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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.

Everyone in Mississippi politics feels the momentum Democrat Brandon Presley has right now in his bid to unseat Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

There are the finance reports that show Presley outraising Reeves, one of the most prolific fundraisers in state’s history. There are the public and private polls that show Reeves under 50 points and Presley within striking distance. There’s the mad scramble of Republican leaders begging voters to turn out on Nov. 7. Even Reeves himself has cranked up the intensity of his attacks against Presley in the past couple weeks.

The buzz among the political class — Republicans and Democrats alike — about the closeness of this governor’s race and the threat Presley poses to the incumbent has reached new heights. But some of the most experienced Democratic consultants in Mississippi are approaching the moment with caution.

To get a sense of their sentiments, Mississippi Today reached out to four Democratic consultants in Mississippi who have not worked for the Presley campaign this cycle. We offered them anonymity to frankly share what was on their mind one week from Election Day.

Their thoughts ranged from varying levels of optimism about the race to frustration about a lack of investment in the state party to knocks on Reeves’ and Presley’s strategy. (Warning: There’s some dirty language in these quotes.)

Consultant 1: “A big difference between 2019 and this year is that Jim Hood peaked in late August and then all the momentum was moving towards Tate after that. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. For Brandon to win, he needed to run a near-perfect campaign. And he’s done that. I honestly would’ve thought that Tate would be up by 6-8 points right now, but he certainly isn’t running like he’s up. Brandon started out further behind than Hood because of name ID, and the environment for Dems is not great right now. Biden is super unpopular, and the issue that has kept Democrats afloat in other states — Dobbs — isn’t relevant to this race … But I’ll say this, if Brandon does win, it’ll be because he actually, genuinely cared about winning Black voters.”

Consultant 2: “I am not being critical of out-of-state consultants. Lord knows there’s enough work here for everybody. But with the money being spent on TV, we could invest in local Democrats and people like (attorney general candidate) Greta Kemp Martin. It’s the money. We wait on national orgs to be excited enough for us to acquire the money and then we turn around and spend it how they see fit with no regard for the problems we know exist … as long as it’s machine versus machine, we risk falling short every time. Think about it like this: If the Mississippi Democratic apparatus had the funds it always needed, Brandon wouldn’t have had to spend all that money on TV to raise his own name ID after 16 years in office because that would have been done already. What we’re doing as Democrats is not sustainable. It’ll be Brandon this November, but it’s political malpractice that I can’t tell you in good faith who it’ll be in 4, 8, even 12 years.”

Consultant 3: “Does it feel different right now than it did four years ago? Yes. Do I think that means Brandon will force a runoff or win? Maybe. Brandon is a very good candidate. But if Tate decided that poor people should be able to see a doctor without going broke, I can’t imagine we’d all feel this level of uncertainty going into Election Day.”

Consultant 4: “We all kept saying it would require a perfect storm for Brandon to be competitive. And I don’t think any of us believed that those variables would align with the calendar in such a way that we would feel good a week out. But here we are, a week out, and god help me I feel cautiously optimistic? It’s terrifying. I’m impressed by the quick turn work the party itself has done to engage Black voters. I’m pleased that the Presley campaign has so visibly courted Black voters and the endorsements of high-profile Black political and faith leaders. But if I never hear ‘let’s go Brandon’ again, it’ll be too soon.”

Headlines From The Trail

‘They don’t trust Tate Reeves’: Radio host explains why conservative voters are struggling with governor’s race

Podcast: At long last, Reeves and Presley will debate

Democratic Elvis relative hopes turnout is enough to unseat Mississippi Gov. Reeves

Could Mississippi Actually Elect a Democratic Governor?

Candidate for Mississippi governor visits Southaven to ‘narrow the gap’

Mississippi Insight: One-on-ones with Reeves and Presley

Debate between Reeves, Presley set for Wednesday

What We’re Watching

1) The final campaign finance reports of the race are due today at 5 p.m., meaning Mississippi voters will get one last peek at how much money Reeves and Presley have raised and spent before the Nov. 7 election. The last report showed Presley outraised Reeves fairly substantially, though Reeves had more cash on hand to spend.

2) Milton Kuykendall — a very well-known DoSoto Countian who is the school’s former superintendent of education, a legendary high school basketball coach, and a Republican — endorsed Presley this week. DeSoto County has traditionally been a Republican stronghold, though a population boom over the past two decades (many people moving out to Memphis’ southern suburbs) is making the county more politically competitive by the cycle. The endorsement is a big get for Presley in a place that’s home to a whole lot of voters who could move the needle on Nov. 7.

3) The first and only debate between Reeves and Presley will be broadcast live on Wednesday, Nov. 1. If you’re in the Jackson metro area on Nov. 1, come to Hal & Mal’s for a free Mississippi Today watch party. Doors open at 6 p.m., we’ll stream the debate live at 7 p.m. on the big screen, and we’ll host a few minutes of live analysis as soon as it ends. Click this link for more information and to register. We hope to see you there!

The post Why some Democrats are approaching Brandon Presley’s momentum with caution appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: The Relationship appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The proposed fellowship will train two to three family physicians a year in obstetrics, which the medical community hopes will provide rural and underserved areas with prenatal, delivery and postpartum care.

More than half of Mississippi’s counties are considered maternity care deserts, meaning there are no practicing OB-GYNs and no hospitals that deliver babies. For family physicians looking to practice obstetrics, the lack of training programs and difficulty getting affordable malpractice insurance coverage are challenging. 

Aside from two hospitals that have been able to cut through the red tape and use family physicians in maternal care, nearly all pregnancies are handled by OB-GYNs, who are in short supply in Mississippi and mostly practice in urban areas. 

The state is an outlier when it comes to how little it uses family physicians in obstetrics. Across the country, family physicians play a significant role in providing obstetric care to expectant mothers. Neighboring Alabama, for instance, boasts five fellowships in obstetrics for family physicians.

Family physicians deliver babies in more than 40% of U.S. counties, and “are the sole maternity care clinicians delivering babies in 181 (maternity care deserts) … serving more than 400,000 women” nationwide, according to a report by the American Academy of Family Physicians. 

Dr. James Lee Valentine and Dr. Melissa Stephens of EC Health Net, a family medicine residency program in Meridian, are designing the new one-year training program to focus on increasing access to rural maternal care.

“The fellowship will train family physicians to be able to go into some of our rural, underserved communities, and provide obstetric care for these women close to home, who may have limited access and are facing challenges,” Stephens said. 

University of Mississippi Medical Center is home to the only OB-GYN residency in the state, which graduates five or six residents each year. Of those, an average of two residents remain and practice in Mississippi.

On the other hand, a record 37 family physicians graduated in 2023 from residencies in Mississippi – more than any year in the past five years, according to the Office of Mississippi Physician Workforce.

 “These patients sometimes don’t get any (prenatal care) and they show up in the emergency room, delivering … that’s got to change,” Valentine said. “And I’m not saying that we ought to put family practice doctors out there doing all kinds of GYN surgeries and all that, but we got to deliver better prenatal care to our patients in the rural areas.”

The fellowship will set physicians up on three-month rotations between EC Health Net in Meridian, South Sunflower Hospital in Indianola, and Wayne General Hospital in Waynesboro. Valentine and Stephens hope to also add a stint at a larger hospital studying gynecological surgeries.

South Sunflower and Wayne General are the only two hospitals in the state currently using family medicine OBs, despite the bureaucratic challenges. The family physician OBs at these two hospitals are attending the majority of births in their counties.

Dr. Kelvin Sherman, the only practicing family medicine OB at Wayne General, delivers between 180 and 280 babies a year from Wayne County and some neighboring counties. In 2022, 256 babies were born in Wayne County, which has no practicing OB-GYN, alone.  

Sherman, who did his obstetrics fellowship in Alabama, said in his experience, women who are farther from obstetrical care tend not to seek help when experiencing symptoms because they can’t justify the long drive or using the county’s only ambulance. Having a family doctor nearby can make a huge difference in pregnancy outcomes. 

“If they’ve got some place to go that’s 15 minutes away, then maybe they go get something checked on and find out that ‘Yeah, you are in preterm labor, but it’s early and we can stop it, and we can prolong your pregnancy and you can have a healthier baby – a baby that goes home with you rather than having to deliver early a small baby that ends up in the NICU that stays sick a lot in the first few years of life,’” he explained. 

Sherman is breaking ground not only as one of the state’s only family medicine OBs, but also by working closely with a certified nurse midwife, a rarity in Mississippi – a state with no certified midwife program. Opening the doors to certified midwives could increase the amount of care available to women.

Advanced nurse practitioners are also qualified to give prenatal care. But in Mississippi, restrictive and expensive collaboration agreements limit the care nurse practitioners can provide. 

Sherman’s partnership with the certified nurse midwife is the kind that Wayne General CEO Andrew Porter hopes the new fellowship will facilitate. 

“The FMOB (a family medicine physician who practices obstetrics) can really be a multiplier,” Porter said. “They can be the captain of a ship that has these other providers working under them and it just multiplies the amount of care that can be provided to patients.”

South Sunflower in Indianola has three family physician OBs on staff who average about 250 births a year in a county that had 263 live births in 2022. 

The hospital has been using the family medicine OB model since it opened in the 1930s, according to hospital CEO Courtney Phillips. It’s a lifeline today, where the next closest hospital is 30 miles away, and even there, there aren’t enough OB-GYNs to take care of all the deliveries. 

“So, even though the next closest hospital to deliver is 30 miles away, they may have to travel all the way to Grenada if we weren’t here, which is close to 80 miles away,” Phillips explained. 

 “There’s a big difference between licensure and credentials,” Stephens, a family medicine physician at EC Health Net in Meridian, said.

While the licensure board allows physicians to practice according to their training without restriction, physicians also need to apply for malpractice insurance coverage, which requires proving competence to the malpractice carrier, and then proving competence to get credentialed by the hospital they are joining. Both became difficult in Mississippi after the explosion of liability insurance costs in the 1990s. 

Medical liability premiums skyrocketed across the U.S. at the turn of the century, but particularly in Mississippi – known by 2001 as the “lawsuit capital of the world,” according to a 2011 case study by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists – and affected physicians’ ability to practice specialties like obstetrics or neurosurgery. Mississippi was “perhaps the hardest hit of the ‘red alert states,’” a term used to denote high medical liability regions, the case study said. 

Valentine, who worked in obstetrics throughout the 1980s and had proven his competency to the board through documentation of all the procedures he performed and deliveries he attended, suddenly couldn’t afford his malpractice insurance premium when what he refers to as the “malpractice crisis” hit. 

“My malpractice insurance went up about 180% premium-wise in a year’s time,” he said. “I couldn’t justify losing money to practice OB, and then take the risk on top of that. It was almost like they were trying to push us out.”

As it stands, Mississippi family physicians interested in obstetrics have few options: pursue an official training program in another state – which often results in those physicians deciding to either leave the state altogether or stay in the state and forego obstetrics – or train unofficially in Mississippi but without the guarantee of affordable malpractice insurance or a hospital that will grant them privileges.

South Sunflower, according to Valentine, is able to utilize family physicians in obstetrics affordably because of its highly regarded staff that helps them get coverage and credentials. 

“Places like Indianola, they have a track record,” he said. “Dr. Wade Dowell has been … a champion for family medicine, doing OB and doing general family medicine for years, and so he’s got a track record, and the doctors he’s trained there – they do a good job.”

Valentine and Stephens hope the new fellowship will offer a similar standard that will help family physicians receive credentials and coverage in obstetrics at an affordable rate – though it’s never a guarantee.

“Whether every hospital in the state of Mississippi will recognize that, whether every hospital will open their doors, I don’t know,” said Valentine. “But from the standpoint of being qualified … we want to make sure that our fellowship is substantial enough that when they leave our fellowship, whether it’s one year or two years, they’re ready to practice obstetrics at the level they’re trained to do that.” 

The fellowship is one proposed solution to changing the maternal health landscape of Mississippi. But experts believe programs like it are critical in shifting the pendulum.

“It’s not going to be a cure-all for some of the obstetrics needs, and issues like infant mortality, but it’s a step,” Porter, the Wayne General CEO, said. “It’s people who are acknowledging that we have a crisis here in the state and are trying to do something about it. Here in Waynesboro, Mississippi, and the surrounding area of Meridian, and those in the Delta, we're trying to take the matter into our own hands and come up with some solutions.”

The post State’s first family medicine obstetrics fellowship hopes to increase access to maternal care in rural areas appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has again pushed back the release of a new Jackson-area flood control study, the agency announced on Monday, saying it needs more money to finish its analysis.

The study is the next step in a decades-long process to protect Jackson from Pearl River flooding. For years, local flood control officials have pushed a plan known as “One Lake” to widen the river near the capital city. But environmental advocates and downstream cities have fought back at every turn, arguing that One Lake would threaten ecosystems below Jackson and is more so a real estate scheme than a flood control plan.

The corps, which told residents in May that it has yet to endorse any proposal, originally planned to release a new environmental study for the project on Sept. 1. The new study will compare several routes for flood control, including One Lake, voluntary buyouts, elevation or floodproofing of homes, or some combination of those options.

On Aug. 31, the corps announced it was delaying the study’s release by “no later than 60 days to allow for additional analysis and coordination,” citing the large volume of comments the agency received after its public hearing in May.

But on Oct. 5, WLBT reported that the corps had ran out of money allocated to complete the study, saying the agency had spent $1 million so far. On Monday, the corps confirmed that it had “exhausted” funding. The agency has found the necessary funds, it says, but is working to get approval from the Office of Management and Budget.

A year ago, the corps announced $221 million in funding for the project through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Local sponsors of the One Lake project estimate it’d cost $340 million total.

Christi Kilroy, chief of Public Affairs for the corps’ Vicksburg District, added that the agency decided to expand the initial scope of the study. After receiving numerous comments about tributary flooding in the creeks throughout Jackson, the corps is ensuring the new study addresses those concerns.

Under its initial timeline, the agency planned to release a draft study in September, followed by another public comment period, the release of the final study in December, and then a final decision by Assistant Secretary of the Army of Civil Works Michael Connor in January. It’s unclear how far the delays have pushed back that timeline.

The post Army Corps cites lack of funding in delay of Jackson flood control study appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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.

Jack Fairchilds is a household name for many Mississippians who closely follow conservative politics.

Fairchild’s radio show earned him a sizable following during state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s three statewide runs, including earlier this year when the far-right lawmaker challenged but ultimately lost to Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in the August Republican primary.

Ahead of the Nov. 7 governor’s race between Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley, Fairchilds devoted an entire episode to a couple questions that many political observers have asked: Is Reeves in trouble with conservative voters? And if so, could that pave the way for a Presley upset?

Here is just a sampling of what Fairchilds said Oct. 20 on his hour-long episode, which he titled “To Tate or Not To Tate, That Is The Question”:

• Fairchilds said Reeves didn’t do enough to help McDaniel in the 2023 Republican primary: “One of the things that has a lot of voters frustrated out there was that during the primary, he didn’t do more to help Chris McDaniel defeat Delbert Hosemann … despite the fact that Chris got him elected four years ago. That’s a cause of concern for a lot of conservatives … I think there are a lot of folks out there who are still disheartened by the way that election went … they feel like maybe it’s best to let the entire party and state burn. Stay at home, vote for Brandon Presley, do whatever it is they feel they need to do to ensure that they have shown a punishment to the Republican Party for putting forth Delbert Hosemann.”

• He pointed out Reeves reneged on his vow to let voters, not politicians, decide whether to change the state flag: “On a debate stage four years ago, Tate Reeves told the people that he felt like the citizens of Mississippi should be the ones to decide the flag and that he wouldn’t act against it without the people voting on it. Then during this whole flag debate, in which the flag got changed in the Legislature, Tate famously tweeted out, ‘Send me a bill and I’ll sign it.’ That is a far cry from the stance that he took before. There are a lot of conservatives out there left scratching their heads right now going, ‘Huh. He’s telling me he won’t expand Medicaid, he’s telling me he won’t raise the gas tax. He won’t do this, he won’t do that. But he also told me he wouldn’t take away my right to vote on the flag, yet he did.’ That decision is haunting him … it is a real factor for a large number of Mississippi voters. Some of them would rather watch the thing burn than reward someone they view as a liar.”

• He said conservative voters feel frustrated about the current state of politics: “I don’t think we can hand the state over to Brandon Presley. I think he’s a bad actor. But at the same time, if conservatives continue to show up and (help) out those who only give us lip service every four years, then what are we gaining? What are we gaining if the Republican Party, for a majority of their term, is governing like Democrats anyways? What are we gaining for bailing out another one of the establishment’s chosen candidates? That’s the real question here. Do you trust Tate Reeves to keep his word on promises? It’s a hard question to answer.”

• He said many voters just don’t like Reeves as much as Presley: “This is not a slam on the governor, but it’s just an honest observation: Tate doesn’t come across as a likable individual. And when you see him on TV ads, they don’t really help him. But when you see Brandon Presley on TV, there’s something more about him that comes across more likable than Tate … if you’re just a voter that knows the names and are seeing the ads, I don’t think Tate comes across as likable as Brandon does.”

• He said conservative voters may prefer to choose to let Reeves lose than support him: “They’re thinking that maybe the only path forward for conservatism is to let the left have it for now, at least for the next four years. They don’t trust Tate Reeves, and quite frankly, I don’t think he’s done enough to earn back their trust. I understand why people feel that way … it’s hard for me to say they’re wrong because I get it. I get the hopelessness. I get the frustration.”

These sentiments shared by Fairchilds, while certainly the most frank and public so far this cycle, are obviously not news to Reeves or his campaign. For months, the governor has spent millions of dollars on his top campaign objective: reminding voters how conservative he is and how liberal Presley is.

If you see a Reeves TV ad — and there are many of them — pay attention to use of the word “conservative” or overt efforts to paint himself as the fighter against Presley’s “liberal ideas” or ones from California, New York and Washington, D.C. In the past week alone, the Reeves campaign has posted the word “conservative” in nine separate tweets.

And in early October, Reeves went to extraordinary lengths to address these same concerns directly with conservative voters. Mississippi Today’s Taylor Vance reported that the governor attended a closed-door meeting on Oct. 2 with several DeSoto County conservatives and answered questions from them about his decisions the past few years.

Among the topics that came up, meeting organizer Don Abernathy told Mississippi Today: McDaniel’s challenge of Hosemann in the 2023 Republican primary, the state flag, and how Reeves would work with a Republican legislative supermajority. All three of those topics, certainly not coincidentally, were also focuses of Fairchilds on his Oct. 20 radio show.

At several points during the show, Fairchilds said conservative voters were considering a number of options ahead of the Nov. 7 election — including staying home or even voting for Presley.

“They’re thinking that maybe the only path forward for conservatism is to let the left have it for now, at least for the next four years. They don’t trust Tate Reeves, and quite frankly, I don’t think he’s done enough to earn back the trust,” Fairchilds said. “… Is it better to sink the ship so that they’ll take us a little more seriously? Is it better to burn the whole thing to the ground? And that’s the question I don’t have the answer to at the moment.

“… Those people, if they stay home or vote for Presley out of spite, could wake up and be witnessing an upset in the Mississippi governor’s race.”

Headlines From The Trail

Gov. Tate Reeves walks away when asked about working Mississippians who need health care

Gov. Tate Reeves supported fully funding public education before he was against it

‘I ain’t ashamed anymore’: poverty and tragedy led Elvis Presley’s cousin to run for Mississippi governor

Democrat Brandon Presley seeks big turnout in Nov. 7 bid to unseat Mississippi’s Republican governor

What We’re Watching

1) The final campaign finance reports are due on Tuesday, meaning Mississippi voters will get one last peek at how much money Reeves and Presley have raised and spent before the Nov. 7 election. The last report showed Presley outraised Reeves fairly substantially, though Reeves had more cash on hand to spend.

2) The first and only debate between Reeves and Presley is Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. It’ll be broadcast live on WAPT in Jackson, streaming on WAPT’s website, and simulcast by Mississippi Public Broadcasting television and radio stations.

3) If you’re in the Jackson metro area on Nov. 1, come to Hal & Mal’s for a free Mississippi Today watch party. Doors open at 6 p.m., we’ll stream the debate live at 7 p.m. on the big screen, and we’ll host a few minutes of live analysis as soon as it ends. Click this link for more information. We hope to see you there!

The post ‘They don’t trust Tate Reeves’: Radio host explains why conservative voters are struggling with governor’s race appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today governmental reporter Taylor Vance previews what to expect during next Wednesday’s Gubernatorial Debate.

You can meet him and the rest of the Mississippi Today staff next Wednesday when Mississippi Today presents the 2023 Gubernatorial Debate Watch Party. We will be livestreaming the debate between gubernatorial candidates Gov. Tate Reeves and Brandon Presley on Wednesday, November 1. Join us at Hal & Mal’s in downtown Jackson for a live analysis with Mississippi Today journalists immediately following the debate, a live drawing with Marshall Ramsey during the debate, and a special menu and drinks available for purchase.

Wednesday, November 1, 2023
Hal & Mal’s in downtown Jackson
Doors at 6:00 p.m. | Debate at 7:00 p.m. sharp!

It’s FREE, but registration on Eventbrite is encouraged.

The post Mississippi Stories: Taylor Vance appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Oct. 29, 1869

Klansmen kidnapped and savagely beat Georgia legislator Abram Colby, leaving him for dead. 

Freed 15 years before emancipation, he became an early organizer of Black Americans. A Radical Republican, he represented Greene County in 1865 at a convention for freed African Americans and was elected to the Georgia Legislature a year later. 

In 1869, the Ku Klux Klan offered him a $7,500 bribe to not run for re-election, but he refused. “I told them that I would not do it if they would give me all the county was worth,” he recalled. 

These Klansmen were hardly impoverished white men, he said. “Some are first-class men in our town. One is a lawyer, one a doctor, and some are farmers.” 

During his whipping, they asked him, “Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?” When he answered yes, the beating became even more severe. 

“They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, with sticks and straps that had buckles on the ends of them,” he recalled. Although he survived, he was unable to work or hold office. Three years later, he testified before a joint House and Senate committee investigating reports of Southern violence, detailing what had happened. 

“The worst thing was my mother, wife and daughter were in the room when they came,” he recalled. “My little daughter begged them not to carry me away. They drew up a gun and actually frightened her to death. She never got over it until she died. That was the part that grieves me the most.”

The post On this day in 1869 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The views of the candidates for governor — Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley — are as different as night and day on fully funding the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides the state’s share of the basics to operate local schools.

In response to questions from The Parents’ Campaign, a public education advocacy organization, Presley recently said: “I agree MAEP should be fully funded. I believe that Mississippi students deserve a world-class education, and that starts with fully funding public education and making sure that every classroom is safe and clean and has a great educator with modern resources. We don’t know the potential of our state because we’ve never funded our public schools enough to realize our potential.”

Throughout his tenure as governor and lieutenant governor, Reeves has placed obstacles to full funding. He has argued MAEP, which was adopted in 1997, is a flawed program and should be scrapped because it provides too much money for administration instead of the classroom.

“The reality is that the funding formula as it currently exists has encouraged and incentivized more and more spending on administration and not as much spending in the classroom,” Reeves said of the MAEP funding formula. “Whatever the mechanism is to get more money in the classroom, that’s what I’m going to support.”

But when the state Senate earlier this year introduced legislation that could have been a vehicle to address some of the problems that Reeves claimed existed within the funding formula, the governor opposed those efforts.

And before, when he was lieutenant governor, Reeves led an unsuccessful effort to repeal the MAEP and replace it with another school funding formula.

The proposal supported by Reeves allowed legislative leaders to determine how much local school districts needed to operate. Under MAEP, the amount of funding school districts need is determined by averaging how much money is spent by districts deemed to be adequate or average based on state rankings. Those average school districts that spend the most and those that spend the least are thrown out and not used in calculating the funding formula. But under state law, the formula is tilted toward discarding from the calculation more high spending districts than low sending districts.

The theory is that the MAEP funding formula ensures an adequate level of funding, if fully funded, instead of leaving it to legislative leaders to fund education at any level they deem appropriate.

Reeves also was a leader in 2015 of the successful effort to defeat ballot Initiative 42, which would have strengthened the state’s commitment to public education in the Mississippi Constitution making it more difficult for lawmakers to not fully fund the Adequate Education Program.

Surprisingly, Reeves has not always been opposed to fully funding MAEP. In 2011, Reeves, then state treasurer and a candidate for lieutenant governor, voiced support for full funding.

“It may take more than two legislative sessions, but yes, I do support full funding for MAEP,” Reeves told the Jackson Free Press at the time.

But as lieutenant governor and later as governor, Reeves never made the effort to fully fund MAEP, despite state surplus funds of about $4 billion going into the 2023 session alone.

In his first year as lieutenant governor after stating his goal to fully fund MAEP, the program was underfunded by about $260 million. The second year of Reeves’ tenure as lieutenant governor, it was underfunded by about $265 million.

MAEP has been underfunded a cumulative $2.97 billion during Reeves’ two terms as lieutenant governor and as his first term as governor draws to a close.

A significant portion of the Legislature has, like Reeves, opposed full funding. But based on polling, a significant portion of the electorate supports full funding.

In a Siena College/Mississippi Today poll of registered voters earlier this year, an overwhelming 79% said they favored fully funding MAEP, “the formula that sends state money to local schools for basic school needs.” Those basic school needs include, of course, teacher salaries.

By contrast, according to the poll that was conducted in March:

• 75% favor expanding Medicaid to provide health care to low income families.
• 71% support restoring the initiative that was ruled invalid by the state Supreme Court to allow voters to bypass the Legislature and place issues on the ballot.
• 60% favor allowing new mothers who qualify for Medicaid while pregnant to remain on Medicaid for one year instead of two months.

Reeves is not the first politician to change his mind or not keep his commitment to MAEP funding. Since the program was fully enacted in 2003, it has been fully funded twice even though every governor since then has at some point voiced support for full funding.

The post Gov. Tate Reeves supported fully funding public education before he was against it appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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.

Gov. Tate Reeves has long struggled to justify his opposition to Medicaid expansion.

Numerous economic experts say the expansion program would bring $1.5 billion in new revenue to Mississippi in year one, create more than 10,000 new jobs per year, and provide health insurance to at least 200,000 working Mississippians who can’t otherwise afford it. The financial benefits to the state, the economists project, would more than cover the state’s share of the expansion program’s costs. 

Forty other states, including numerous Republican-led ones, have expanded Medicaid to great success.

But Reeves has blocked it for years. And as he’s running for reelection in 2023, he’s struggling to explain his rationale on the issue that would help so many Mississippians who need it, that an overwhelming majority of voters support, that hospital leaders have begged for, and that his Democratic opponent Brandon Presley has made central to his 2023 campaign.

Here’s the exchange from Thursday on the campaign trail, which occurred at the end of an interview gaggle with reporters:

Ross Adams, WAPT-TV reporter: “What do you say to working class people — people working at McDonald’s and Walmart who can’t afford private health insurance who could benefit from Medicaid expansion?”

Gov. Tate Reeves: “What I would say to you is we are going to continue to work to invest in creating more jobs in our state. We’re going to continue to work to create more opportunities in our state. We’re going to continue to invest in our people.”

Adams: “What about the people—”

Reeves: “We’re going to continue to invest in our people. We’re going to continue to invest in our people through workforce development and workforce training because we want upward mobility for our people. Having a job matters. Having a job brings dignity and respect — upward mobility, not only for the parents but for their kids, as well, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

The governor then put a hand between himself and Adams, uttered a quick “thank y’all very much” and walked away from reporters. Video of the exchange has been seen by tens of thousands of people on social media.

Reeves, serving his first term in the Governor’s Mansion and seeking a second this November, is hardly the first governor to care about job creation. One could argue a governor’s most important job is selling the state to employers, and Reeves’ focus there is a worthy one.

But a major reason Reeves has struggled defending his stance on Medicaid expansion is because job creation on its own is not a working solution to the health care challenges so many face. If it were, the state’s health outcomes would have long been improved and more people would have the ability to afford trips to the doctor.

The reality is that today, thousands of jobs available to Mississippians — among the poorest, unhealthiest and least educated people in America — are just like the ones the governor was asked about on Thursday. They don’t offer health insurance, and they don’t pay enough to lift people out of staggering financial difficulties.

Data from the state’s employment agency, which Reeves as governor directly oversees, tells it all.

Take, for instance, the McDonald’s workers that Reeves was asked about this week. “Food preparation and serving related occupations” is the fourth-most common in Mississippi as of April 2023. More than 105,000 Mississippians — almost 10% of the state’s entire workforce — hold these jobs. Another 37,000 Mississippians are counted in “fast food” job categories. Very, very few of the employers in these industries offer health insurance to their employees.

The average hourly wage for food service workers in Mississippi is $11.43. If those workers put in 40 hours per week, they’d make $1,828.80 per month before taxes, or $23,780 per year. Factoring in rent, groceries, gas and other necessary expenses, that’s barely enough to survive, let alone afford private health insurance. That annual pre-tax salary is actually under the federal poverty line if the household has more than two people in it.

But despite all those factors, the food service worker who makes $23,780 annually does not qualify for Medicaid under Mississippi’s current program. They make too much, according to the state’s policymakers, to qualify for the government program. But if those leaders chose to expand Medicaid, that same working person would qualify for government-paid health care coverage.

Reeves, though, has never publicly acknowledged these realities. He’s instead chosen to dwell only on his focus on economic development and job creation. He wants working people who are barely scraping by to go out and learn new skills, find better paying jobs that offer health insurance and lift themselves out of an impossible position. It’s not a terrible hope to have for people, but it’s a completely unrealistic one — especially if you’re not providing them all the help you have at your disposal.

On the same day Reeves literally walked away from an earnest conversation about this problem, Presley laid out a completely different message when asked about the issue.

“(Medicaid expansion) is common sense for us to do in Mississippi … I’m most concerned about the 230,000 Mississippians who don’t have access to health care,” Presley told reporters at the same event. “… Tate Reeves insults working people by saying they’re on welfare. He insults people who sack groceries for a living, he insults people who roof for a living. He wouldn’t take those jobs, but he insults those people who are out working. He calls it welfare. That’s how out of touch he is.”

Reeves, with holes in his logic and an unwillingness to even acknowledge the reality so many Mississippians face, is teeing up Presley perfectly on this issue. How might voters respond in November?

Headlines From The Trail

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Elvis Presley’s cousin is getting Mississippi voters all shook up

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How a Tate Reeves victory would place him in Mississippi history books

What We’re Watching

1) Debate, debate, debate. Voters have been calling for it for months, and on Nov. 1, they’re going to get it. If you’re wondering how it might go, read some of the quotes from Reeves and Presley about one another from Thursday’s annual Hobnob event. Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender has the full story.

2) If you’re in the Jackson metro area on Nov. 1, come to Hal & Mal’s for a Mississippi Today watch party. We’ll stream the debate live at 7 p.m. on the big screen, and we’ll host some live analysis as soon as it ends. We hope to see you there!

3) “The road goes on forever, and the party never ends.” The Robert Earl Keen classic is a great road trip tune, but the second part of the line is probably getting left off by the candidates and campaigns this weekend. Reeves and Presley continue to tear up the trail, with both scheduled to touch essentially all corners of the state over the next few days.

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