Mississippi Today

Gov. Tate Reeves taps another major campaign donor for government appointment

Published

2 years ago

March 23, 2023

Gov. Tate Reeves taps another major campaign donor for government appointment

by Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today
March 23, 2023

Gov. Tate Reeves has appointed one of his top campaign donors to the Mississippi Gaming Commission, growing a list of Reeves insiders who have received government jobs in his first term in office.

Reeves appointed Kent Nicaud, the president and CEO of Gulfport Memorial Hospital, to serve the remainder of the term of former Gaming Commissioner Al Hopkins, who died in February.

If Nicaud is confirmed, he would join another major Reeves donor on the three-member Gaming Commission. The governor appointed Franc Lee, a payday loan magnate and Reeves’ largest individual donor, to the commission in 2021.

Gaming commissioners receive a modest salary from taxpayers — $40 per day — and are reimbursed by the state for travel and meals. The commission is tasked with regulating the casino gaming industry, which brings the state hundreds of millions in tax revenue each year. That revenue has become necessary to fund basic public services across Mississippi.

Nicaud has been one of Reeves’ top donors over the past few years, writing checks totaling more than $100,000, including $41,000 in 2022 alone. Nicaud’s fundraising influence led Reeves to appoint him to his gubernatorial campaign finance committee in 2019.

Reeves also appointed Nicaud’s wife Jenny Nicaud as an administrative law judge for the Mississippi Workers Compensation Commission in 2021. Kent and Jenny Nicaud’s son Jourdan Nicaud has also been a campaign donor to the governor, giving at least $36,000 to Reeves since 2018.

With the appointments, Reeves is growing the list of his personal campaign donors who have later been appointed to taxpayer-funded government positions by the governor.

Another one of Reeves’ pending appointments is Gerard Gibert, the host of a conservative Supertalk Mississippi radio show and regular campaign donor of Reeves. Gibert, first appointed to the Mississippi Lottery Corporation board by former Gov. Phil Bryant, was reappointed by Reeves this year after writing several checks to Reeves’ campaign accounts since 2017.

In 2021, Reeves appointed three campaign donors to the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees — among the state’s most coveted government appointments — and two campaign donors to the Mississippi Community College Board.

Businessman Johnny McRight gave Reeves $50,000 in the four years before his 2021 IHL appointment. Businessman Luke Montgomery gave Reeves $14,500 in the years before his 2021 MCBB appointment.

Gregg Rader, a Columbus businessman, gave Reeves $85,000 in the months leading up to his 2021 IHL appointment. And Rader has continued the flow of money to Reeves’ campaign coffers even after his appointment, writing another $30,000 check to the governor in 2022.

William Symmes, a Gulfport lawyer appointed by Reeves to the MCCB in 2021 after a small 2020 donation to the governor, acknowledged in an interview at the time that his personal connections to Reeves led to his appointment, but said it is logical the governor would pick people who know and support him.

“Obama said it best: ‘Elections have consequences,’” Symmes told Mississippi Today in 2021. “I think that one of those consequences is you’re able to put people around you that you feel comfortable and work well with.”

Mississippi Today reached out to Reeves’ office before this story published and asked why the governor appointed Nicaud to the Gaming Commission. We also asked what Reeves would say to taxpayers who are funding his campaign insider appointments during his first term as governor.

“Mississippi Today is not a news organization, it is an unregistered Democrat super PAC and obviously acting like one again today,” Reeves’ deputy chief of staff Cory Custer said in an emailed statement, declining to answer the questions.

Nicaud faces Senate confirmation before he can assume the Gaming Commission post. He would finish out the term of Alben “Al” Hopkins, who was first appointed to the commission by former Gov. Phil Bryant in 2015 and died in February 2023.

In 2022, Reeves reappointed Hopkins, who faced some political heat in the Senate before ultimately being confirmed for a new term.

Just a few months before Reeves reappointed Hopkins, the Reeves campaign cashed a check: $1,000 from Alben Hopkins LLC.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1906

Published

3 hours ago

January 22, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-22 07:00:00

Jan. 22, 1906

Willa Beatrice Brown served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. Credit: Wikipedia

Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky.

While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.”

In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S.

She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen.

In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics.

After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Stories Videos

Mississippi Stories: Michael May of Lazy Acres

Published

19 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – rlake – 2025-01-21 14:51:00

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey takes a trip to Lazy Acres. In 1980, Lazy Acres Christmas tree farm was founded in Chunky, Mississippi by Raburn and Shirley May. Twenty-one years later, Michael and Cathy May purchased Lazy Acres. Today, the farm has grown into a multi seasonal business offering a Bunny Patch at Easter, Pumpkin Patch in the fall, Christmas trees and an spectacular Christmas light show. It’s also a masterclass in family business entrepreneurship and agricultural tourism.

For more videos, subscribe to Mississippi Today’s YouTube channel.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1921

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-21 07:00:00

Jan. 21, 1921

George Washington Carver Credit: Wikipedia

George Washington Carver became one of the first Black experts to testify before Congress.

His unlikely road to Washington began after his birth in Missouri, just before the Civil War ended. When he was a week old, he and his mother and his sister were kidnapped by night raiders. The slaveholder hired a man to track them down, but the only one the man could locate was George, and the slaveholder exchanged a race horse for George’s safe return. George and his brother were raised by the slaveholder and his wife.

The couple taught them to read and write. George wound up attending a school for Black children 10 miles away and later tried to attend Highland University in Kansas, only to get turned away because of the color of his skin. Then he attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, before becoming the first Black student at what is now Iowa State University, where he received a Master’s of Science degree and became the first Black faculty member.

Booker T. Washington then invited Carver to head the Tuskegee Institute’s Agriculture Department, where he found new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops.

In the past, segregation would have barred Carver’s testimony before Congress, but white peanut farmers, desperate to convince lawmakers about the need for a tariff on peanuts because of cheap Chinese imports, believed Carver could captivate them — and captivate he did, detailing how the nut could be transformed into candy, milk, livestock feed, even ink.

“I have just begun with the peanut,” he told lawmakers.

Impressed, they passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922.

In addition to this work, Carver promoted racial harmony. From 1923 to 1933, he traveled to white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Time magazine referred to him as a “Black Leonardo,” and he died in 1943.

That same year, the George Washington Carver Monument complex, the first national park honoring a Black American, was founded in Joplin, Missouri.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.