Mississippi Today
Rowdy Neshoba County Fair attendees show that bitter race for governor is officially in full swing
NESHOBA COUNTY FAIR — The sheer intensity of crowd interaction at the Neshoba County Fair on Thursday largely overshadowed the traditional stump speeches from the two leading candidates for governor, signaling the arrival of an intense election cycle that will grip the state for the next four months.
Hundreds of supporters of incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic candidate Brandon Presley filled the Founder’s Square benches and fiercely interacted with the two candidates in a way that hasn’t been seen at the event in recent years.
Reeves’ supporters repeated loud “Tate!” chants during the governor’s speech, while Presley’s supporters shouted “Let’s go, Brandon!” when the Democrat delivered his 10-minute stump. And, at certain points, the two factions engaged in chant battles.
When Presley asked the crowd who they trusted to stand up for working Mississippians, Reeves’ faction shouted “Tate” to dump cold water on the Democrat’s speech.
And when Reeves concluded his speech, Presley supporters shouted, “Lock him up,” an apparent extension of their attempt to tie the governor to the welfare scandal, though prosecutors have not charged the governor with any crime connected to the issue.
The first-term governor, at one point during his speech, even used his allotted time to engage in a back-and-forth with a Presley supporter who was standing near the stage.
“To support him, you’ve got to believe we are on the wrong track,” Reeves said to the supporter. “You’ve got to believe that our culture is wrong and that our values are bad. You want to say yes to that, sir, because you believe it? You believe it, don’t you?”
While neither candidate delivered any new policy pitches, their messaging and starkly differing views of Mississippi’s present and future became crystal clear under the blistering July heat at one of the state’s longest-running political traditions.
Reeves staunchly defended his record as a conservative leader and attacked Democratic Party values while Presley attempted to cast the governor as a derelict politician who is numb to the difficulties average Mississippians deal with.
Reeves, running for a second term, rattled off accomplishments over the last four years, including recruiting new jobs to the state and improving education test scores.
“To hear Brandon’s fiction, Mississippi is just not doing well,” Reeves said. “It’s all my fault. … He said, and I quote, ‘Under Tate Reeves’ leadership, we are moving in the wrong direction.’ That’s what Brandon Presley says. The math says that’s pure fiction.”
Presley, the current utility regulator for north Mississippi, panned the governor for not doing enough to keep health care infrastructure in the state from deteriorating and again reiterated to reporters his support for expanding Medicaid coverage to the working poor.
“Much like Nero of old, he’s fiddling while our hospitals are burning to the ground, and he doesn’t care,” Presley said of Reeves.
Reeves called Presley’s Medicaid expansion push a “welfare check” to poor Mississippians and later told reporters he believed the better approach was for more Mississippians to obtain private insurance coverage that tied to their careers.
The governor also tied Presley, a moderate Democrat, with other liberal candidates across the nation, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, common rhetoric Reeves has used during the campaign.
Presley rejected that notion and said the governor was using that tactic as a smokescreen to keep from discussing real campaign issues.
Typical publicity stunts also made their way to the fairgrounds, with two Presley supporters donning orange jumpsuit costumes mimicking prison inmates to symbolize two of the governor’s donors who have pleaded guilty to crimes connected to the state’s welfare scandal.
The Wednesday speeches marked a rare instance in which all three GOP candidates for governor appeared in the same location.
Reeves is expected to capture the Republican nomination in the Aug. 8 primary election, though his two GOP opponents, David Hardigree and John Witcher, also delivered stump speeches on Wednesday.
Hardigree, a retired military member, advocated for new efforts to crack down on crime throughout the state, and Witcher, a doctor, said he would work to enact conservative social policies such as putting Bibles in public school classrooms.
The winner of the primary will compete against Presley, the only Democratic candidate, in the general election on Nov. 6.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1865
Dec. 24, 1865
Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others.
While the first wave of the KKK operated in the South through the 1870s, the second wave spread throughout the U.S., adding Catholics, Jews and others to their enemies’ list. Membership rose to 4 million or so.
The KKK returned again in the 1950s and 1960s, this time in opposition to the civil rights movement. Despite the history of violence by this organization, the federal government has yet to declare the KKK a terrorist organization.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
An old drug charge sent her to prison despite a life transformation. Now Georgia Sloan is home
CANTON – Georgia Sloan is home, back from a potentially life-derailing stint in prison that she was determined to instead make meaningful.
She hadn’t used drugs in three years and she had a life waiting for her outside the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women in Pearl: a daughter she was trying to reunite with, a sick mother and a career where she found purpose.
During 10 months of incarceration, Sloan, who spent over half of her life using drugs, took classes, read her Bible and helped other women. Her drug possession charge was parole eligible, and the Parole Board approved her for early release.
At the end of October, she left the prison and returned to Madison County. The next day she was back at work at Musee, a Canton-based bath products company that employs formerly incarcerated women like Sloan and others in the community facing difficulties. She first started working at the company in 2021.
“This side of life is so beautiful. I would literally hold on to my promise every single minute of the day while I was in (prison),” Sloan told Mississippi Today in December.
Next year, she is moving into a home in central Mississippi, closer to work and her new support system. Sloan plans to bring her daughter and mother to live with her. Sloan is hopeful of regaining custody of her child, who has been cared for by her aunt on a temporary basis.
“This is my area now,” she said. “This has become my family, my life. This is where I want my child to grow up. This is where I want to make my life because this is my life.”
Additionally, Sloan is taking other steps to readjust to life after prison: getting her driver’s license for the first time in over a decade, checking in monthly with her parole officer and paying court-ordered fines and restitution.
In December 2023, Sloan went to court in Columbus for an old drug possession charge from when she was still using drugs.
Sloan thought the judge would see how much she had turned her life around through Crossroads Ministries, a nonprofit women’s reentry center she entered in 2021, and Musee. Her boss Leisha Pickering who drove her to court and spoke as a witness on Sloan’s behalf, thought the judge would order house arrest or time served.
Instead, Circuit Judge James Kitchens sentenced her to eight years with four years suspended and probation.
He seemed doubtful about her transformation, saying she didn’t have a “contrite heart.” By choosing to sell drugs, Kitchens said she was “(making) other people addicts,” according to a transcript of the Dec. 4, 2023, hearing.
“I felt like my life literally crumbled before my eyes,” Sloan said about her return to prison. “Everything I had worked so hard for, it felt like it had been snatched from me.”
She was taken from the courtroom to the Lowndes County Detention Center, where she spent two months before her transfer to the women’s prison in Rankin County.
Sloan found the county jail more difficult because there was no separation between everyone there. But the prison had its own challenges, such as violence between inmates and access to drugs, which would have threatened her sobriety.
She kept busy by taking classes, which helped her set a goal to take college courses one day with a focus on business. Visits, phone calls and letters from family members and staff from Musee and Crossroads were her lifeline.
“I did not let prison break me, I rose above it, and I got to help restore other ladies,” Sloan said.
She also helped several women in the prison get to Crossroads – the same program that helped her and others at Musee.
Sloan credits a long-term commitment to Crossroads and Musee for turning her life around – the places where she said someone believed in her and took a chance on her.
Pickering, Musee’s CEO, said in the three years she’s known Sloan, she’s watched her grow and become a light for others.
The bath and lifestyle company has employed over 300 formerly incarcerated women in the past dozen years, but Pickering said not everyone has had the same support, advocacy and transformation as Sloan. Regardless, Pickering believes each person is worth fighting for.
When Sloan isn’t traveling for work to craft markets with Pickering, she shares an office with her Musee colleague Julie Crutcher, who is also formerly incarcerated and a graduate of Crossroads’ programs. She also considers Crutcher a close friend and mentor.
Sloan has traveled to Columbus to see her mother and daughter whom she spent Thanksgiving with. She will see them again for Christmas and celebrate her daughter’s 12th birthday the day after.
Her involvement with the criminal justice system has made Sloan want to advocate for prison reform to help others and be an inspiration to others.
“I never knew what I was capable of,” Sloan said. “I never knew how much people truly, genuinely love me and love being around me. I never knew how much I could have and how much I could offer the world.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1946
Dec. 23, 1946
University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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