Mike Knobler finished second in the seniors division of the Governor’s Cup Marathon in Helena, Mont.
When most Mississippi readers last heard from my good friend Mike Knobler, he was the award-winning sports editor of The Clarion Ledger. He was a Harvard-educated intellectual flying his own airplane to and from Mississippi ballgames. Physically, he was, shall we say, portly. He was also, without question, one of the worst golfers in history of this planet.
That was nearly 20 years and more than 50 pounds ago.
Now, Knobler is a former sports writer-turned-California tax attorney who flies his own airplane all over these United States to run marathons. This Saturday morning, he will run the Mississippi Blues Marathon, which will start and end at the Mississippi State Capitol.
Should he finish, this will be Knobler’s 40th marathon completed. And Mississippi will be the 36th state in which he has run a 26.2 mile race.
Impressive, you say? You haven’t heard the half of it.
Knobler, now 58, didn’t start running marathons — or any distance, really — until 2004, or about a year after he left the Clarion Ledger for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. After seven years in Atlanta, Knobler left the journalism business and went to law school. He started at Georgetown, finished at Yale. He aced law school, of course. About the only facet of life Knobler doesn’t ace is anything athletic. Something tragic occurs between his brain and his muscles. His muscles just don’t get the message.
I’ll give you a sample. We were once playing in a scramble golf tournament at Whisper Lake. Knobler was attempting a wedge shot from 100 yards. His three teammates were standing behind him. Knobler swung and the ball flew right back at us. We ducked in unison. Never saw that before. Never since. His ball didn’t hit anything. It just went backwards. His game was so bad, he was the inspiration for a newspaper-sponsored golf tournament. We called it: “Mississippi’s Worst Golfer.” Alas, Knobler finished second, carding a 154. It wasn’t just golf either. I once saw him try to shoot a basketball after a ballgame in Starkville. He missed the entire backboard from six feet away. Wide left.
Rick Cleveland
So, about these marathons…
“You don’t have to be an athlete to run marathons,” Knobler says. “You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other one. It’s all about perseverance and persistence. You just keep going.”
Easy for him to say. I once was an aspiring marathoner. I made it through a 20-mile training run, then cramped all night and could barely walk the next morning. I quit. Knobler never has. He keeps on going.
He ran one in Wyoming at 8,000 feet. That was the hardest. He has run Boston. Funny story: At the Boston Marathon, runners take buses from Boston to the suburb of Hopkinson for the start of the race. Knobler departed the bus, saw a sign that said “Athletes Village,” and entered proudly.
“I guess this means I am really and truly an athlete,” Knobler remembers saying to himself.
And there was that time at the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, where high school cheerleaders volunteered along the race course to cheer the runners. “The first time I had ever had cheerleaders yelling for me,” he says. “I kind of liked it.”
In Helena, Montana, he finished second in the masters division and won 50 bucks. “So I am not only an athlete, I am a professional athlete,” Knobler says.
He is also by far the smartest person I have ever worked with, quite possibly the smartest I have ever known.
During his newly 15 years in Jackson, he dabbled in chess. He dabbled enough to win his division at a state tournament. Once, when my boy child won the county chess championship for fourth graders, I purchased a Bobby Fischer chess computer to help his game along. There were 10 levels, the highest called grand master. The boy and I never got past level 5. Knobler came over one night and we set it at grand master level.
After a few moves, Knobler said, “Hmmm, I think I can see where he’s going…”
He mated the computer in under 10 minutes.
Once we were covering at football game in Gainesville, Fla., and on Friday night before the game we found ourselves at a party attended by some university professors. Talk turned to the Friday New York Times crossword puzzle, notoriously difficult but especially so that day. Somebody handed Knobler the puzzle. He solved it under 10 minutes, using ink. Jaws dropped. “Would have been faster, but I was a little drunk,” he told onlookers.
And, oh, did I mention that now he sometimes constructs crossword puzzles for the New York Times?
The Clarion Ledger once bought a brand new, state-of-the-art computer system and brought in a team of experts to show us how to use it. Knobler showed the experts what the system would really do. Yes, and he ended up teaching the classes.
That intellect doesn’t help him one bit — not even one step — when he runs marathons.
“You just keep going,” he says. “No matter what, you keep going…”
Yes, Knobler says, he plans to run a marathon in all 50 states.
A proposal to give state lawmakers a pay raise died a quiet, ignominious death without a vote or even discussion on Monday.
The Senate last week passed a bill that would give lawmakers a pay bump of $6,000 for the first year of a four-year term, and $4,500 a year for the other three years of the term. Some House members had expressed interest in a lawmaker pay raise and were awaiting the arrival of the Senate bill in the House.
But Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, held it on a motion to reconsider the vote. For most bills, tabling such a motion is pro forma. But in the case of Senate Bill 2794, McDaniel’s motion to reconsider was not taken up, so the bill died with Monday’s deadline to clear such procedural motions.
McDaniel said he believes legislative leaders caught so much flak for proposing the pay increase that they just let it go.
“The word I’ve used for it is embarrassing,” McDaniel said. “Politicians do not deserve a pay raise. We know what the pay is when we run for office … I do think the (motion to reconsider) delay allowed people around the state to make phone calls and send emails and push back against this.”
Mississippi’s part-time legislators are paid a base of $23,500 a year — although most make between $40,000 and $50,000 a year in salary, per diem, reimbursements and other payments. Some lawmakers’ total compensation is around $70,000 a year.
The $23,500 includes a base salary of $10,000 a year, plus $1,500 a month for office expenses during months when the Legislature is not in session — despite the fact that most lawmakers have other jobs and don’t have separate legislative offices in their district. Many rely on Capitol staffers to help with administrative work year-round.
Lawmakers do not receive the $1,500 a month office payment when the Legislature is in session. Typically, the first year of a term the Legislature meets four months, then three months each of the following three years.
Senate Bill 2794 would have paid lawmakers the $1,500 in months when the Legislature is in session.
Lawmakers also receive about $150 per diem — living expenses — for each day they spend in Jackson (including those who live in or near it), and mileage reimbursement set at the federal government rate, currently about 58 cents a mile. All members are allowed at least four days a month at the Capitol, with chairmen allowed six days and vice chairmen five days. Extra days must be approved.
Numbers crunched at the state Senate’s request by the Legislative Budget Office show a House income tax elimination plan would cause a huge budget hole starting in its second year.
But House leaders say those projections discount booming state revenue, and a modest Senate tax cut plan would not give taxpayers real relief at a time when state coffers are full.
The dueling tax cut proposals could provide the political battle of the year as the 2022 legislative session enters its home stretch. Republican leaders in the House and Senate both want income tax cuts, but they remain far apart on their plans and leaders from each side are criticizing the other.
The major difference in their plans is simple: The House wants a sweeping tax overhaul, and the Senate wants to take a more cautious approach.
“Tax policy should be straightforward and sustainable,” said Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the Republican Senate leader. “Basing tax structures on assumptions which will probably never occur is neither of these things.
“According to the state’s budget analysts, the Senate tax cut plan is durable, it will not incur a future deficit, and it allows our state to continue to fund critical services without growing government,” Hosemann said. “If the state continues record high revenue growth, we will continue returning taxpayer money to the taxpayers.”
But Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn said: “We are not interested in a token tax reduction that returns only a portion to our citizens without eliminating it … We still believe our plan is real, conservative tax relief.”
Meanwhile, some lawmakers do not believe the state is in position to cut taxes. State Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said it is a fallacy to assume there are funds for either tax cut plan.
“We are not paying state employees, our roads are crumbling. We have not funded the schools,” Bryan said. “We don’t have water and sewer. We can cut taxes and not have a functioning society. That is where we are heading now.”
The House plan vs. the Senate plan
Gunn has said eliminating the state income tax is the most important goal of his political career. To accomplish that goal, House leaders want to phase out the state’s income tax, starting with major exemptions in year one that would mean most Mississippians would pay no income tax, coupled with an increase in sales taxes.
The Gunn plan, which has already passed the House, phases out the income tax, which accounts for about one-third of state general fund revenue, while increasing the sales tax on most retail items from 7% percent to 8.5% and cutting the cost of car tags in half.
The plan also reduces the grocery tax eventually from 7% to 4%. When fully enacted, the plan would result in an overall reduction in state revenue of about $1.4 billion in today’s dollars — a significant amount, considering the state general fund is $5.8 billion this year.
A large part of the House proposal, though, does not go into effect unless certain revenue growth projections are met over about a decade. Some say it would take much longer than a decade to meet the revenue growth projections.
The Senate, led by Hosemann, is proposing a much more modest tax cut that would, based on projections developed for the Senate leadership, prevent major spending cuts and would maintain funds to deal with inflationary growth and various needs facing the state.
Instead of eliminating the income tax altogether like the House plan, the Senate plan would phase out only the 4% state income tax bracket over four years. This, coupled with elimination of the 3% tax bracket effective last year, would mean people would pay no state income tax on their first $26,600 of income. The Senate plan, at the end of four years of cuts, would cost $316 million a year, plus a one-time expense of $130 million its first year for a rebate to taxpayers.
The Senate plan would also reduce the state grocery tax from 7% to 5%, provide up to a 5% income tax rebate in 2022 for those who paid taxes, and eliminate the state fee on car tags going into the general fund.
The House proposal passed through its chamber with bipartisan support and is now in the hands of Senate leaders. The Senate hasn’t yet passed its plan, although that is expected in coming days.
What the projections say
The Legislative Budget Office projections the Senate requested about the House plan are based on assumptions from historical trends in revenue, spending and inflation. They show that by year two, the House plan would create more than a $250 million revenue shortfall, and the state would remain in the red for the next three years — requiring large spending cuts or tax increases. The projections do not go beyond five years.
The Senate projections use a revenue estimate of $6.49 billion for next fiscal year, the state’s current official revenue estimate.
But House leaders, including Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, say the state is set to collect far more than that, as it is on track to do for the current year.
“What I don’t want to get out there is that the state can’t afford the House plan,” Lamar said. “There’s two easy ways we can afford the House plan. No. 1, change that estimate that the Senate is using — that we know is wrong — to the tune of about $600 million. Use actual collections instead of — I’m not going to call it a bogus estimate — but there are more,green dollars coming in that we know are there … Put $7 billion in there, and the red numbers go away at the bottom of their page.
“Or,” Lamar said, “you just leave it there, ignore the money coming in and leave it there, and we’ve got more than $2 billion set aside, on top of the rainy day fund. Take about $400 million to $500 million and put it aside and push it forward into these years — worst case — or we don’t go spend it on a road somewhere, or you spend $1.5 billion on a road and put $400 million aside.”
But his Senate counterpart, Finance Chair Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, said: “In recent years, under conservative leadership, we stopped the irresponsible practice of using one-time money to pay recurring expenses. Right now, we have an influx of one-time federal funds from a federal government that is spending excessively. The Senate has a durable tax cut which will put more money in taxpayers’ pockets and withstand any economic instability.”
At issue in the projections developed for the Senate by the Legislative Budget Office is the impact of the House plan in the first two years. The cuts in the first two years are not dependent on growth projections to go into effect.
In the first two years of the House plan, the first $40,000 in income for a single person and first $80,000 of income for a married couple will be exempted from taxation, at a cost of $103.6 million for fiscal year 2024, which starts July 1, 2023. The cost of cutting car tag fees in half would be $187.7 million annually and the cost of cutting the grocery tax would be $103.6 million for fiscal 2024.
In addition, the state would receive $705.5 million from increasing the sales tax on most retail items from 7% to 8.5%.
House leaders question the projections
All of the revenue assumptions of both plans are based on projections made by the Department of Revenue and by the state’s financial experts, legislative leaders say.
The Senate projection of the impact of the House plan on overall state revenue uses the revenue estimate adopted by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, which includes Gunn and Lamar, and the governor, as its starting point in developing its projections. The committee and Gov. Tate Reeves unanimously adopted an estimate in December 2021 of $6.49 billion as the projection of the amount of revenue that will be available to budget in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Even though Lamar and other House leaders voted for that projection, they now say it leaves money on the table. The state is currently experiencing unprecedented revenue growth. The House in developing a fiscal analysis of its own plan projects an additional $1.1 million in revenue for the current year that could be applied toward the tax cut.
Lamar says he believes revenue will be strong not only for this fiscal year, but that it will remain strong in the ensuing years. Revenue collections for the current fiscal year already are $667 million above projections with five months remaining in the fiscal year. Lamar said money will be available to fund vital needs, including a teacher pay raise of more than $200 million, which has passed both chambers of the Legislature in different forms and still must be reconciled before the end of the session.
But Senate leaders maintain that even when using the House projections, it is likely that revenue will not be available during the 2023 session to fund the teacher pay raises and other spending that both sides have said they want to pass this year.
Senate leaders say history has shown that state economic boons spurred by federal spending — such as Hurricane Katrina recovery, the Great Recession stimulus, BP oil disaster funds and now COVID-relief funding — are fleeting. They say with inflation at historic levels and other uncertainties in the economy, a conservative approach is warranted, not a complete overhaul in tax structure.
Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez, the House Democratic leader, voted for the House plan, but does not sound sold on it, acknowledging the many needs facing the state. Johnson questioned whether the Republican majority can ultimately agree on a plan to eliminate the income tax because of disagreements in how to undertake such a massive endeavor.
“I am betting they butt heads and nobody passes anything,” Johnson recently predicted, but added that at least Gunn’s plan cuts the state’s grocery tax and reduces by 50% the cost of car tags, both of which he said aided poor people and working families.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker kicked off what would be more than 70 speakers testifying over the disputed Gulf Coast passenger route before a federal board on Tuesday.
“Restoration of this vital service is long overdue,” Wicker told the Surface Transportation Board over Zoom. “The impact of Hurricane Katria is still being felt … one of the victims that remains is passenger rail across the Gulf Coast.”
The board is tasked with deciding the future of a public train route that would run between Mobile and New Orleans, with four stops in Mississippi. Passenger train stops on the Gulf Coast were never restored following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, although the freight rail companies that own the affected tracks long ago repaired and replaced them.
After years of debate over use of the railways and attempts to create a plan, Amtrak filed a complaint with the transportation board asking its members to mediate and make a decision about the future of the proposed route.
Members of the Southern Rail Commission, which conducted feasibility studies as the region’s champion for railways, have long accused freight company CSX of stonewalling any progress.
Typically private rail companies and Amtrak reach use agreements outside of the courtroom-style hearings.
Testimonies regarding the route during Tuesday’s hearing came primarily from Alabama and Mississippi officials but also included leaders from as far as Pennsylvania and Oregon.
“The board’s decision will have far implications beyond the Gulf Coast,” Amit Bose, the administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration in the Department of Transportation, said during his testimony. “We believe it’s imperative that host railroads fulfill their fundamental statutory obligations to allow the expansion and improvement of intercity rail services.”
The railroad industry at large is watching the case closely, as it could set precedent for the future of passenger rail expansion across the country.
Despite Bose and DOT’s support of the Gulf Coast route, Alabama leaders have largely sided with freight rail companies that have said more studies are needed to test the capacity of the tracks.
Passenger railroad advocates have called this a strategy of death by delay. CSX, the main company involved, says it isn’t opposed to a new route as long as it doesn’t negatively impact freight – also but says more studies are needed to conclude that.
Alabama officials, like Alabama House Speaker Mac McCutcheon, testified concerns that the country’s existing supply chain issues could be worsened by added train traffic. Alabama relies on freight companies’ use of the Port of Mobile as an economic boon.
Amtrak’s proposed route would stretch over 200 miles and have two trains running round trips — once in the morning and once in the evening. All but about 50 miles of that route runs through Mississippi with stops in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula.
Amtrak made its filing with the transportation board in March 2021. Next month – a full year later – the board will hold what it called an evidentiary hearing, which will give Amtrak and CSX a chance to make their cases before the board reaches a decision.
A Mississippi Senate bill would add an “irrevocably broken” marriage as grounds for a divorce.
This is the latest in an age-old, usually fruitless, effort to bring Mississippi’s antiquated, misogynistic divorce laws into the 20th (that’s right, 20th) century.
Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins has authored Senate Bill 2643, which passed the Senate on a vote of 35-13, with four politically courageous souls voting “present.” Wiggins authored the bill based on recommendations of a task force of judges, lawyers and other experts reviewing the state’s domestic laws.
“The task force’s reasons are compelling,” Wiggins told colleagues, “it’s the destruction caused to children and families caused by Mississippi’s restrictive divorce laws … being weaponized.”
This would at least be a step closer to a unilateral no-fault divorce like most of the rest of the world has. Mississippi and South Dakota remain the only two states without a unilateral no-fault divorce ground. Mississippi’s divorce ground of “irreconcilable differences” requires mutual consent of spouses. This frequently makes getting a divorce in Mississippi difficult and expensive, and it often allows one spouse to delay a divorce for years, sometimes many years. This also leads to spouses and children being trapped in bad, often abusive, family situations.
Otherwise, a spouse wanting out of a marriage would have to file for — and prove, sometimes with a ridiculous legal burden of proof level — a divorce on one of 12 grounds. The wording of many of the grounds exemplifies how antiquated they are. The grounds are:
Adultery.
Habitual cruel and inhumane treatment (note it must be “habitual”). In 2017, after much debate and having killed similar measures for years, the Legislature added spousal domestic abuse, based on testimony of the victim spouse, to this ground.
Willful, continued and obstinate desertion for at least one continuous year.
A criminal conviction and imprisonment.
Habitual drunkenness.
Habitual and excessive use of opium, morphine or other like drugs.
“Idiocy,” provided the spouse did not know of a mental disability before marriage.
Incurable mental illness.
Wife impregnated by another man.
Incest — spouses related to each other.
Natural impotency.
Bigamy.
Mississippi’s divorce laws, little changed over 100 years, are ostensibly aimed at upholding the sanctity of marriage. But they don’t do that, as Mississippi’s divorce rate is often among the highest in the country (likely because its laws make it very easy to get married). They do add to the state’s high rate of domestic abuse, clog the courts with protracted divorce battles and cost families money on attorney bills that would be better spent otherwise. The laws put low-income people at a disadvantage, particularly homemakers who don’t have resources to fight a protracted legal battle to get out of a marriage.
But many lawmakers and some of the state’s religious lobby have opposed any reform of divorce laws. Lawmakers did, however, in 2012 pass what was called a “quickie marriage” law, making it easier to get married in the Magnolia State by removing a 3-day waiting period and other regulations.
The Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence and a Coast judge a few years ago tried unsuccessfully to get the state Supreme Court to find the state’s lack of a true no-fault divorce unconstitutional.
Wiggins said the task force had recommended a unilateral no-fault ground, but the “irrevocably broken” was apparently a nod to the realpolitik.
The bill now heads to the House, where divorce reform has also been a tough sell.
Sen. Rod Hickman, an attorney from Macon, before the Senate vote said: “This law does not make divorce an automatic thing. It’s a half-step. I’ve had clients separated for 16 years who still couldn’t get a divorce. I think this is a good law that is going to help a lot of people.”
Mississippi’s two largest universities announced modified mask mandates late Friday afternoon.
Masks are now optional at University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University except in healthcare and instructional settings, such as classrooms, labs and studios. UM cited updated guidance from the Mississippi Department of Health, as well as declining metrics such as case numbers and positivity rates, as factors in the adjusted protocol.
Public relations officers for the state’s six other universities told Mississippi Today that their schools are continuing to require masks indoors.
UM and MSU announced the modified requirements about a week after MSDH updated its guidance for colleges and universities on Feb. 7 to new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s updated guidance “recommends indoor masking in public for everyone in areas of substantial or high transmission” for colleges and universities.
Though cases are declining, Lafayette and Oktibbeha counties — where UM and MSU are located — continue to see a high level of community transmission, as does the entire state of Mississippi, according to the CDC.
Previously, MSDH required the universities to mandate that masks in indoor campus settings when community transmission in a county is substantial or high. That guidance was adopted during the delta wave, said Liz Sharlot, MSDH’s communications director.
MSDH briefed the Institutions of Higher Learning on the new guidance last week, Sharlot said. So far, UM and MSU are the only public universities to loosen their mask mandates. Delta State University’s administration is meeting this week to review its COVID protocol, said Brittany Davis-Green, the university’s communications director.
At UM, faculty and staff can “require face coverings for visits to their private offices,” Chancellor Glenn Boyce wrote in an email to students, faculty and staff. Boyce wrote that masks will not be required in the following on-campus spaces: residence halls, libraries, dining facilities, the student union, recreation facilities, retail spaces, offices, or conference rooms.
In its press release, MSU said its COVID-19 task force will re-evaluate those metrics on a weekly basis.
“The university’s goal is to return to normal campus operations as soon as possible,” wrote Sid Salter, MSU’s director of public affairs.
Mississippi’s Republican national committeemen and committeewoman were divided on Friday’s RNC vote to formally censure Republican U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for serving on a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Mississippi RNC Committeeman Henry Barbour and Committeewoman Jeanne Luckey were among a minority of RNC members voting against the resolution, which accused the two House Republicans of participating in a “Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
State GOP Chairman Frank Bordeaux voted for the censure. Luckey was unable to attend the meeting in Salt Lake City last week, and her vote was cast by proxy by Barbour, who said he consulted with her before the vote. The resolution was passed Friday by a voice vote.
RNC delegate Henry Barbour, nephew of former Gov. Haley Barbour
Barbour over the weekend told the Washington Post he voted no, and voiced frustration that “resolutions shooting at other Republicans are never going to be helpful.”
Back home on Monday, Barbour told Mississippi Today: “I see the whole thing as a great distraction to 2022 and winning elections, and it’s not the RNC’s job to be going after Republicans. The original resolution was to purge them — not a great way to grow a political party.”
But Bordeaux said he voted in favor of the resolution out of frustration that the Democrat-led House committee is turning the investigation “into a political fiasco rather than an investigation.”
“There were parts of the resolution I did not like,” Bordeaux said. “But I felt like there needed to be a message sent. January 6 is a serious issue, and should not be turned into a partisan issue.”
Both Bordeaux and Barbour criticized the House committee — led by Mississippi U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson — for “subpoenaing people who weren’t even involved” in the Jan. 6 attack.
While the issue appears to be causing a rift among Republicans in Washington, Bordeaux and Barbour said there are no ill feelings among the state’s RNC delegation over the vote.
“I do understand why there is some anger in the party at Kinzinger and Chaney and over some of the tactics of the House committee,” Barbour said.
Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.
Sometimes Mississippi Republicans introduce a bill so questionable that the most far-right fringes of their own party agree with the staunchest liberal Democrats in the state.
That rarity occurred last week regarding a Senate bill that would allow the state’s two major parties to set their own filing fees for statewide and legislative candidates who want to run for office. For decades, lawmakers have written those appropriately modest fees into state law, largely taking the politics out of the process.
But 30 Republican senators voted on Feb. 9 to make Mississippi just the fourth state in the nation to allow the major political parties to set those fees themselves.
If the bill passes and the Mississippi parties mirror their counterparts in those other three states, incumbents would be more protected from primary challengers, the bank accounts of both major parties would be a lot more flush, and many Mississippians who want to run for office would be unable to afford it.
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Why would lawmakers pass a bill that could make it difficult for Mississippians to run for office? That was the first question asked last week of Sen. Joey Fillingane, the Republican who defended it on the Senate floor.
“When there’s little or no cost to running for office and putting your name on the ballot, it creates the opportunity for lots of mischief,” Fillingane said on the Senate floor, among the most public forums in the state. “… A lot of people just want to make fun of the system and just sort of, you know, not be serious about running for office. It would cause problems for those who are serious about running for office.”
Apparently feeling like he hadn’t admitted enough flaws with the bill, Fillingane — unprompted — continued his telling defense of the bill.
“You had a situation not too long ago where a truck driver put his name on the ballot, didn’t campaign, didn’t really run. He was running his 18-wheeler truck. He ended up winning a major party primary for a major office in Mississippi. I think you could argue that was a direct result of having extremely low filing fees in that particular race.”
Fillingane, of course, was referencing Robert Gray, who in 2015 won the Democratic nomination for governor. His summary of Gray’s unlikely primary victory was pretty accurate: Gray knew little about the political process, hadn’t run any real public campaign at all, and even his own mother didn’t know he was running.
But despite all that, Gray had what the vast majority of Mississippians have: An intense disdain for how elected officials have operated in Jackson for many years, and a desire to try to make their home state better. So the truck driver paid what was then a $300 filing fee to the state Democratic Party to put his name on the ballot. A few weeks later, he won the primary, and for the next several weeks, he had a massive platform to share his ideas for Mississippi. For better or worse, that’s American democracy.
In 2016, lawmakers increased the Mississippi filing fees for statewide and legislative races. Today, Mississippi Republicans or Democrats who want to run for office are between $250 and $1,000. State senators and state representatives must pay their parties $250 (up from the $15 filing fee before the 2016 change was passed).
The only three U.S. states that have given the power to set filing fees to their state parties are Alabama, Arkansas and Delaware. Here are the filing fees in those states:
Alabama state senator: $925.14 for both major parties
Alabama state representative: $925.14 for both major parties
Arkansas state senator: $7,500 for Republicans, $4,500 for Democrats
Arkansas state representative: $3,000 for Republicans, $3,000 for Democrats
Delaware state senator: $945 for both major parties
Delaware state representative: $945 for both major parties
All of these costs are much higher than Mississippi’s $250 across-the-board filing fees for state lawmakers. And running for statewide offices in Mississippi and those other states costs even more than the totals listed above.
When pressed last week on the Senate floor whether there were ulterior motives behind the Mississippi bill, Fillingane deflected. But by the end of the debate, ultra-conservative Republicans and Democrats were in agreement: The bill seemed sketchy, and it was a bad piece of legislation.
“To me, I think anybody who wants to run for office ought to be able to run for office,” said Sen. Angela Hill, the conservative Republican firebrand who is regularly chastised by establishment Republicans. “It shouldn’t be cost prohibitive for them to do it, and I don’t care what their reason is for running.”
To that point, Fillingane invoked the names of Vladimir Putin and Communist Russia, decrying governments that try to control every layer of a political process. Senate Republicans and Democrats alike jeered and booed Fillingane on the floor for making that comparison.
“Do you think the people back home should be worried we’re passing a law to help raise the fee to protect incumbency?” asked Sen. Rod Hickman, a freshman Democrat from Macon who was elected mid-term in November 2021. “From the small research I’ve done, states that have gone to this model go very high (with filing fees)… I think this is a bad bill.”
To that point, Fillingane replied: “People can go to the other party to run if they want to be upset about that.”
The bill, if passed by the House in coming weeks, would certainly raise money for both major parties. During floor debate, Sen. David Blount, a Jackson Democrat, said he spoke with Republican Party Chairman Frank Bordeaux, Gov. Tate Reeves’ hand-picked party chairman who said he pushed the bill because it would help the party raise money.
Political fundraising aside, the high fees could only stand to discourage most Mississippians from running for office, from sharing ideas about how they could better serve the state and help it grow — taking advantage of true American democracy.
Meanwhile, this bill can be added to the growing list of reasons most Mississippians feel that their elected officials aren’t really focused on problems that need to be solved.
