(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.)

LEARNING MODULE: WEEK 9, Mississippi- Modern Mature Republicans

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. We’ve already had a question on the last test about Mississippi, so I don’t expect you’ll have any more questions about Mississippi.

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?

Well, 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 most known for being strong on national defense, chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee. Constituency service- 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 African American alumni. There is also a Stennis Institute of Government on campus, which was funded by state taxpayers earlier after the Senator was near death from a D.C. mugger’s bullet. Stennis, an MSU alumnus, was inducted in 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, expert at economic issues) 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 his constituents. 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. 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. Congressman Jamie Whitten represented the 1^st district since 1941, and brought a lot of federal money to Mississippi as Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Like Stennis, both 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 a history of such electorally strong Democrats? Well, it started with two young lawyers, Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, deciding 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. Big Jim 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 (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 succeeding re-elections were cakewalks (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 bother anymore.). Cochran’s toughest race was actually his last, and it was in the Republican primary rather than in a 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 Senator, and he ended up winning 51% in the runoff primary and then easily won the general election. He ended up resigning in 2018, and Republican governor Phil Bryant appointed the woman Republican Secretary of Agriculture (there’s a first, 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 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 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 won easy re-elections with much white farmer support. Hyde-Smith wisely kept Cochran’s key staff members who had the experience she needed, and her television ad 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 (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.

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, shook 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 appeared 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 of leadership) driving through small towns and ignoring the needs of average people. Lott ran an ad with the actual George Awkward, who was an African American; he explained that he was a D.C. police veteran and a security guard for Lott and responded: “I’m nobody’s chauffeur. Got it?” At one debate, Dowdy quipped, “Let’s cut George” (Lott’s chauffeur). 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,” as the audience roared. Most importantly, the conservative Lott hired an advertising firm whose tradename was Dr. Feelgood, and they ran a bunch of visually appealing television ads that depicted Lott as a supporter of college loans and grants, highways, Social Security, and the environment. It was a good 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 poor 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 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 had been 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 with 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, and has served as Chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, is the ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee. Internationally, he Chaired the U.S. Helsinki Commission and was a Vice President of the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly.

How time flies. Mississippi governors, quickly. In 1971 Mississippi started electing a string of racial moderates or racial liberals as governors, all Democrats until 1991. First came Bill Waller, who as a prosecutor had had the guts to try Medgar Evers’ killer (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 progressive 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 important 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 out of 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. 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.

Well, 1991 starts a string of Republican governors with only one Democrat. 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 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 four white male businessmen from the three largest historically white universities shot down by the Democratic controlled legislature (in his defense, they had been good financial supporters of the schools). A little footnote is that he had a girlfriend, and in one press luncheon 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. (Poetic justice- Fordice was nearly killed in a highway accident as he was driving back from Memphis.) Enraged Republicans forced Fordice to buy his own ticket to attend a 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. He also tried to change the state flag and 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 the sincere Barbour responded by looking at Musgrove and saying to the camera, “We can do better.” Barbour was an interesting guy, for such a partisan as having been RNC Chair during the GOP tsunami (landslide) win of 1994 to take governing the state so 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 how they helped our state. One prominent 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 before the hurricane!

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, who has 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. What do you all think about how Mississippi handled this virus problem? The liberal national media said Reeves didn’t go far enough, yet our state’s College Board shut down our universities for three months, and cities had the option to go further than state requirements (Starkville had a mask requirement). 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 fairly 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 Mississippian 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 also interesting to observe how Mississippi today produces important national-level leadership. 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. State Attorney General Lynn Fitch spearheaded the Supreme Court 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 in Mississippi have also risen to important leadership roles, with Congressman Bennie Thompson chairing the House Homeland Security Committee and chairing the effective January 6 Committee on the Attack of the Capitol, and Georgia voting rights activist Stacey Abrams contributing to Democratic capture of the U.S. senate (by winning 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.