Mississippi Today
Should Tate Reeves be concerned about Republican voter enthusiasm?

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.
Longtime Republican politico Henry Barbour, about a month ago in a radio interview, might as well have lit a fuse tied to the backsides of every political operative in Mississippi.
“The way we end up with a liberal governor is that Republicans assume we win,” Barbour told radio host Paul Gallo on Sept. 14. “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.”
Barbour, the nephew of a founding father of the modern Republican Party and a well-connected lobbyist who certainly knows a thing or two about what it takes to win a governor’s race, continued.
“So we need big turnout, we need people to get fired up, to lean on their neighbors and friends. The best way to get someone to vote is not a TV ad or a radio ad, heaven forbid. It’s peer to peer, it’s talking to somebody they know like their neighbor and encouraging them that hey, we’ve got to run because this is important. It’s about the future of our state and our children.”
The speculation Barbour’s comment stirred in mid-September among the Jackson political class was loud and sustained, but the consensus among them: Reeves, facing at least a decent challenge from Democrat Brandon Presley, might not have this governor’s race wrapped in a bow like his allies had been projecting for months.
If Reeves struggles on Nov. 7, it’ll almost certainly be because, in large part, Republican voters weren’t excited about heading to the polls. That shouldn’t necessarily read as support for Presley or for his positions, but the Democrat sure could benefit from lackluster turnout in GOP strongholds — and especially in the three Gulf Coast counties.
Another longtime GOP operative put it this way this week: “I can’t remember a statewide election cycle when a Republican had a tough challenge and so few Republican voters seemed to care.”
So why the dull feelings for Republican voters this go-round? Well, it’s not just this go-round for Reeves. To put it bluntly, it might just be that voters don’t like him all that much.
For three-plus years, Reeves has polled as one of the most unpopular governors in the nation. He got just 51.9% of the vote in 2019 in ruby red Mississippi against Democratic challenger Jim Hood. For reference, Republican President Donald Trump earned 57.6% in Mississippi the very next year. For even further reference, former Republican Gov. Phil Bryant earned 61% of the vote against Democrat Johnny Dupree in 2011 and 66% against Democrat Robert Gray in 2015.
As Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Taylor Vance have reported, Reeves has been sharply criticized in his first term by both the political left and the political right. Here’s what two of Mississippi’s most prominent far right conservatives have said about Reeves’ 2023 candidacy in recent days:
- Chris McDaniel, the state senator who unsuccessfully ran three times for statewide or federal office: “There is an overall unease about everything. There’s some dissatisfaction out there, but not necessarily with (Reeves) but just the political climate … There is a chance that could equate to lower turnout (of conservative voters). Low turnout would be trouble for everyone. Our models are usually based on having good turnout.”
- Robert Foster, who unsuccessfully ran against Reeves in 2019: “While most conservative Christians I know have forgiven (Reeves) for his emotional rather than rational actions during the COVID hysteria, we haven’t forgotten how he mishandled it. He issued many unconstitutional mandates and gave tiny tyrants all over the state unbridled power, and they abused it. They used it to hurt small businesses. They used it to hurt our elderly in nursing homes and our helpless children in schools and daycares. They even used it to close churches for a short time. I for one think a public apology is not only due but possibly necessary for many to consider voting for him to be our governor again and not skipping the race altogether on the ballot in November.”
Presley would argue that low potential GOP turnout on Election Day is not just about Tate’s general likability on the right. The Democratic nominee has spent millions pointing out Reeves’ ties to the very well-known welfare scandal, Reeves’ inaction on the very well-known hospital crisis, and Reeves’ refusal to expand Medicaid to provide at least 200,000 working poor Mississippians with health care. All three of those issues have polled off the charts in Presley’s favor this year.
Meanwhile, Presley is getting what appears to be unprecedented support from Black Democrats across the state. Much will be written about this in the coming days, but Black voters are the base of the Mississippi Democratic Party, period.
If the recent coordinated work of Black political leaders, pastors and community activists produces the results they’re hoping, and Republicans stay home for whatever reason, the evening of Nov. 7 might be a long one for Reeves.
Headlines From The Trail
It’s official: Democrat Brandon Presley fulfills promise to campaign in all 82 counties
Proceed with caution on what 2023 races tell us
Gov. Reeves tours Jones College, talks health care
Fact check: Did Gov. Reeves keep Mississippi ‘open for business’ during pandemic?
$44 million approved for 15 RESTORE Act projects in Mississippi
Port Gibson benefits from Delta Regional Authority’s new investments
What We’re Watching
1) Regarding that potential Gulf Coast problem: Reeves on Thursday announced funding for 15 new projects for the Gulf Coast. Reeves’ administration manages a huge pot of federal settlement funds the state received after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill gutted the Gulf Coast. And in his first term as governor, he has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars for specific Coast projects. It should be noted that any governor would have the power to do this, and Coast-based projects have to receive the funding. But Reeves has masterfully played these “look what I’m doing for the Coast” cards many, many times over the past few years, and it undoubtedly helps him with everyday Coast voters.
2) What’s the extent of runoff preparations being made by the campaigns? Click this link to read about the potential runoff and how it’s being discussed currently, but having to prepare for a runoff while in the homestretch could certainly be a huge distraction for already stretched-thin campaign teams.
3) What about debate prep? Reeves may take the strategy of setting low expectations. In his Neshoba County Fair speech in late July, he actually directly took a self-deprecating approach about his less-than-stellar public speaking skills. Presley, on the other hand, is known in political circles as an effective communicator. How much might debate prep time ahead of the Nov. 1 throw-down on live TV keep the candidates off the trail?
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session
Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.
Senate leaders, on the last day of their regular 2025 session, decided not to send a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves that would have expanded pre-Election Day voting options. The governor has been vocally opposed to early voting in Mississippi, and would likely have vetoed the measure.
The House and Senate this week overwhelmingly voted for legislation that established a watered-down version of early voting. The proposal would have required voters to go to a circuit clerk’s office and verify their identity with a photo ID.
The proposal also listed broad excuses that would have allowed many voters an opportunity to cast early ballots.
The measure passed the House unanimously and the Senate approved it 42-7. However, Sen. Jeff Tate, a Republican from Meridian who strongly opposes early voting, held the bill on a procedural motion.
Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England chose not to dispose of Tate’s motion on Thursday morning, the last day the Senate was in session. This killed the bill and prevented it from going to the governor.
England, a Republican from Vancleave, told reporters he decided to kill the legislation because he believed some of its language needed tweaking.
The other reality is that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves strongly opposes early voting proposals and even attacked England on social media for advancing the proposal out of the Senate chamber.
England said he received word “through some sources” that Reeves would veto the measure.
“I’m not done working on it, though,” England said.
Although Mississippi does not have no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, it does have absentee voting.
To vote by absentee, a voter must meet one of around a dozen legal excuses, such as temporarily living outside of their county or being over 65. Mississippi law doesn’t allow people to vote by absentee purely out of convenience or choice.
Several conservative states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, have an in-person early voting system. The Republican National Committee in 2023 urged Republican voters to cast an early ballot in states that have early voting procedures.
Yet some Republican leaders in Mississippi have ardently opposed early voting legislation over concerns that it undermines election security.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate
Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.
House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.
The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers followed hours of heated debate in which Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. They also said the bill could bog universities down with costly legal fights and erode academic freedom.
Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.
“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.'”
Legislative Republicans argued that the measure — which will apply to all public schools from the K-12 level through universities — will elevate merit in education and remove a list of so-called “divisive concepts” from academic settings. More broadly, conservative critics of DEI say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life.
“We are a diverse state. Nowhere in here are we trying to wipe that out,” said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the bill’s authors. “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.”
The House and Senate initially passed proposals that differed in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system. Some House leaders wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge. The Senate wanted to pair a DEI ban with a task force to study inefficiencies in the higher education system, a provision the upper chamber later agreed to scrap.
The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.
The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the measure but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, parents of minor students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law.
People could only sue after they go through an internal campus review process and a 25-day period when schools could fix the alleged violation. Republican Rep. Joey Hood, one of the House negotiators, said that was a compromise between the chambers. The House wanted to make it possible for almost anyone to file lawsuits over the DEI ban, while Senate negotiators initially bristled at the idea of fast-tracking internal campus disputes to the legal system.
The House ultimately held firm in its position to create a private cause of action, or the right to sue, but it agreed to give schools the ability to conduct an investigative process and potentially resolve the alleged violation before letting people sue in chancery courts.
“You have to go through the administrative process,” said Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd, one of the bill’s lead authors. “Because the whole idea is that, if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.”
If people disagree with the findings from that process, they could also ask the attorney general’s office to sue on their behalf.
Under the new law, Mississippi could withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. Schools would be required to compile reports on all complaints filed in response to the new law.
Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other laws in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers made plans to introduce anti-DEI legislation.
The policy debate also unfolded amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, had branded Hosemann in the months before the 2025 session “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature.
During the first Senate floor debate over the chamber’s DEI legislation during this year’s legislative session, Hosemann seemed to be conscious of these political attacks. He walked over to staff members and asked how many people were watching the debate live on YouTube.
As the DEI debate cleared one of its final hurdles Wednesday afternoon, the House and Senate remained at loggerheads over the state budget amid Republican infighting. It appeared likely the Legislature would end its session Wednesday or Thursday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown.
“It is my understanding that we don’t have a budget and will likely leave here without a budget. But this piece of legislation …which I don’t think remedies any of Mississippi’s issues, this has become one of the top priorities that we had to get done,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “I just want to say, if we put that much work into everything else we did, Mississippi might be a much better place.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget
The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.
Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.
The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend.
House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session.
“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.”
But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.
The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.
The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass.
Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget.
“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said.
The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.
But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.
The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.
The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session.
But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget.
On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.
If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later.
“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said.
If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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