
I won’t take a side in that controversy, but I sure would love to here what Shorty Mac would say.
Two more Shorty Mac vignettes before we close:
- The late Dick Smith, a sports writer and later a newspaper owner, told me about one of Shorty’s games at Meridian High in 1943. “Meridian was playing Tupelo for the Big Eight Conference championship,” Smith said. “The first seven times Shorty touched the ball, he scored. Short runs, long runs, kick returns, didn’t matter. Every time he got the ball he scored. The eighth time he touched it, he ran 70 yards until he pulled his hamstring and went down on the two-yard line. By then, Meridian was so far ahead, they didn’t need him.”
- The late Edward “Cookie” Epperson told me this one at Shorty Mac’s funeral in January 1997. Epperson was Shorty’s roommate at State and one of his best pals. Said Epperson: “Shorty was enjoying a hot shower after practice when a couple of players sneaked an opossum into the shower with him. That possum hissed and Shorty flew out of there. He didn’t bother to get his clothes or even a towel. He ran past the secretary and on outside. He never ran faster.”
Shorty Mac wasn’t afraid of the biggest, baddest linebackers, but he apparently did fear critters whether they roared or hissed.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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