Gov. Tate Reeves, the state’s most powerful opponent of Medicaid expansion, repeated a familiar claim at Wednesday night’s gubernatorial debate: that the program wouldn’t save the state’s failing hospitals.
But health care experts say that was always clear, that the governor’s argument is missing an understanding of the challenges facing the state’s health care system and that expansion, by potentially insuring about a quarter million Mississippians, would allow hospitals to get paid something for the care they provide to uninsured patients versus getting paid nothing.
The first and only debate between Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley ahead of the Nov. 7 election opened Wednesday night with questions about Medicaid expansion, which has remained a title issue of the campaign cycle.
Mississippi is one of just 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid. Though most Mississippians support the policy, the governor has remained steadfast in his opposition.
“Medicaid is not the best policy for rural hospitals, but you don’t have to look very far to prove that,” Reeves said at the debate, before citing data from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform’s rural hospital report about Louisiana and Arkansas, two Southern states that have expanded Medicaid.
The center’s most recent version of the report, which was updated last month, shows that Louisiana and Arkansas still have high rates of rural hospitals at risk of closure — 42% and 43%, respectively.
According to the report, 42% of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure.
“Guess what? The difference is… Louisiana and Arkansas have expanded Medicaid,” Reeves continued. “Mississippi has not. (Medicaid expansion) is not the financial windfall that Brandon Presley would have you believe.”
The heart of Reeves’ argument misses some major points, experts said.
“To say that other states that expanded have had the same problems is a very true statement,” said Ryan Kelly, executive director of the Mississippi Rural Health Association. “But would they be worse off without (Medicaid expansion) in the current environment? Yes, I think they would be.”
According to the center’s report, the average percentage of rural hospitals at risk of closure in non-expansion states is over 37%, while the percentage in expansion states is much lower at 26%.
“What [Reeves is] saying is true,” said Harold Miller, leader of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. “Those are the numbers.”
However, expansion is about more than just “saving” hospitals, Miller said — it’s about insuring vulnerable people, allowing them to receive regular health care.
While emergency rooms cannot turn down patients regardless of their insurance status, doctor’s offices can, preventing people from receiving preventative and other non-urgent forms of health care.
Somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 Mississippians would be affected by Medicaid expansion, according to projections. The policy would potentially bring in billions within its first few years of implementation in Mississippi, an influx of cash that the state needs. Just minutes later during the same debate, Reeves touched on Mississippi’s economy, and the “competitive disadvantage” the state’s up against when it comes to economic development.
Miller said hospitals in states that have expanded Medicaid do have greater losses on Medicaid services — Medicaid typically reimburses hospitals at lower rates than commercial insurance for health care services.
Reeves used that argument during the debate.
“The unintended consequence of expanding Medicaid to 300,000 Mississippians is moving individuals off of private insurance,” he said. “That’s bad for rural hospitals as well, because the fact is that when you move them from private insurance, the reimbursement rates… are actually lower when they go on Medicaid.”
But that’s better than not getting paid at all, according to Kelly.
Hospitals report losing about $600 million on uncompensated care annually, or services provided to people who aren’t insured. That number would reduce drastically if Medicaid was expanded.
Experts agree that the hospital crisis, while heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been caused by a multitude of factors. In the same vein, it won’t be solved by one policy.
Kelly cited all of the other challenges hospitals are up against, including timely insurance reimbursements and rising health care costs, but he conceded that expansion would aid hospitals’ uncompensated care losses, an issue that’s fueling the crisis.
“You’re going to have a real hard time finding someone who would say hospitals would be better off without Medicaid expansion,” Kelly said.
When the U.S. Supreme Court determined last year that Americans no longer had a constitutional right to obtain an abortion, Greta Kemp Martin felt like she had been sucker punched in the stomach.
She said she felt so angered by the decision that she couldn’t let Lynn Fitch, Mississippi’s Republican attorney general responsible for asking the nation’s highest court to overturn Roe v. Wade, run unopposed during the 2023 election cycle.
“At that point, I knew Lynn Fitch had to be taken down,” Martin said at a Lee County event in September.
Martin, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, has made her support of women’s access to reproductive care one of the core components in her campaign against Fitch, the first woman attorney general and first Republican to hold the office since Reconstruction.
Fitch accomplished what anti-abortion advocates had worked to achieve for decades when the nation’s highest court ruled in favor of the Magnolia State in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
Since that ruling, the incumbent attorney general said the state’s next goals for supporting mothers should focus on providing affordable childcare, having flexible workplace accommodations and strengthening child support payment laws.
“We’re empowering you, each of you as stakeholders to be involved with us together because we’ve got some challenges,” Fitch said at the Neshoba County Fair this summer. “And as we work together, we can beat those challenges.”
Martin, the litigation director for Disability Rights Mississippi and a Tishomingo County native, believes those policy goals are insufficient.
The Democratic candidate, like many others around the country since the Dobbs ruling, has made access to reproductive health one of the core components of her campaign.
Martin told Mississippi Today that she’s not trying to change voters’ minds about abortion. Rather, she’s framed the issue on the campaign trail about the government’s role in private health care decisions.
“What I’ve tried to get people to see is step away from the abortion side of Dobbs and look at what kind of precedent this sets in our health care freedom and decision-making,” Martin said.
Mississippi is a deeply religious and conservative state, but voters in 2011 overwhelmingly rejected a “personhood” ballot initiative that would have established in the state constitution that life begins at conception. Since the Dobbs ruling last year, voters in many states, including some Republican-controlled ones, have followed suit and rejected efforts to restrict abortion access.
But in addition to health care access, Martin has also made reforming operations of the state’s top legal agency a focus of her platform. Other policies she’s advocated for on the campaign trail include establishing a conviction integrity unit at the AG’s office to ensure criminal convictions are adequately prosecuted, using her position to protect LGBTQ and differently-abled citizens and creating a fair labor division at the agency.
Martin has also sharply criticized the incumbent’s handling of the state’s sprawling welfare scandal and told reporters that if she were elected attorney general, she would work to seek a criminal indictment of former NFL star Brett Favre and former Gov. Phil Bryant in connection to the scandal.
Prosecutors are usually tight-lipped about criminal investigations and prefer speaking through court documents they file, making Martin’s decision to openly campaign on prosecuting specific people unusual.
“I see nothing wrong with telling people that you intend to investigate these individuals, and if the evidence is provided, prosecute them,” Martin said. “You’re not giving away trade secrets here, but what you are doing is telling Mississippians that you’re there to protect them.”
Both Favre and Bryant have maintained they committed no criminal wrongdoing, and federal and state prosecutors have charged neither with a crime.
Mississippi’s Attorney General Lynn Fitch speaks during Mississippi Economic Council’s 2023 Hobnob at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
And Fitch told reporters over the summer that her office has worked with other state agencies in the ongoing civil lawsuit to recover misspent welfare funds.
Substance aside, Martin faces a tough path to victory because her opponent has spent more than twice as much as she has during the campaign cycle and has a vast amount of cash remaining to spend.
Martin reports raising over $179,000 and spending over $176,000, leaving her with around $2,400 in cash on hand. Fitch, on the other hand, has raised over $1.1 million and spent over $421,000. Combined with previous fundraising, the incumbent has around $1.7 million in cash on hand.
But the very fact that Martin has not received an influx of cash from national organizations has irritated some Democratic consultants in the state.
A Democratic operative in the state who asked to speak anonymously told Mississippi Today they believed the lack of national funding was unfair to Martin because she is “a naturally gifted politician” for someone who has never run for public office before.
“I don’t know how in the world national Democrats can look at the success that abortion access has had in other states and think we can look over a candidate like Greta,” the operative said. “That’s political malpractice.”
Still, the Tishomingo County native believes her grassroots campaign, combined with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley’s competitive challenge against Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, could work in her favor.
Whatever happens in the general election, Martin told Mississippi Today that she is not leaving Mississippi politics behind, something the state’s top Democratic leaders are happy about.
“It is on everyone’s mind in the Mississippi Democratic Party that regardless of what happens on Nov. 7, we can’t lose her,” the operative said.
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.
If Tuesday’s governor’s race between Republican incumbent Tate Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley is as close as some predict, a winner might not be known on Nov. 7 Election Day.
It’s possible we might not even be known that night whether Reeves and Presley will advance to a Nov. 28 runoff.
In Mississippi, under a recent change to the state constitution, candidates for statewide offices must obtain a majority vote in the general election to avoid a runoff. A runoff could occur this year because independent Gwendolyn Gray also will be on the ballot for governor. Gray announced in October she was dropping out of the race and endorsing Presley, but her decision came too late to be removed from the ballot.
Several polls in the past couple weeks have shown Reeves under the 50% threshold, and Republicans are scrambling to turn out GOP voters. In theory, if Reeves garnered just under or just over 50% of votes cast on Election Day, early and affidavit votes could delay a final call.
Mississippi’s local election officials typically can count most votes on election night. But a small percentage of votes are not able to be counted right away. Under state law, mail-in ballots postmarked by Nov. 7 will be counted as long as they arrive in the local circuit clerk’s office by 5 p.m. on Nov. 15 — eight days after Election Day.
That is also the deadline for people who voted by affidavit without a government-issued photo identification to return with proof of who they are if they want their vote to count.
During the same time period, voters who cast absentee ballots that were rejected because of questions about their signature also will have an opportunity to challenge that rejection.
Then by Nov. 17, each county is supposed to submit its certified returns to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office.
And if no candidate has captured a majority based on the tabulations from the local election officials, there will be a runoff 11 days later than that Nov. 17 certification date. That would, of course, be the first general election runoff in state history.
1) There’s one last weekend for the candidates to greet voters face-to-face. Where will Reeves and Presley spend the final five days of the campaign? On Thursday, Reeves spent time on the Gulf Coast — traditionally his base, as Mississippi Today’s Taylor Vance wrote when the governor officially kicked off his 2023 campaign. Presley on Thursday campaigned in Vicksburg, Brookhaven and Hattiesburg.
2) Outgoing Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, who has clashed with Reeves constantly over the past 12 years and has stayed fairly quiet this cycle, threw support the governor’s way on conservative radio host Paul Gallo show on Thursday morning with an eyebrow-raising quote: “We’re not electing a homecoming queen here. This is not who is the prettiest or who do we like the best? This is a serious position that is going to serve for the next four years as the governor of this state.”
3) Will the Republican Governors Association pump money into the state in the waning days of the campaign? Reeves has been outraised by at least $5 million, thanks to Presley’s receipt of millions from the Democratic Governors Association. Similarly, will the DGA spend more? Candidates must report donations they receive within 48 hours of receipt between now and Election Day.
Democrat Larry Bradford alleges Republican incumbent Auditor Shad White has not been transparent in his investigation of Mississippi’s massive welfare scandal.
Bradford, who is challenging White in the Nov. 7 general election, also says White has a conflict of interest in the case because the welfare scandal occurred during the administration of former Gov. Phil Bryant, whom White is linked to professionally. White served as Bryant’s campaign manager in 2015, and Bryant appointed White to the vacant auditor’s post in 2018.
As the election approaches, state and federal investigations continue into the misspending of federal welfare funds. Various Democratic candidates for statewide office are trying to make the welfare scandal and broader corruption a campaign issue, given that the scandal occurred under the watch of Republican officials and their allies. The welfare funds were intended for the state’s poorest citizens, but instead were spend on such items as volleyball courts, drug company investments, fitness programs and other questionable activities.
White’s campaign says Bradford’s allegations about the welfare scandal are unfounded.
“Auditor White’s team uncovered the largest public fraud in state history and put a stop to it,” said Quinton Dickerson of the White campaign. “Maybe Mr. Bradford hasn’t read the news, but Auditor White turned everything over to the FBI years ago, and they have since taken the lead in investigating and prosecuting any new individuals in the scheme. Mr. Bradford might want to pick up a newspaper and get up to speed.”
At a recent news conference, Bradford said, “From the time he served as former Gov. Phil Bryant’s campaign manager to when he was appointed state auditor, White has been a lackey for Bryant’s cronies and a shill for the rich and powerful … White is setting a personal tone for corruption and cronyism. He must be removed from office.”
Dickerson pointed out White’s office released a nearly 200-page report detailing the misspending of the $77 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Family funds. Thus far, multiple people close to Bryant, including John Davis, the former governor’s appointed director of the Department of Human Services, have pleaded guilty to charges related to the welfare scandal.
In 2020, then-U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst of the Southern District of Mississippi said he was not notified by the state auditor’s office as would normally occur when federal money, such as the TANF funds, were misspent. White said he opted to work on the investigation with Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, a Democrat, to move as quickly as possible on the case to prevent the additional misspending of the funds. But now federal officials are investigating the case.
Bradford also challenged White to three debates this cycle to allow the incumbent “to defend his inaction and misinformation.” White ignored the requests for debates.
Dickerson countered Bradford has missed the last two campaign finance report filing deadlines, “violating state law and hiding how he’s spending his money. When he starts acting like a serious candidate, Auditor White will start treating him like a serious candidate.”
Bradford, a Panola County native, is the former mayor of Anguilla. He is running his first statewide campaign.
While White is running for his second full term as auditor, he is facing his first opposition. He was unopposed in 2019, his first campaign for the office of auditor after being appointed to the post in 2018 to fill the vacancy created when then-Auditor Stacey Pickering stepped down before his term was completed.
White recently touted that $70 million in misspent funds have been recovered during his tenure, “more than any five-year period in history.”
White is often active on social media, offering opinions on various topics. He recently received attention for his social media posts claiming it was a waste of taxpayer money for public universities to offer degrees in certain areas of study.
“Honestly, I have no idea why Mississippi taxpayers should pay money to educate an urban studies or women’s studies major. These programs are basically indoctrination factories. How about nursing, managerial economics, mech engineering instead?” he posted on social media.
White also has been critical of diversity programs at state universities.
Bradford said such issues are not related to the responsibilities of the auditor’s office. He said the auditor should be offering solutions of how to improve the state’s economy and stop population loss.
Bradford said White is focusing on those issues to try to distract from his shortcomings in the welfare investigation.
When Gov. Tate Reeves was sworn into office nearly four years ago, his very first priority was addressing the long-troubled Mississippi prison system.
Deadly riots at the Mississippi State Penitentiary and violence in other state facilities and how state leaders were struggling to address the situation became a major national story. And the Department of Justice had moved in with an investigation into the deplorable conditions and gang violence at four of the prisons.
Reeves, who as governor oversees the Mississippi Department of Corrections, focused on the crisis during his first State of the State address a couple weeks after he was inaugurated.
He vowed in that speech to shut down the worst of the worst, Parchman’s Unit 29, to stem the violence and chaos.
He didn’t.
Today, two-thirds of Unit 29 remains open. The man Reeves put in charge, Burl Cain, said there was no need to shutter the unit and that he could bring it back online through renovations and save the state money.
“I have absolute full confidence in Burl Cain’s ability to change the culture at the Department of Corrections,” Reeves said in May 2020 when he announced Cain’s appointment to oversee the prison system.
“I have absolute confidence he will do so in a manner to make Mississippians proud. I have zero reservations about appointing him,” Reeves said.
The 2020 riots might be over, but the deaths have continued.
Over 300 people have died in Missisisppi’s prisons since Cain became commissioner, with at least 50 of those deaths attributed to homicide, suicide and drug overdoses, according to records between June 2020 and September 2023 from the State Medical Examiner’s Office.
So what has Cain done as commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections?
Mississippi Today, over the past two months, took a deep look at how the long-troubled prison system has fared over the past four years under Cain and Reeves. We interviewed people who are incarcerated, former staff, advocates who have been inside the prisons and state elected officials. We scoured through numerous state documents and reports and federal court filings, submitted open records requests and we spoke with prison officials.
What did we find? Mississippi’s prison system has made some gains, but there is more work to be done.
Incarcerated people still live among crumbling infrastructure. Getting people to work in the prisons continues to be an uphill climb. Gangs continue to hold power over inmates and staff. Efforts to prepare people to return to their communities after incarceration may not be enough.
“Time is short,” Cain said in a September interview with Mississippi Today. “You have four years and we had to rock and roll.”
He was referring to the four-year term of the man who hired him – Reeves. Cain’s name will not appear on any November 2023 state election ballot, but the governor – the person with the ability to keep Cain on the job or dismiss him – is up for a vote. And he’s not running unopposed.
Reeves, in a statement released from his office, said he is grateful for what Cain has been able to accomplish in nearly four years and the commissioner’s ability to solve inherited issues.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley said in a statement that questions and allegations about Cain’s departure from his previous position in Louisiana give him pause and are why he would look for a different candidate to lead MDOC.
Before coming to Mississippi, Cain, a Louisiana native, was known for reducing violence and incorporating faith into the culture of Angola State Prison, also known as “The Bloodiest Prison in America.”
He had left Angola following questions uncovered in a 2017 audit about his use of corrections staff labor at his private home and receiving benefits for relatives. There were also allegations of his conflicts of interest in business and real estate deals. Throughout the confirmation process, Cain denied the allegations and noted he was not charged with any crime.
Prison violence and other ways to die
Walking into Parchman for the first time, Cain said it reminded him of his first day at Angola.
“It didn’t scare me,” he said.
“It wasn’t something I wasn’t used to, but I knew how to fix it, and that was the advantage I had over other people,” Cain said.
He wanted to prove his work could be replicated. Yet the violence has not abated.
Gov. Tate Reeves enters Unit 29 at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, the scene of deadly rioting in late December, on Jan. 23, 2020. Credit: MDOC
There have been at least eight homicide deaths inside prison facilities during Cain’s tenure – four deaths from blunt force trauma, two stabbings, one from a lung clot and one from thermal injuries, according to records from the State Medical Examiner’s Office.
The data does not include the Sept. 7 stabbing of 23-year-old Raymond Coffey at Parchman, which is believed to be gang-related.
“We’re trying to get home to our families and get people home to their families,” Andrico Pegues, who is incarcerated at the Alcorn County Regional Correctional Facility in Corinth and spent time this year in Parchman’s Unit 29, told Missisisppi Today in a phone call.
More often than not, a majority of inmates die in Mississippi prisons of natural causes. Cancer is the top natural cause of death, according to data from the State Medical Examiner, followed by heart attacks, strokes, lung conditions and liver and kidney diseases.
Disability Rights Mississippi, which has the ability to go inside and investigate the state’s prisons and jails, said it often sees people denied medical and mental health care and accessibility services.
“We’re not seeing really significant improvements on things that incarcerated individuals need,” said Greta Kemp Martin, Disability Rights Mississippi’s litigation director. She is also the Democratic candidate for attorney general.
Disability Rights filed a federal lawsuit in 2021 against MDOC’s medical provider VitalCore Health Strategies and Cain alleging they don’t provide adequate medical and mental health care. The lawsuit is ongoing, and in court records, MDOC and VitalCore have denied the allegations.
MDOC’s COVID-19 response: ‘We made the right decision’
The COVID-19 pandemic has also claimed lives inside Mississippi’s prisons.
At the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, MDOC suspended transfers from all county jails and visitation at all facilities, with exceptions only for attorneys and essential visitors.
By next month, the prison system reported a COVID-19 death: a Parchman inmate with underlying health conditions who had symptoms. The department responded by isolating affected areas, giving close contacts face masks, increasing screening and sanitizing frequently touched areas.
Some family members said officials weren’t doing enough to keep incarcerated people safe.
In May 2020, the Mississippi Center for Justice, MacArthur Justice Center and ACLU of Mississippi filed a class action suit against MDOC for inadequate response to COVID-19 at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl and South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville. They reached an agreement with MDOC on the grounds the department would implement safety protocols.
By January 2021, MDOC had about 1,380 COVID-19 positive inmates across the system, which Cain noted was better than how other prison systems were faring. He pointed to reporting by The Marshall Project that ranked Mississippi as the 10th safest prison system for only having 21 COVID-19 deaths and 21st for COVID-19 deaths nationwide.
“This is proof that we made the right decision in immediately buying, installing and using sanitization equipment in every area of our prisons as quickly as we could,” Cain said in a 2021 statement. “The temptation had been to wait on thousands of kits to test 17,000 inmates but testing and results would have taken weeks during which the virus could have spread like wildfire.”
SMCI had nearly 400 total COVID-19 cases between early 2020 and June 2022, according to reports released by MDOC online during the pandemic. Next was George/Greene County Correctional Facility with 235 cases, CMCF with 156 cases, Carroll/Montgomery County Regional Correctional Facility with 123 cases and Parchman with 113 total cases.
MDOC’s last online update of confirmed COVID-19 cases is dated June 9, 2022.
Janice Curtis, vice president of Mississippi Dreams Prisoner Advocacy, credited the wardens for taking people to the medical unit or into quarantine if they were exposed to the virus. She also credited Cain for being transparent about the number of active and cumulative cases on MDOC’s website and an effort was made to update the numbers.
The COVID Behind Bars Data Project at UCLA Law School, which tracked cases in state and federal jails, prisons, immigration detention centers and youth facilities, gave Mississippi an F based on how accessible its COVID-19 data was. The project noted that MDOC’s data didn’t include deaths from the virus or count how many staff were infected or died.
Contractor CoreCivic operates the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, which has housed inmates from in and out of state. Credit: Courtesy of CoreCivic
The department’s data may not have been the most accurate. Around August 2020 at the private Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility run by CoreCivic, MDOC reported 14 cases even though nearly 150 of the more than 200 Vermont inmates housed there tested positive for the virus when they returned from Mississippi, prompting Vermont prison officials to seek testing for the rest of the state’s inmates in Mississippi.
MDOC began vaccinating people at CMCF in March 2021, one of the first states to do so. Officials said prisoners could decline the vaccine, but documents obtained by Mississippi Today showed refusal could result in loss of privileges, such as visitation and participation in activities.
With inadequate training, ‘you’re going to have chaos’
Perhaps the biggest, and most ongoing challenge, facing Cain at MDOC has been inadequate staffing.
A 2021 report by the Justice Department found that staffing and a lack of supervision threaten the safety of Parchman inmates and staff.
The prison has been operating at half staff since at least 2018, according to the DOJ report. In February 2020, the prison’s overall staffing vacancy was 47% and 52.9% specifically for correctional officers.
Understaffing exists across the prison system. About two-thirds of the authorized security positions are filled at CMCF and about 70% at SMCI, according to MDOC’s 2021 annual report, the most recent available.
How well-trained staff is adds to the already untenable situation.
“If you don’t train the correctional officers to do and know the job, you’re going to have chaos. You will not have control over the situation,” said Anthony Allen, a former correctional officer at Stone County Correctional Facility, which houses state and county inmates.
He said a lack of adequate training hinders staff and inmate safety, and it makes some open to inmate manipulation and later involvement in bringing in contraband.
Cain needed to get more people to work in the prison system, so he made changes, such as lowering the hiring age for correctional officers and raising salaries to attract and retain staff.
Last year, MDOC announced 10% salary increases for current correctional officers and case managers and increases in base pay for new employees. This brought the starting salary for corporal officers to $36,000, $40,000 for sergeants, $42,000 for captains and over $47,000 for majors. There were also benefits packages.
Even with raises, Mississippi remains among the states with the lowest annual mean wage for correctional officers and jailers, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
CMCF now has the largest population of inmates compared to Parchman. MDOC is focusing its staffing efforts in the Jackson metro area because it’s not as easy to attract people to work in the Delta.
Cain said inmates who abuse staff are sent to the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in Leake County, which he says has helped lower staff violence and help staff feel safe at work.
‘We got to keep drugs out of the prisons’
The presence of gangs and contraband are a threat to Parchman’s safety, the DOJ said in its report.
In a six-month period, 630 cellphones, 555 shanks, pints of alcohol, pounds of tobacco, marijuana and various other drugs were confiscated from inside Parchman, which in its report, the DOJ said points to staff involvement.
Cain said contraband such as drugs and cellphones cause violence, but incarcerated people have used phones to inform the outside world about problems going on inside, such as during the 2020 riots.
To combat phones, Cain wants Congress to pass a law to allow Missisisppi to jam cellphone signals in the prison like the federal prisons are able to do.
Cain has said gang members extort other inmates and their family members. They have used their power to get contraband into the prison, he said, and the gangs are responsible for much of the violence against other inmates and staff.
Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain, seen here with John Hunt, director of the Corrections Investigation Division examining a drone used to try and smuggle contraband to inmates at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, initiated an internal investigation into a Sept. 10, 2021, escape at East Mississippi Correctional Facility. Credit: Photo courtesy of MDOC/MCIR
MDOC has investigated and fired staff from various MDOC facilities found to be smuggling in drugs and other contraband.
Cain is especially cautious about who works at Walnut Grove because it is where gang members are sent. He said anyone who wants to work there has to take a polygraph test and they are asked if they are affiliated with a gang. As with any prison, they can’t work at Walnut Grove if they previously have brought drugs into a prison facility.
The presence of drugs inside the walls also jeopardizes the drug treatment MDOC makes available to inmates, Cain said.
“Addiction is a big deal,” he said, noting how many in the prison system struggle with it. “For addiction (treatment) to really work, we got to try to do everything in our power to keep drugs out of the prisons.”
Amid DOJ probe, lawsuits, state pumps money into MDOC
State leaders, lawmakers and the community were looking to Cain to quell the violence and transform prison culture.
One way to support that task was by increasing the department’s budget. Between 2014 and 2020, MDOC’s budget was cut by $215 million, the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting reported.
Rep. Kevin Horan, chairman of the House’s Corrections Committee, said when Cain arrived, he may not have realized how underfunded MDOC was. Leadership and the Governor’s Office realized, with the DOJ investigating its prisons, the department’s budget should be increased to address issues and prevent future lawsuits.
MDOC’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget appropriation was nearly $311 million and appropriations have risen each year to the most recent appropriation of about $450 million, according to the Legislative Budget Office. The department received additional money from special fund appropriations and other sources.
With an increased budget, MDOC has been able to spend more on its prison facilities each year since Cain has been commissioner, according to the department budgets since Fiscal Year 2021.
Cain said MDOC used $19 million to restore Parchman, notably cleaning up and fixing cells inside Unit 29, and the roof is being fixed. He said a new death row is expected to open in a year and a half.
The most recent Mississippi State Health Department inspection of Parchman completed in September 2022 documented backed- up shower drains, running or leaking toilets, lights out, mold and pests in various housing cells. Similar issues were found in other housing units and inspections from 2020 and 2021.
Parchman inmates talk about the huge mice or rats they see in this prison and shared photos. Credit: Special to Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting
Former MDOC staff and incarcerated people interviewed by Mississippi Today say these conditions are a violation of peoples’ constitutional rights.
Larry Waldon, incarcerated at the Holmes/Humphreys County Correctional Facility in Lexington, has advocated for reform while in prison, including through Mississippi Prison Reform Advocates.
Several weeks ago, he and a dozen other incarcerated people spoke with Mississippi Today on a group call where they shared a fraction of their experiences in the prison system and what kind of change they would like to see.
They talked about brown drinking water. One remembered not being able to sleep in the summer because of the mosquitoes. They witnessed violence among inmates and by staff.
Waldon wonders how incarcerated people at various MDOC facilities live in the conditions they do despite the millions the department receives from taxpayers.
“Inmates can’t tell the difference that you (the commissioner) have done things that are positive,” he said.
These are similar to the health and safety conditions that in 2020 caught the attention of rappers Jay-Z and Yo Gotti, who through Roc Nation filed two federal lawsuits on behalf of Mississippi prisoners and demanded state officials to fix Parchman or close the prison.
The lawsuits were dismissed in January after the inmates’ attorneys and MDOC said improvements have been made during the past three years, but the entertainers promised to continue to hold MDOC accountable and work toward long-lasting change that protects inmate safety.
Isolate problem inmates
Under Cain, two prison buildings have been refurbished and reopened to house maximum security inmates, those undergoing drug and alcohol treatment and women inmates.
A federal lawsuit closed the privately run Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in 2016, which a federal judge described as a “picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.” It housed people convicted for serious crimes when they were children.
Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain reopened Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, which was closed five years ago.
Cain saw a new use for the facility: alcohol and substance addiction programs on one side and on the other, a maximum-security facility for gang members, those who attack corrections staff and those who extort others.
In an interview, Cain said the facility is modeled after Angola’s disciplinary unit, the now-closed Camp J, and he said it is having a similar effect to help ease violence. Cain said the goal of isolating problem inmates is to protect the majority who are trying to stay out of trouble and better themselves.
“If you can’t peacefully co-exist, go live by yourself,” he said about sending people to Walnut Grove.
Cain said Walnut Grove has also helped reduce the prison-wide gang population from 6,400 when he took office to 1,400 more recently.
However, some former prison staff members and current inmates interviewed by Mississippi Today don’t see Walnut Grove as a complete solution. The DOJ said in its 2021 report that the strategy of sending gang leaders away isn’t a comprehensive strategy because a new leader will emerge to replace them.
The next facility to reopen was Delta Correctional Facility, a women’s facility in Greenwood that was a private prison and closed in 2012.
By the end of 2022, most of the women were moved to Delta Correctional. The move put women further away from their families and into an area lacking adequate health care options, particularly for gynecological care.
Women had been exclusively housed at CMCF since the early 2000s separate from the men, but last year had to leave their longtime space in the 1A Yard to go to 720, a men’s unit – a decision the women protested. Cain said the move was meant to limit interaction between the men and women.
As of October, there are about 330 women at Delta and about 850 at CMCF, according to MDOC records. In an interview, Cain said the two women’s facilities satisfy a need for additional space.
“That’s why it was just time (to open Delta) to anticipate in the next 15 years or so we’d have more women, so might as well divide it and conquer it right now,” he said.
Cain’s four pillars for fixing prisons
In his 2020 confirmation hearing, Cain described four main tenets to fixing the prison system: good food, good medicine, good playing and good praying.
He went on to say that he wanted to build churches in the state’s prisons and start ministry programs like at Angola. That promise was realized this summer when a chapel at the women’s unit at CMCF opened for services.
Cain said there are plans to place churches at SMCI and Parchman through private donations, which is how the first church was built.
In Mississippi’s prisons, inmates can earn a seminary degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and become chaplains. Senior U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett, who has long advocated for prison reform, said, through spiritual programs, work and character components, Cain is helping people build new habits and lifestyles with accountability.
Another path inmates may take to improve themselves is education.
Kerry Gipson, who is incarcerated at the Holmes/Humphreys County Correctional Facility, wants to see more classes and educational programs. The commissioner talks about bringing programs across the prison system, “but (they are) not everywhere like he promised,” Gipson said.
Lead by example
In his nearly four years as commissioner, Cain has focused on skilled job training programs that he said he believes will give people careers after prison.
He plans to ask the Legislature to expand a work release program, following success from the pilot last year that operated through the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office. He said none of the participants returned to prison and they were able to go home with $2,000 in their pockets.
Cain said he wants to lead by example and encourage business owners to hire formerly incarcerated people, which is what he did for chaplains and other MDOC staff. Among them is George King, who served 25 years at Angola for manslaughter and now is the MDOC’s statewide program director.
Through MDOC’s job training schools, inmates can learn to drive and pour concrete trucks. They can train to be a commercial truck driver through a simulator. They learn to weld in a mobile unit that travels among the prisons. Cain wants people to walk out with certifications and licenses.
While women can also participate in those programs, there are also some specifically for them, such as the cosmetology school that opened last month at Delta Correctional.
Inmates at Delta Correctional Facility in Greenwood invited fellow inmates and program leaders to sit in their cosmetology chairs for demonstrations and consultations of their skills. Credit: Courtesy of MDOC
In the spring, nearly 30 women close to release at the Flowood Community Work Center graduated from a health services program – MDOC’s first reentry program at the center.
The commissioner doesn’t think the men have better job opportunities available to them than the women. Women can join the programs from traditionally male-dominated, better-paying industries, he said. They just need the motivation to go into those fields and learn different skills.
Curtis, of Mississippi Dreams Prisoner Advocacy, said that barrier still exists, and often it seems that the women don’t get as many options to better themselves.
Can one person fix Mississippi’s prisons?
Cain sees job training, education and morality as the pillars of reentry – the way to reduce recidivism and the taxpayer’s burden to fund the prison system.
Judge Starrett said he has learned that you can’t send someone to prison for a few years and expect them to change their lives. Seeing Cain focus on skills training and reentry reinforces his view that the commissioner is doing the right thing.
It took a year to get the training schools running, and the commissioner hopes the Legislature will support his request for more programs. The process has been slow, and Cain said he’s in a hurry to do more – prevent people from returning and from there being new crime victims.
“We’re taking in several thousand people this last year and several thousand people left. They left unprepared. We’re failing” he said. “We got to have them prepared so they don’t fail, so I’m in a hurry for their sake.”
Incarcerated people and advocates, however, don’t see the state’s reentry efforts as enough.
Tomon Clark, who is incarcerated at the Washington County Regional Correctional Facility in Greenville, said he and others don’t have the same access to job training programs like there are at the prisons.
He also wants to see more at his regional facility to prevent people from sitting around and learning to become better criminals.
“You can’t rehabilitate them if there’s not opportunity,” he said by phone.
Kemp Martin has had clients through Disability Rights Mississippi who want to work or attend school, but she said they are discouraged from participating because they have mobility challenges, and they would need to get a prison staff member to take them to the programs.
“I don’t care how much training you give someone or how set up for a job they are afterward,” she said. “If while they are incarcerated they languish, they are not treated for medical issues they have and they are not given mental health treatment, they are not fully set up for success.”
Meanwhile, Mississippi leads the world in mass incarceration. Since May 2022, the prison population has been above 19,000 – an increase from the population low of around 17,000 MDOC reached during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Advocates are looking for solutions to ease the prison population, such as sentencing reform, supporting a functioning indigent public defense system and parole.
Can Mississippi’s prisons be fixed by one person? Not everyone thinks so.
“There are so many systemic things wrong with MDOC,” said Paloma Wu, from the Mississippi Center for Justice. “I don’t think any one commissioner can come in and have a huge dent.”
Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin talks about his Saturday opponent, the Texas A&M Aggies, as if he is describing the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only perfect team in pro football history.
“These guys are absolutely loaded,” Kiffin said of the Aggies. “It’s actually a mind-blowing collection of talent. As you watch them offensively, defensively, return game, special teams, it really is an NFL roster – height, weight, speed, explosiveness.”
Rick Cleveland
The Ole Miss coach said A&M has “receivers that can score at any time and great running backs. Their defense is playing as well as anyone in the country. The collection of defensive linemen has to be one of the best ever. And Edgerrin Cooper (linebacker) is playing like the SEC Player of the Year. … They’ve done a phenomenal job of getting a collection of players that are extremely elite and talented.”
Well, don’t look now, but that same “mind-blowing” and “extremely elite” Texas A&M talent will roll into Oxford with a 5-3 record, coming off a 5-7 season last year. That’s right: The Aggies are 10-10 over their past 20 games.
Indeed, you can make the case that Texas A&M spends more money per victory than any school in NCAA history and surely more than those perfect 1972 Dolphins. Fisher famously is in the third year of a fully guaranteed, 10-year, $95 million contract. If the Aggie administration doesn’t like the fact that A&M is 10-10 over the last 20 games and 8-9 in games away from home under Fisher, well, he can be bought out. It would only cost them $77 million. That’s a lot of oil, even at today’s prices.
Texas A&M also pays its football assistants a total of nearly $7 million a year. The school recently spent $485 million rebuilding and refurbishing Kyle Field. The Bright Football Complex, where the Aggies train, has been updated to the tune of $20.8 million. And we haven’t even gotten to NIL money, which A&M clearly spends lavishly. As the old saying goes, pretty soon, we’ll be talking about some real money.
So, what do you think? Is A&M getting a good return on its investment? We can put this in simpler terms. Appalachian State spent $8.5 million on football last year. That’s coaches’ salaries, travel, equipment, expenses, everything. Texas A&M paid its head coach more than App State’s entire annual football budget. Final score from College Station on Sept. 10, 2022: App State 17, Texas A&M 14. App State went on to finish fourth in the Sun Belt.
Remember, Kevin Sumlin was fired after achieving a 51-26 record at Texas A&M. That’s a winning percentage of 66.2%. Jimbo Fisher is 44-24, a winning percentage of 64.7%. A&M bought out the remainder of Sumlin’s contract for $10.4 million. So the Aggies paid Sumlin more than $10 million not to coach. They are paying Fisher roughly $100 million to coach. Sumlin won a higher percentage of games. Frankly, Texas A&M is college football’s poster child for fiscal profligacy.
That said, the Aggies are as dangerous as they are under-achieving. Anybody who follows college football recruiting even a little has to know how stacked the Aggie talent is. Here’s a sample: Four years ago, McKinnley Jackson of George County (Lucedale) was the most highly recruited high school football player in Mississippi, a 6-foot-3, 325-pound defensive lineman who threw people around like rag dolls. (I thought he was as good as I had ever seen in this state.) When Mississippi beat Alabama in the annual all-star game that December of 2019, Jackson was the MVP. Yes, a defensive lineman was the MVP. Alabama and LSU wanted him. So did Georgia. So did everybody else. Texas A&M got him. Now a senior starter at nose tackle and a captain, Jackson nevertheless ranks fourth among Aggie defensive linemen in tackles, tackles for loss and sacks. In other words, A&M has several more like him.
So why isn’t Texas A&M kicking butts and taking names? Why did they lose to Miami by 15 points? Why are the Aggies unranked? Why, again, are they a mundane 10-10 over their last 20? Why are they 3-point underdogs at Oxford Saturday?
There’s a bottom line here. Fisher – and his boss Ross Bjork, formerly of Ole Miss – know what it is. Fisher isn’t getting it done.
Yes, you say, but Ole Miss pays Kiffin $9 million a year. That’s a lot of money in Oxford, Mississippi. And you are right. Currently, at least, and no matter what happens Saturday, the Rebels are getting a whole lot more for their money.
North Gulfport residents came to Jackson on Wednesday as part of a years-long effort to block the building of a military storage facility that would require construction on contaminated property and filling in wetlands that protect nearby homes from flooding.
The case goes back to 2019, when the state’s environmental permit board signed off on a Mississippi State Port Authority proposal for the project. The Port Authority wants to use its land in North Gulfport, near the historic Black community of Turkey Creek, to build a storage facility for the U.S. Department of Defense that would act as a link between the state ports and Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg.
After multiple failed attempts to appeal the permit board’s decision, the residents — along with a local church and nonprofit — have brought the case to the Mississippi Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments on Wednesday afternoon.
The appellants, represented by ACLU-MS and Earthjustice, are arguing that the Mississippi Environmental Quality Permit Board failed to consider whether the storage facility would be used to keep explosive ammunition, which they say would pose a contamination risk to nearby public waters. Attorneys working with the residents only learned of the potential to store ammunition through a records request after the permit board approved the project.
Monique Harden, director of Law and Public Policy for Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, speaks with media Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023, before Turkey Creek/North Gulfport residents and their legal representatives present oral arguments before the Court of Appeals regarding the Department of Defense’s plans to build on wetlands in their area. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Residents also oppose the project because of its potential to increase flooding, as construction would require filling in over three acres of wetlands.
The proposed property for the facility is the former home of a fertilizer company that operated in the early 1900s. In 2009, the state ordered a remediation plan for the property after finding illegal levels of arsenic and lead. As part of the plan, the contaminated area has been capped off with a 10-inch layer of clay and a 4-inch layer of topsoil.
During Wednesday’s arguments, Earthjustice attorney Rodrigo Cantu stressed that while the permit board issued a public notice before approving the project, the notice did not mention the facility could be used to hold explosive ammunition. The ammunition, Cantu said, could contaminate state waters through leaking or explosions.
The appellants argued that, if the permit board didn’t consider the ammunition storage in its approval of the project, then the board couldn’t have properly assessed the project’s environmental risks.
Judge David Neil McCarty, one of three judges hearing the case, questioned whether the concern was too theoretical, given that the proposed project only said it could hold ammunition, not that it necessarily would.
On the other side, permit board attorney Scott Johnson argued that the initial advertisement of the project — which said that the facility would be used to store cargo and equipment shipments — implied that weapons and ammunition could be included.
The property of the proposed military storage site in North Gulfport. Credit: Monique Harden
Other environmental concerns in North Gulfport
Even years before the military site proposal, North Gulfport residents have fought with the Port Authority over how it wants to use the contaminated land where the fertilizer company used to be.
In 2013, the Port Authority attempted to move freezers used to store chickens to the property, after the port’s storage area was wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. Some of the same residents pushed back then as well, before the Port Authority eventually abandoned the idea.
Then last year, Gulf Coast advocacy groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation over a proposed connector road, saying the project would threaten wetlands and worsen flooding in the Forest Heights, North Gulfport and Turkey Creek communities.
“All of these are tied together, and all of it affects the minority community,” said John Johnson, one of the appellants and a North Gulfport resident for the last 52 years. “(The permit board) and the Port Authority have not been considerate to the people in that community.”
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,” Republican consultant Henry 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.”
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.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves speaks with reporters following the televised gubernatorial debate with the Democratic nominee Brandon Presley, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023, in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Mississippi voters who tuned in Wednesday night were treated to the most heated gubernatorial debate in recent history, as Republican Tate Reeves and Democrat Brandon Presley accused each other of lying, corruption, lying, offering up bad policies and lying.
The two frequently talked over each other and the moderators — and loudly when their mics were shut off. Recriminations flew.
“When he qualified to run for governor he couldn’t make it an entire hour without lying to the people of Mississippi,” incumbent Reeves said early in the hour-long scrum. “And on this debate stage he couldn’t make it one full minute without lying to the people of Mississippi.”
Presley quipped: “I told somebody recently that asked me about negative ads, ‘If he’d quit lying on me, I’d quit telling the truth on him.’”
Post-debate, each camp and their party leaders claimed victory. Both candidates landed blows, dodged and parried. Neither appeared to offer any major new policy, platform planks or accusation against the other likely to sway undecided voters. Perhaps not surprising given their only debate happened just six days out from Tuesday’s election, the candidates mostly used talking points from their stump speeches and recent barrage of millions of dollars worth of ads attacking each other.
WAPT moderators Megan West and Troy Johnson, at times growing a little flustered, tried to keep the sparring politicians on topic with questions mostly sent in by the public, including a few video-recorded questions from Mississippians.
Mississippi’s health care and hospitals crisis, and Medicaid expansion as a possible solution
Reeves said that Medicaid expansion is “probably the topic that my team and I have worked on more than any other.” This might surprise some advocates, as Reeves has long been a major opponent of Mississippi accepting federal money to expand Medicaid coverage to working poor people as 40 other states have, and he’s appeared to eschew it out-of-hand with little discussion.
“At the end of the day, it does not make sense for the people of Mississippi,” Reeves said. “If you add 300,000 people, 100,000 would currently be on private insurance, so putting them on the government rolls doesn’t make any sense.”
Reeves said a plan he recently proposed to tax hospitals more and enable them to draw down more federal Medicaid reimbursement dollars is a better solution for hospitals. He has also repeatedly said he’ll focus on creating better jobs that offer insurance.
Presley has made Medicaid expansion a focus of his campaign. He said Mississippi receiving the $1 billion a year in federal dollars would help the large number of uninsured working Mississippians, help save struggling hospitals and create an estimated 16,000 new jobs.
“It’s past time to do it,” Presley said. “… The truth of the matter is, Tate, there’s a majority in the House and Senate of Democrats and Republicans right now that want to expand Medicaid, and you’re standing in the way of 230,000 working people that have jobs that you’re too good to do yourself that would benefit if we expanded Medicaid … A majority of Republican support expanding Medicaid. A majority of Mississippians support it … We have 34 hospitals on the brink of closure, and Tate Reeves didn’t open his mouth in this campaign about trying to help those hospitals until he got in a tight race and you saw the polls tightening, and then he came up with a scheme that’s going to actually tax our hospitals.”
Presley has in the past vowed to expand Medicaid, day one, if elected. Reeves said, “He doesn’t have the authority to do anything on the first day in office. But like everything else he proposes, he simply is lying to the people of Mississippi.”
“There are unintended consequences of expanding Medicaid to 300,000 Mississippians,” Reeves said. “The unintended consequence is moving individuals off of private insurance. And, by the way, that’s bad for rural hospitals as well because the fact is when you move them from private insurance, the reimbursement rates for those 100,000 people are actually lower when they go on Medicaid.” Reeves said Louisiana and Arkansas have both expanded Medicaid, and they also have rural hospitals facing closure.
Presley said that as governor, he could ask federal Medicaid for a waiver that would allow him to start Medicaid expansion. “I don’t know if the governor knows the authority of his job or not … Tate Reeves’ own state economist says that this program will pay for itself. Well, if he doesn’t believe his own state economist, he ought to fire him.”
Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for Mississippi governor, speaks with reporters following the televised gubernatorial debate with Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023, in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Corruption, particularly Mississippi’s massive welfare scandal, attack ads and the influence of campaign donors
Presley pulled out the only prop of the night — paper copies of text messages — and said Reeves “has been ensnarled in the largest public corruption scandal in Mississippi history.”
“We found out (Reeves’) brother, we’ve got text messages for his brother,” Presley said as he pulled papers from his suit coat. “He was text messaging with Brett Favre about how to be a PR agent.
“Seventy-seven million dollars was diverted for things like Brett Favre on a volleyball court, for Tate Reeves’ personal trainer, $1.3 million dollars,” Presley said. “And what did Tate do? He fired the independent investigator. He delayed depositions 13 times indefinitely. He is at the center of the state’s largest public corruption scandal. And so what do crooked politicians do when they’ve been caught in a scandal like this? They try to throw some sort of accusations at somebody else.”
Reeves denied any involvement in the welfare scandal and, as he has done in campaign ads, accused Presley — who’s serving as a state Public Service commissioner — of accepting illegal campaign contributions from solar companies.
“You would have to believe in time travel to believe I was involved in the TANF scandal,” Reeves said. “It all happened before I was governor … He’ll lie about my family, lie about me, lie about what he believes or doesn’t believe because he doesn’t have any of his own beliefs.”
“Three public service commissioners have gone to jail in the last 30 years for doing the same thing Brandon Presley did,” Reeves said. “… He’s taken money from his solar panel buddies. He’s approved their ability to produce energy. That’s illegal in Mississippi (for a PSC commissioner to take donations from a regulated utility). The law is clear and Brandon Presley knowingly broke the law.”
Presley said Reeves’ claim is “a bald-faced lie.”
“And I’ll tell you why he knows it’s a lie,” Presley said. “The minute that the company involved threatened his campaign with a lawsuit for defamation, guess what he did. He changed the ad … These solar companies are not public utilities, and Tate Reeves knows that.”
Presley has made ethics reform and fighting corruption a major plank in his platform, and early in his campaign presented a detailed plan for reforms. On Thursday he accused Reeves of being “the biggest cheerleader for corruption, with pom-poms on … and if you think Tate Reeves will take on corruption, I’ve got some beachfront property in Nettleton to sell you.”
Each candidate accused the other of being bought and paid for by big-money campaign donors. Reeves said Presley has sold out to the national Democratic Party. Presley said Reeves has been bought off by big donors who get large state contracts in exchange.
“Eighty percent of the money that he is spending in this campaign has come from California, New York, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.,” Reeves said. “And if you’re keeping score at home, that’s over $10 million in far-left radicals funding his campaign.”
Presley said to Reeves onstage: “The truth is, you’re a bought-and-paid-for politician, and you know it, and the people of Mississippi know it … He is the poster child of this broken, corrupt system … There’s a report out just yesterday about Tate Reeves’ pay to play scheme … his contributors benefitted over a billion dollars in state contracts. One guy gave him $25,000, and then about 48 hours later he became a gaming commissioner.”
The candidates’ jabs at each other on alleged corruption got so heated and drawn out a moderator urged, “Gentlemen, we need to move on. We have to move on.”
Tax cuts: eliminating the state income tax or tax on groceries
Both candidates have vowed to cut taxes, but each has a different focus. Reeves vows to continue a push to eliminate the state income tax. Presley vows to eliminate the state’s sales tax on groceries. They were asked how they plan to get this done and to replace lost revenue. Neither directly answered those questions.
“I’ve been a tax cutter as governor,” Reeves said. “I was a tax cutter as lieutenant governor. In fact, in 2016 we passed the larges tax cut in Mississippi history. In 2021 we passed an even bigger tax cut. Combined, we’ve cut taxes over $1.2 billion for the people of this state. I do believe that eliminating the income tax is the best public policy for the state.”
Presley said: “Look, I want to cut the sales tax on groceries. We have the highest sales tax on food of any state in the United States. If you go out tonight and buy feed for a hog or feed for a cow, you pay zero sales tax. But if you want to feed your baby or you want to feed your family, you pay the highest sales tax in America.”
Presley said Reeves has had 12 years to get income tax elimination done and that he “talks so tough but does so little.”
Reeves said: “If you earn income, if you make a living in this state, we’ve cut your taxes. You have more money in your pocket because of conservative leadership in the Legislature and the governor’s office. And if we turn Mississippi blue, we would never see another tax cut in the state of Mississippi.”
Public education, funding for schools and teacher pay
Reeves, as he has done many times on the campaign trail, touted public education achievements made over the last decade, teacher pay raises and increased spending for schools.
“The Mississippi miracle — that’s what the New York Times called it, and the New York Times is very rarely nice or generous to Mississippi,” Reeves said. “… We passed conservative reforms in 2013 and 2014 that laid the groundwork for the best educational achievement levels in the history of Mississippi.”
Reeves noted marked improvements in fourth-grade reading and math, and higher high school graduations rates, and “the largest teacher pay raise in state history … $6,100 more per year.”
Presley said he’s being supported by teacher groups including the Mississippi Association of Educators. He said he would push for full funding of the state’s adequate education formula, “that we have not fully funded education but two times in the entire existence of our school funding formula.”
“It’s evident who educators in this race support and know will really have their back,” Presley said. “… They looked at Tate Reeves’ record. They looked at my record and looked at my platform and they chose to endorse me over him … He brags about teacher pay raises. I think we’re measuring wrong on teacher pay … Instead of bragging about getting to the Southeastern average, we ought to bet teacher pay to the national average.”
Reeves said the educators supporting Presley are from teacher unions, with ties to national liberals “who led the effort to shut down our schools during COVID-19.”
Presley provided an anecdote of a teacher he talked with last week in north Mississippi, who told him “she netted out about $23 a month” from the teacher pay raise Reeves touted. Some teachers have recently reported their take-home from raises ended up shrinking because of increased insurance and other costs.
Reeves responded to Presley: “There is no possible way that a teacher netted $23 a month on a $6,100 a year pay raise. Brandon Presley can’t do math. He lies really well, but he can’t do math.”
The candidates accused each other of being out of step with rank-and-file Mississippians.
“He wants to talk about California and New York,” Presley said. “Let me tell you this, governor, how about you talk about Caledonia and New Hebron? You’re obsessed with California and New York. I ain’t been to California — I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Reeves said: “Can I just say something about Caledonia?”
Presley, who has visited all 82 counties in his campaign, said: “Have you been there?”
Reeves said: “Yes. I went to breakfast in Caledonia last Monday morning and I’m gonna tell you something, Brandon, you’re gonna get more votes in California than you get in Caledonia.”
Incumbent Republican Delbert Hosemann, seeking a second and final term as lieutenant governor, faces Democratic challenger D. Ryan Grover.
Hosemann, 76, is a native of Vicksburg, an attorney who served three terms as secretary of state before being elected lieutenant governor in 2019.
Grover, 34, of Hattiesburg, is a business owner and consultant and newcomer to state politics.
Hosemann has vowed, if reelected, he would continue to cut Mississippians’ taxes. He said this is feasible because of conservative policies and spending he pushed in his first term.
“We cut the state’s debt by about $500 million — about 12%,” Hosemann said. “We did something that’s never been done before: We made the largest tax cut in state history while we paid off $500 million in debt … In the last four years we have done the most extraordinary thing ever in state government — we have run it like a business. It will pay dividends not just through the next election, but for the next generation.”
Grover said he’s running “to create an efficient state government that is of the people and works for the people.”
“Being a native Mississippian I have a great love for my state and am tired of seeing it fail in every respect,” Grover said. “While it is not easy running a political campaign, the only real qualification needed to run is to think you can do a better job than the current person in that position. I know I can do a better job than the incumbent, so I am compelled to run for Lieutenant Governor and help Mississippi recover from the past 20 years of severe neglect.”
