Mississippi Today
‘It is so different this year’: John Grisham gives Brandon Presley supporters even more hope for an upset
Welcome to The Homestretch, a daily blog featuring the most comprehensive coverage of the 2023 Mississippi governor’s race. This page, curated by the Mississippi Today politics team, will feature the biggest storylines of the 2023 governor’s race at 7 a.m. every day between now and the Nov. 7 election.
One of the best-selling authors in the world put it succinctly on Wednesday night: Brandon Presley’s 2023 bid for governor feels different than the many Democratic Party losses of recent years.
“Every four years for a long time, Renee and I have been back here in Jackson raising money trying to get the Governor’s Mansion back,” John Grisham told more than 100 people gathered for a Presley fundraiser he hosted at Iron Horse Grill in downtown Jackson. “And every four years, we lose. But this is different. It is so different this year. There’s a great candidate, a great stump speech, a great story, a great family, and great ideas.”
Grisham has built a legendary career of thrilling readers with fiction set in Mississippi — stories rooted in backroom politics, moral justice and unexpected twists. But he sure wasn’t spinning a tale Wednesday night.
Anyone following Presley’s bid to unseat incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves the past few weeks knows the author is right about the difference this go-round. Presley this year has raised $5 million more than Reeves, one of the state’s best political fundraisers in history. Polling from Democrats and Republicans suggests Reeves is struggling to hit the 50% mark and has dismal favorability ratings, and Presley is within striking distance.
Republican Party leaders and surrogates have launched into an all-out blitz of get-out-the-vote efforts, expressing outward concern that Reeves is not drawing necessary enthusiasm from Republican Party voters.
“The way we end up with a liberal governor is that Republicans assume we win,” Barbour told radio host Paul Gallo in September. “I’m talking to you on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi … We’ve got to run the score up down there because there are going to be other parts of the state, like the Delta, where Brandon Presley is gonna run the score up.”
Democratic Party forces, likewise, have activated in profound ways. Presley’s campaign has picked up an impressive level of grassroots support, and the millions of dollars pumped in from the Democratic Governors Association sure won’t hurt his ground game.
But even the Mississippi Democratic Party, for several years close to dormant, has sprung into action the past few months. Democrats have attracted high-profile politicians to help campaign from DeSoto County to Harrison County, working to turn out voters for Presley and others progressives down ticket. Congressman Bennie Thompson and other prominent elected Dems are working hard to turn out Black voters, who make up the base of the state Democratic Party and could easily vault Presley to victory.
And anyone who watched the first and only debate between Presley and Reeves on Wednesday night saw the difference firsthand. The candidates stood face-to-face in a cold television studio, but they may as well have been in a boxing ring. They didn’t literally swing at each other, but they got mighty close a few times.
Both took some big blows from one another, but Presley’s jabs of the governor were sharp, deliberate and immediate (it took him four seconds of speaking before lobbing his first criticism at Reeves). Presley landed more punches overall than Reeves, and the Democrat was clearly the better prepared. He weaved in bits of humanity and forward-looking policy ideas with the attacks.
Reeves froze up and tripped over words several times, repeated himself many times, and talked little about future ideas, instead choosing to dwell on many of the same successes he’s highlighted for several years.
Both campaigns afterward — as they always do — claimed victory, but Presley’s seemed most justified.
“Tonight, we showed the contrast in what the last four years have looked like and what the next four years will look like,” Presley told his supporters after arriving post-debate to the Grisham-hosted fundraiser. “(Reeves) came out there tonight needing a win, and he lost. He needed it and he didn’t get it.”
But despite the momentum, Presley still has a mountain to climb. He’s facing a Republican Party machine that hasn’t lost since 1999, a major name ID problem, attack ads painting him as an out-of-touch liberal beholden to out-of-state liberal interests, and a GOP electorate that adores former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Reeves this week.
Still, he’s trying to leverage his campaign’s recent wins and call his supporters to action.
“We’ve got five days left in this campaign,” Presley said to the room Wednesday night. “Bear Bryant won a lot of football games, and he was interviewed one time and asked, “Coach, how do you keep winning?’ He said, ‘We do the little things right, and we give it a little something extra.’ What I’m asking you to do between tonight and Tuesday night at 7 o’clock is to do the little things, and a little something extra…
“More importantly than anything else, please contact your neighbors and family. This race is tied … If everybody in this room talks to two people in the next five days, that’s 10 votes. This room could be the margin of victory Tuesday night. … We are going to win this election … We’re going to turn that Governor’s Mansion back over to the people.”
Headlines From The Trail
Absentee balloting is low as Mississippi general election nears
Only debate of Mississippi governor’s race brings insults and interruptions from Reeves and Presley
What it takes for a Democrat to be competitive in the Deep Red South
Campaign conversations: Tate Reeves talks his journey to Governor
Democrats are holding their own in Kentucky and Mississippi
What We’re Watching
1) Where will Reeves and Presley spend the final five days of the campaign? The answer to this question may provide hints about what they’re worried about and what vulnerabilities might exist. Both candidates have been tearing up the campaign trail over the past few weeks, and this weekend is their last chance to meet voters where they are.
2) How will the Trump endorsement of Reeves play? We’ve reported several times that Republican consultants are worried about Republican voter enthusiasm and turnout. Might Trump, whose favorability numbers do appear lower in Mississippi than they were four years ago when he visited Mississippi to campaign for Reeves, be the solution to that concern?
3) If you missed the debate, Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender has an excellent and pretty detailed summary. A big lingering question that we may never know the answer to: Did undecideds move because of what they saw and heard in the debate? Recent polls have shown between 7-10% are still undecided. That’s the difference in a close race.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1997
Dec. 22, 1997
The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers.
In the court’s 4–2 decision, Justice Mike Mills praised efforts “to squeeze justice out of the harm caused by a furtive explosion which erupted from dark bushes on a June night in Jackson, Mississippi.”
He wrote that Beckwith’s constitutional right to a speedy trial had not been denied. His “complicity with the Sovereignty Commission’s involvement in the prior trials contributed to the delay.”
The decision did more than ensure that Beckwith would stay behind bars. The conviction helped clear the way for other prosecutions of unpunished killings from the Civil Rights Era.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Medicaid expansion tracker approaches $1 billion loss for Mississippi
About the time people ring in the new year next week, the digital tracker on Mississippi Today’s homepage tabulating the amount of money the state is losing by not expanding Medicaid will hit $1 billion.
The state has lost $1 billion not since the start of the quickly departing 2024 but since the beginning of the state’s fiscal year on July 1.
Some who oppose Medicaid expansion say the digital tracker is flawed.
During an October news conference, when state Auditor Shad White unveiled details of his $2 million study seeking ways to cut state government spending, he said he did not look at Medicaid expansion as a method to save money or grow state revenue.
“I think that (Mississippi Today) calculator is wrong,” White said. “… I don’t think that takes into account how many people are going to be moved off the federal health care exchange where their health care is paid for fully by the federal government and moved onto Medicaid.”
White is not the only Mississippi politician who has expressed concern that if Medicaid expansion were enacted, thousands of people would lose their insurance on the exchange and be forced to enroll in Medicaid for health care coverage.
Mississippi Today’s projections used for the tracker are based on studies conducted by the Institutions of Higher Learning University Research Center. Granted, there are a lot of variables in the study that are inexact. It is impossible to say, for example, how many people will get sick and need health care, thus increasing the cost of Medicaid expansion. But is reasonable that the projections of the University Research Center are in the ballpark of being accurate and close to other studies conducted by health care experts.
White and others are correct that Mississippi Today’s calculator does not take into account money flowing into the state for people covered on the health care exchange. But that money does not go to the state; it goes to insurance companies that, granted, use that money to reimburse Mississippians for providing health care. But at least a portion of the money goes to out-of-state insurance companies as profits.
Both Medicaid expansion and the health care exchange are part of the Affordable Care Act. Under Medicaid expansion people earning up to $20,120 annually can sign up for Medicaid and the federal government will pay the bulk of the cost. Mississippi is one of 10 states that have not opted into Medicaid expansion.
People making more than $14,580 annually can garner private insurance through the health insurance exchanges, and people below certain income levels can receive help from the federal government in paying for that coverage.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, legislation championed and signed into law by President Joe Biden significantly increased the federal subsidies provided to people receiving insurance on the exchange. Those increased subsidies led to many Mississippians — desperate for health care — turning to the exchange for help.
White, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, Gov. Tate Reeves and others have expressed concern that those people would lose their private health insurance and be forced to sign up for Medicaid if lawmakers vote to expand Medicaid.
They are correct.
But they do not mention that the enhanced benefits authored by the Biden administration are scheduled to expire in December 2025 unless they are reenacted by Congress. The incoming Donald Trump administration has given no indication it will continue the enhanced subsidies.
As a matter of fact, the Trump administration, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is looking for ways to cut federal spending.
Some have speculated that Medicaid expansion also could be on Musk’s chopping block.
That is possible. But remember congressional action is required to continue the enhanced subsidies. On the flip side, congressional action would most likely be required to end or cut Medicaid expansion.
Would the multiple U.S. senators and House members in the red states that have expanded Medicaid vote to end a program that is providing health care to thousands of their constituents?
If Congress does not continue Biden’s enhanced subsidies, the rates for Mississippians on the exchange will increase on average about $500 per year, according to a study by KFF, a national health advocacy nonprofit. If that occurs, it is likely that many of the 280,000 Mississippians on the exchange will drop their coverage.
The result will be that Mississippi’s rate of uninsured — already one of the highest in the nation – will rise further, putting additional pressure on hospitals and other providers who will be treating patients who have no ability to pay.
In the meantime, the Mississippi Today counter that tracks the amount of money Mississippi is losing by not expanding Medicaid keeps ticking up.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1911
Dec. 21, 1911
Josh Gibson, the Negro League’s “Home Run King,” was born in Buena Vista, Georgia.
When the family’s farm suffered, they moved to Pittsburgh, and Gibson tried baseball at age 16. He eventually played for a semi-pro team in Pittsburgh and became known for his towering home runs.
He was watching the Homestead Grays play on July 25, 1930, when the catcher injured his hand. Team members called for Gibson, sitting in the stands, to join them. He was such a talented catcher that base runners were more reluctant to steal. He hit the baseball so hard and so far (580 feet once at Yankee Stadium) that he became the second-highest paid player in the Negro Leagues behind Satchel Paige, with both of them entering the National Baseball Hame of Fame.
The Hall estimated that Gibson hit nearly 800 homers in his 17-year career and had a lifetime batting average of .359. Gibson was portrayed in the 1996 TV movie, “Soul of the Game,” by Mykelti Williamson. Blair Underwood played Jackie Robinson, Delroy Lindo portrayed Satchel Paige, and Harvey Williams played “Cat” Mays, the father of the legendary Willie Mays.
Gibson has now been honored with a statue outside the Washington Nationals’ ballpark.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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