(Note: these learning modules encompass the
actual class lectures, and are designed for those students who have to miss
class through no fault of their own, and also as a refresher for all students.
Bold print in the notes are what the professor writes on the board.)
Mississippi along with
Alabama are probably the two most Deep South of the Deep South states,
also jokingly referred to as the “buckle” of the Bible Belt. We’ve already
talked at length about the state’s history of white supremacy, racism, and
racial segregation and disfranchisement, so now we can talk about the more modern,
post 1960s era.
Like most southern states, Republicans
in Mississippi made gains in presidential elections before other offices, and
then made gains in congressional races before state elections. Barry Goldwater
in 1964 was the first Republican presidential candidate since Reconstruction to
carry Mississippi, and Nixon won a smashing landslide in his 1972 re-election
bid. When southerner Jimmy Carter ran, he won Mississippi by 1% in 1976 but
then lost it by the same slim margin to Reagan in 1980. After that, the state has
gone consistently Republican in presidential races, presumably because the
average voter is a moderate conservative and state voters view Democratic
presidential candidates as too liberal (our Mississippi polls bear this out).
Democrats kept control of the state’s U.S. senate seats until losing one in
1978 and the other in 1988, and Democrats kept the governorship until losing in
1991. Why did it take Republicans so long to win these non-presidential offices
in Mississippi?
The Mississippi Democrats who
had been elected before the national Democratic Party started moving to the
left in the late 1960s were a pretty conservative bunch, on my five point
ideological scale anywhere from moderate conservative to conservative, and they
did a great job in constituency service and bringing home the federal funds.
Senator John Stennis was elected in 1947, and he was most known for
integrity (campaign pledge- “I will plow a straight furrow right down to the end of the row.”)
Stennis was also well known for being strong on national defense, chairing the
Senate Armed Services Committee. A constituency service example is that he got
Congress to fund the Tenn-Tom waterway by buttonholing his colleagues on the
Senate floor and taking them into a room to show them a film about the expected
economic benefits of the waterway, while his senate friends grabbed the
senators afterwards and begged for support for the aging statesman. Upon his
retirement, Congress not only funded a Stennis Center for Public Service
located in our Research Park, but also named a modern nuclear-powered aircraft
carrier after him (an honor normally reserved for Presidents). The Stennis
Center’s Director is one of our political science undergrads and public
administration graduate alumni, Brian Pugh, one of our many successful alumni
(who is also an African American). There is also a Stennis Institute of
Government on campus (directed by Dallas Breen, another successful alumnus,
this time of our public administration PhD. Program), which was funded by state
taxpayers years before after the Senator was near death from a D.C. mugger’s
bullet. Stennis, an MSU alumnus, was
inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Virginia law school. He was
regarded as a “mild” segregationist rather than a strong segregationist
(Eastland type), as he voted against civil rights bills, expressed opposition
to federal civil rights measures in answering his white constituents’ letters,
but never used racist rhetoric; he also changed after the 1960s, and voted to
renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Stennis had a very dignified, courtly,
southern gentleman manner, with never a negative word about opponents. Meeting
our students in 1988, when asked about Democratic vice-presidential nominee
Senator Lloyd Bentsen (a moderate from Texas, and an expert on economic matters) Stennis responded, “Fine
man, very fine.” When asked about the Republican vice-presidential nominee,
Senator Dan Quayle (from Indiana, a young guy criticized for lacking political
experience), Stennis just said, “Don’t really know him.” Unlike many modern
politicians who seem to lust after public office, Stennis saw it as more of a
trust that he held to serve the interests of Mississippians. When facing a
tough Republican in his last campaign in 1982 (Haley Barbour, actually), his
staff brought him a campaign expert who lectured the Senator on what he needed
to do to win (“This is what we need to do to win!). The distinguished elder
statesman looked at the “expert,” and quietly said, “Young man, you know, we
don’t HAVE to win.” By the 1980s, Stennis’ roll call voting record had moved
from conservative to a moderate conservative orientation. Other notable
Mississippi Democrats who served as U.S. House members until the mid-1990s
included another MSU alumnus, Congressman Sonny Montgomery, who served
in the Army National Guard, was the veteran of two wars, chaired the House
Veterans Affairs Committee, and authored the G.I. Bill of Rights. Another
prominent Democrat was Congressman Jamie Whitten, who represented the 1st
district since 1941, and brought a lot of federal money to Mississippi as Chair
of the House Appropriations Committee. Like Stennis, both House members were
conservative in voting records, but were more moderate conservative in their
final years. In all three cases, when they left office, they were replaced by
conservative Republicans.
So how did Republicans end up winning
control of both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats, given the state’s history of
such electorally strong Democrats? Well, it started with two young lawyers, Thad
Cochran and Trent Lott, who decided to run for Congress in 1972, the year
of Nixon’s landslide re-election. Lott had been Congressman Bill Colmer’s (a
conservative Democrat) staff member, but he and Cochran decided that they were
more ideologically in tune with the national Republican Party. Both got elected
to the House as Republicans, and then easily got re-elected. Senator James
Eastland finally retired in 1978 and endorsed a white Democrat as his
successor, angering African American Democrats who ended up backing a black
independent, Charles Evers (Medgar’s brother). With the normally Democratic
vote split, Congressman Cochran’s 45% got him elected as Senator (However, Cochran
was popular enough in the black community that a two-way race with only one
Democrat would have been a tossup.). Our Mississippi Poll in April of Cochran’s
re-election year of 1984 shocked political observers, as we had Cochran ahead
of highly respected former Democratic governor William Winter by a 60-40 split.
Cochran was a soft-spoken, genial, polite, bright guy, who while conservative
backed other programs that helped his state, such as food stamps, rural
housing, and aid to historically black colleges. He was big on constituency
service; one ad I remember from his first re-election was an ad with a nice
little ole lady who had trouble getting her social security check, and she
looked to Thad, and Thad Delivered! Cochran maintained that kind of persona and
record and his re-elections were indeed landslides (One time at a Pi Sigma
Alpha dinner, his chief of staff, another of our alumni, asked me if we had
done any polling on his upcoming election, and I just laughed and said that he
was so popular that I didn’t even ask about his election.). Cochran’s toughest
race was actually his last, and it was in the Republican primary rather than in
the general election. In 2014 Cochran (whose voting record had become moderate
conservative) was challenged by conservative state senator Chris McDaniel, and
the aging incumbent who did not seem to campaign as much as his challenger
ended up trailing by 1% in the first primary. The more progressive forces in
Mississippi were horrified. All three of the public education boards rejected
McDaniel’s calls for federal spending cuts and endorsed Cochran, and prominent
African American leaders praised the Republican Senator, so he ended up winning
51% in the runoff primary and then easily won the general election.
Cochran resigned his seat in 2018, and Republican governor
Phil Bryant appointed the woman Republican Secretary of Agriculture (a first
for Mississippi, a woman ag secretary) Cindy Hyde-Smith as Interim U.S.
Senator (another first). Hyde-Smith, a farmer, had been honored by the state
farm bureau for her support of agriculture as a Democratic state legislator,
and she had served on Trump’s transition team. Senate Republicans wisely gave
her Cochran’s old important committee assignments- Appropriations and
Agriculture, both important for Mississippi. Hyde-Smith also sat behind swing
Senator Maine’s Susan Collins when Collins gave her speech supporting Trump’s
Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh. Hyde-Smith faced a tough election later that
year against former Congressman Mike Espy, Mississippi’s first African American
Congressman (from the Delta) since Reconstruction, who had served his
constituents of both races so well that he had earned easy re-elections with significant
white farmer support. Hyde-Smith wisely kept Cochran’s key staff members who
had the experience she needed, and her television ads depicted her down-home
farmer roots. The national media highlighted her campaign errors: joking in
Tupelo that she so appreciated one supporter that she’d even attend a “hanging”
if he asked her, and joking to an MSU student that she didn’t want those “liberal”
folks at Ole Miss to vote (the media claimed voter suppression). Hyde-Smith
beat Espy with only a 54% vote, which is primarily because Republicans
outnumber Democrats in party identification terms in Mississippi. So Mike Espy
took his close defeat as a positive and challenged her again in 2020, but lost
by an additional percentage point, perhaps because he stressed liberal national
issues such as Medicaid expansion and racial justice and accepted the support
of such national Democrats as Obama and Biden.
It is interesting that Trent Lott
was always viewed as very ambitious, yet he passed up the open senate seat in
1978 and had to wait ten years until Stennis retired. He didn’t waste time,
though, and rose to the number two GOP position of House Minority Whip. In 1988
he faced a strong Democrat, Congressman Wayne Dowdy, a populist, nice guy, and shake
every hand type of person. Lott though was real quick and bright. I was putting
on a civics seminar in Jackson for high school teachers and Dowdy appeared in
person and answered some questions a little slow; Lott spoke by phone, and he
answered every question immediately and very completely. The bloody campaign
battle included a Dowdy ad that had a chauffeur driven limousine (Lott’s perk for
his House leadership position) driving through small towns and ignoring the
needs of average people. Lott ran an ad with the actual driver George Awkward,
who was an African American; Mr. Awkward explained that he was a D.C. police veteran
and a security guard for Lott and concluded: “I’m nobody’s chauffeur. Got it?”
At one debate, Wayne Dowdy quipped, “Let’s cut George.” Lott blasted Dowdy’s
low attendance record on House roll call votes that year, and deadpanned: “I’ve
got a better idea. Let’s cut Wayne. At least George shows up for work, and he
makes less than you,” and the audience roared. Most importantly, the
conservative Lott hired an advertising firm whose tradename was Dr. Feelgood,
and they ran a number of visually appealing television ads that depicted Lott
as a supporter of college student loans and grants, highway funding, Social
Security, and the environment. It was a competitive race, but Lott won 54%. The
first re-election is usually the toughest one, but Lott’s reelection was in
1994. That was the year of the national Republican landslide in Congress
(Clinton’s first midterm election), and the Democrat went down to defeat as the
national Democratic Party pulled money from his race in a desperate effort to
save their own incumbent Senators. Thus began Mississippi’s other Republican
senator’s easy re-elections.
Lott resigned early in 2008, and Republican governor Haley
Barbour appointed Congressman Roger Wicker as Interim Senator. Wicker is
an interesting guy- he pointed out that his father had been a Democratic
Circuit Judge, but that if he were alive today he would be a Republican. Wicker
was elected as a Republican state senator in 1987 from the very pro-public
education town of Tupelo. He made what I think was a courageous move to support
his constituents instead of the governor of his own party when he supported a
tax increase for education in 1991. In 1994 he won Jamie Whitten’s old U.S.
House seat; his toughest race was just winning the party’s primary against a
more conservative opponent. In the 2008 Senate special election, Wicker faced a
tough Democratic opponent, former governor Ronnie Musgrove. That election
showed how Democrats have been hurt by Republicans being able to “nationalize”
the elections and paint their opponents as “liberals,” as Wicker blasted
Musgrove for accepting campaign donations from liberal interest groups and
linked him to the liberal Democratic D.C. leadership. Wicker also reminded
voters that Musgrove had lost reelection (to Haley Barbour)- that they had
“given him his walking papers.” Wicker has won easy re-elections since then.
Wicker is quite respected in the Senate, serving as Chair of the Armed Services
Committee, and as Chair of the U.S. Helsinki Commission.
The enfranchisement of African Americans after the Voting
Rights Act resulted in the emergence of a biracial Democratic Party that now
controlled state government. In 1971 Mississippi started electing a string of
racial moderates or racial liberals as governors, all governors until 1991 were
Democrats. First came Bill Waller, who as a prosecutor had had the political
courage to try Medgar Evers’ killer (he got hung juries). He was elected with a
biracial coalition of blacks and working-class whites. Waller closed the
notorious Mississippi Sovereignty Commission which had spied on civil rights
workers and had run a “speaker’s bureau” to send state public officials up
North to give speeches supporting the state’s segregated system. He also
started appointing African Americans to state government positions, which all
governors since then of both parties have done. In 1975 Cliff Finch was
elected with a similar biracial coalition; in 1976 he successfully got the
state Democratic party to unite its two racial factions under a co-chairmanship
of one white regular and one black loyalist; the united party enthusiastically
helped Carter win Mississippi. In 1979 Mississippi hit a home run by electing
racial liberal William Winter, though reformer Republican Gil Carmichael
was also a great choice. Winter as governor pushed public education and
confronted the conservative Delta-led state legislature by saying, “It’s
boat-rocking time in Mississippi!” When House Speaker Buddie Newman ignored
members standing to request a vote on Winter’s Education Reform Act and just
walked out on a deadline date, the state exploded. Winter held town hall
meetings across the state pushing his bill, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger printed
the pictures of legislators who had voted against it in what they called their
Hall of Shame, and a national news program highlighted the state’s educational
deficiencies and blamed the Speaker. Winter used our own Mississippi Poll
results showing public support for improving education, called a special
legislative session, and got the 1982 Education Reform Act passed (public
kindergartens, compulsory school attendance law, teacher pay raise, funded with
a tax increase). Winter then ended up chairing a national education reform
commission. In 1983 attorney general Bill Allain got elected after being
the target of the dirtiest campaign I’ve seen; his Republican opponent’s only
issue was claiming that the divorced Allain cruised Farish street in Jackson
picking up male prostitutes, and he even trotted them out (they later recanted).
Allain’s greatest accomplishment was actually as attorney general, when he
filed a successful lawsuit against the state legislature for violating the
state constitution’s separation of powers, which got state legislators kicked
off of executive branch boards and commissions. As governor Allain was a racial
liberal, an economic populist, and very opposed to any tax increase. The
business community hated the state’s absence of four-lane roads (except for the
interstates, and the coast, the only four-lane road was the one going from Starkville
to Columbus) as they were unsafe, so they formed a broad coalition called AHEAD
(Advocating Highways for Economic Advancement) and backed a tax increase. The
state legislature passed the 1987 Highway Bill, which four-laned 1,000 miles of
highways by the year 2000. Allain vetoed it, and the legislature got the
required two-thirds vote to override him. One of the legislative leaders of
this effort was my own student Scott Ross, the youngest man at the time elected
to the legislature; a West Point lawyer, he then became a College Board member,
and then mayor. In 1987 we elected state auditor, Harvard-educated,
pro-education Ray Mabus as governor; another dream election, as the
Republican was Jack Reed, Chair of the state Education Board and an early
supporter of school integration. Mabus tried to enact further education
reforms, but he didn’t want to raise taxes, and the legislature wasn’t willing
to increase user fees or enact a lottery, so nothing got done.
The 1991 election started a string of
Republican governors with only one Democrat victorious. This was the year of
the national recession that caused Bush to lose to Clinton, so Mississippi was
hurting, and education at all levels was being cut. Indeed, a former MSU
President threatened to kill degree programs serving hundreds of students (and fire
tenured professors). Former Congressman Wayne Dowdy challenged Mabus for the
Democratic nomination, and they cut each other up pretty badly. Mabus got
renominated, but with only 51% of the vote in a three-person contest. Instead
of being gracious to his defeated opponent, the arrogant Mabus crowed, “My
victory shows Mississippi is not willing to go backward.” Republicans had
nominated a political unknown, Kirk Fordice, a construction company
owner and Vicksburg GOP activist. Many Dowdy supporters were so turned off by
Mabus that they immediately said that they planned to vote for Fordice. Fordice
shocked everyone by winning, as he ran an outsider campaign- “I’m not a
professional politician, I’m a businessman.” Given the bad economy, people
voted for a change, and got their first Republican governor since
Reconstruction. Fordice was Mississippi’s Donald Trump. He was very outspoken
in his conservatism, joked that he would “call out the National Guard” if any
federal judge required a tax increase to settle the higher education
desegregation lawsuit, and saw the Black Caucus walk out of his State of the
State Address. Once again, the Democratic-controlled legislature showed some
leadership, and raised taxes to prevent any more cuts in elementary, secondary,
and higher education. Fordice vetoed it, and they passed the 1992 tax hike for
education over his veto. My own student, Amy Tuck, who was the youngest female
state senator at the time, provided a key vote supporting education (she went
on to two terms as lieutenant governor). Fordice blasted GOP lawmakers who had
gone against him, calling them “pseudo Republicans” whom he would defeat, but
they got re-elected since they did what their constituents wanted. Fordice’s
greatest accomplishment was to set up a Rainy-Day fund, which is a budgetary
surplus that helps the state when we have hard times (like during recessions).
Fordice got re-elected because of the good economy, as he barely mentioned his
conservative ideology in television ads. He then saw his College Board
nominees, four white male businessmen from the three largest historically white
universities, shot down by the Democratic-controlled legislature (in his
defense, they had been loyal financial supporters of the schools). A little
footnote is that Fordice had a girlfriend, and in one press luncheon he had
boasted that Mrs. Fordice wouldn’t be in the governor’s mansion much longer;
she replied to the press that she wasn’t going anywhere. Enraged Republicans
forced Fordice to buy his own ticket to attend a state party fundraiser held by
presidential hopeful George Bush, and they seated him in the last row. In 1999
Lieutenant Governor and Democrat Ronnie Musgrove got elected. He did
indeed raise teacher salaries significantly, but it came at the expense of
higher education, which saw a big cut. Musgrove also tried to change the state
flag to remove the Confederate emblem; in a 2001 vote, the public voted to keep
the flag.
Republican Haley Barbour beat Musgrove in 2003, as
Musgrove kept running ads claimed that Barbour was a lobbyist whose firm had
“poisoned our kids” by supporting tobacco companies, and in a debate the
sincere Barbour responded by looking at Musgrove and saying to the camera, “We
can do better.” Barbour was an interesting guy. Despite being such a partisan
RNC Chair during the GOP tsunami (landslide) win of 1994, he governing the
state and representing all Mississippians very seriously. He won Governing
magazine’s Public Official of the Year award for his leadership during
Hurricane Katrina. Read his book, America’s Great Storm, for some great tips on
leadership. Interestingly enough, he seems to be the opposite of Trump. Barbour
has only kind words for everyone in his book, and talks about how they helped
our state. One prominent northern liberal Democratic congressman whom he bumped
into in D.C. even offered, “Haley, tell me what you need. I’ll send a letter to
every Democratic congressman.” Barbour worked closely with our congressional
delegation, especially Senator Cochran and his Chief of Staff, our own Dr. Mark
Keenum. Instead of being economically devastated as we had thought, our state
actually got more funds that we had expected if the hurricane had never hit!
After Barbour’s two terms, we saw Lieutenant Governor Phil
Bryant elected in 2011 to the first of two terms. Bryant is also
interesting. He started out as a state legislator and then as state auditor in
the 1990s, and operated in a very non-partisan manner and fought against waste
and fraud in government. As lieutenant governor he led the state senate and
worked closely with Governor Barbour and backed pro-business measures. As
governor, Bryant worked on economic development, and attended many business
openings and expansions across the state. He was also an articulate defender of
the conservative philosophy through his newspaper editorial letters.
Most recently in 2019 we elected Tate Reeves with 53%
of the vote. He had a strong resume of experience, having been a two-term state
treasurer and then a two-term lieutenant governor. Governor Reeves had to cope
with two very divisive issues in his first year- the coronavirus and the state
flag. The liberal national media claimed that Reeves didn’t go far enough
regarding Covid, yet our state’s College Board did shut down our universities
for three months, and cities had the option to go further than state
requirements (Starkville had a mask requirement for businesses). Regarding the
flag, it is interesting to see how the Republican-controlled state legislature
seems to realize that they are responsible for the welfare of our state, given
how the old flag was not only offensive to African Americans but also hurt our economic
development (you all heard about the SEC and NCAA threatened bans on
post-season tournaments?). Late June 2020, the legislature got a two-thirds
vote to take down the old state flag and create a new design; though the No
votes were Republicans, to get a two-thirds vote there had to be a lot of
Republicans favoring a new flag. Conservative Chris McDaniel was a vocal
proponent of the old flag, accusing GOP flag changers of lacking a backbone,
and fellow Republican Jeremy England (another one of our political science
alumni, a Stennis Scholar) stood up to him, called for changing the flag, and
helped shape the final outcome. A front-page picture shows an African American
female state senator hugging a Republican state senator with Senator England
standing next to them. So, what can I say? We live in interesting times!
Indeed, you all have a great future, since this kind of bipartisan cooperation
is a breath of fresh air compared to the divisive partisanship in D.C.
The 2023 governor's
race was pretty close, as Democrats nominated Brandon Presley, the 4-term
Northern District Public Service Commissioner. The religious, pro-life and
pro-gun rights Presley portrayed himself as a "Populist, FDR-Billy McCoy
Democrat" who had worked across the partisan aisle and even voted for
President Bush's re-election. Pledging to fight for the "working
families" by attacking public corruption and backing health care
improvements such as expanding Medicaid, Presley mocked the governor: "I
ain't never owned a tennis racket... I ain't never been a member of a country
club" (Mac Gordon article in the Clarion-Ledger, January 29, 2023,
Democrat Brandon Presley plays populism card in declaring candidacy). The
popular north Mississippi Democrat touted some endorsements from north
Mississippi local Republican officeholders, and worked to stimulate African
American turnout by campaigning at Jackson State University and advertising on
radio stations with largely black audiences. Republican Governor Tate Reeves
argued that "conservative leadership works," as he touted the state's
economic development efforts, such as incentive packages that attracted a $2.5
billion aluminum mill and biocarbon facility and led to other businesses
expanding in the Golden Triangle region. Reeves' bragging on the state's
education advances in 4th and 8th grade reading were even praised by the
founder of the California Reading Coalition. Reeves also blasted his Democratic
opponent as being supported by a "radical, vicious" national party
that believed that "taxes are good, boys are girls, and our state and
nation is racist" (Ed Inman May 4, 2023 article in the Clarion Ledger,
Reeves kicks off reelection bid by touting agenda to bring jobs). Reeves pulled
out a 50.9% to 47.7% victory, a narrow 3.2% edge that showed that Democrats
could be competitive with a strong candidate and sufficient campaign support.
It is interesting to observe how Mississippi today produces important national-level leaders. We talked about Senator John Stennis' leadership on national security issues, and Governor William Winter's role in national education reform. First elected to the U.S. House in the GOP landslide year of 1994 (when Haley Barbour was RNC Chair), Roger Wicker was elected by his peers as Chairman of the Republican freshman class, and serves as the highly respected chair of the Armed Services Committee. State Attorney General Lynn Fitch spearheaded the case that led to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade (returning the abortion issue to the states), and Auditor Shad White (a Rhodes Scholar) was president of the conservative Federalist Society at Harvard Law School. African American Democrats born or raised in Mississippi have also risen to important leadership roles. Congressman Bennie Thompson chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and chaired the effective January 6 Committee on the Attack of the Capitol, and Georgia voting rights activist Stacey Abrams contributed to the Democratic capture of the U.S. senate (as Democrats won both of Georgia's senate seats in 2020). As I have kept mentioning our own successful MSU graduates, I believe that all of you have similar great potential to make a real positive difference in the future of our nation.