In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Brittany Wagner. Brittany is a nationally respected athletic academic counselor and motivational speaker best known for her role as the breakout star of the hit Netflix documentary series Last Chance U.
Recognized for her compassion, encouragement, and no-nonsense attitude, Brittany guided many young men to academic and professional success despite run-ins with the law, extreme poverty, abandonment, and often a complete lack of academic preparedness. She has helped over 200 football players academically qualify for nationally respected NCAA Division I schools, and all of the students Brittany advised who are currently playing in the NFL, also hold college degrees.
Brittany’s inadvertent stardom led to feature interviews with ABC’s Nightline, The Dan Patrick Show, GQ,The New York Times, The LA Times and Sports Illustrated — to name a few. For the past four years, Brittany has traveled all over the country as a motivational speaker. In the fall of 2017, she launched her own company, Ten Thousand Pencils (10KP).
Mississippi Democrats must be asking themselves why they cannot do what Republicans did in Virginia and almost did in New Jersey this past week.
In Virginia, of course, the Republican candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin, defeated the former Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe. In New Jersey, the Republican came close to defeating incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
Democrats in Mississippi, on the other hand, have not won a gubernatorial election since 1999. And to top it off, no Democrat running for governor in Mississippi has come as close to winning as Republican Jack Ciattarelli came to upending Murphy in New Jersey.
Both New Jersey and Virginia have been Democratic strongholds. In the 2020 presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 10 points in Virginia and by 16 points in New Jersey, which incidentally is about the same margin by which Trump won Mississippi.
If Republicans can prevail in those deep blue states, why can’t Democrats win in Mississippi?
No doubt, one day a Democrat will win again in Mississippi. Many view Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley as the next best chance for Democrats to recapture the Governor’s Mansion.
But two years before the 2023 election, Presley is playing his political cards close to his vest.
“That log will shake itself out between now and election year, and, you know, quite frankly, the good Lord will open doors or shut doors however he sees fit,” Presley said recently on Mississippi Today’s The other side podcast.
He added, “We’re two years out… I’m not worried about any of that.”
Presley, despite his country charm and communicative abilities that rival those of former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, faces headwinds in Mississippi that the Republican candidates in Virginia and New Jersey did not endure.
For instance, a 2020 study by FiveThirtyEight, a respected blog that breaks down political trends and data, labels the Mississippi electorate as the nation’s least elastic or least persuadable. In other words, Mississippi voters are less likely to vote for a candidate of the party they normally oppose even in cases of scandal or economic turmoil.
Mississippi is not the most Republican state. But it has the least — per capita — persuadable voters, according to FiveThirtyEight. Mississippi has more Republicans who will not vote for the Democratic candidate and more Democrats who will not support the Republican candidate.
An argument can be made that race is a factor in that inelasticity. Most white people vote Republican in Mississippi and most African Americans vote Democratic. Polls bear out that fact. For instance, CNN exit polls from the 2018 Senate special election in Mississippi found 84% of white voters supported the Republican candidates and 94% of African Americans supported the Democratic candidates.
The same FiveThirtyEight study found Virginia in the bottom 10 states in terms of elasticity and New Jersey in the middle. New Hampshire and Rhode Island had the most persuadable voters.
For whatever it is worth, the study found Alabama is the second least persuadable state. Still, Alabama elected Democrat Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate in a 2017 special election. Of course, Jones barely squeaked by controversial former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who among other things was accused of sexual misconduct, including with some underage girls.
Can anyone say scandal?
Of course, three years later in the 2020 regular election, Jones was trounced by former Auburn and Ole Miss football coach Tommy Tuberville, a political novice who ran as a Republican.
While the loss in Virginia and unexpectedly close election in New Jersey do not look good for Democrats, there were some unusual circumstances. In Virginia, McAuliffe, who was first elected governor in 2017, was trying to become the first governor to serve two terms since the 1970s. Virginia governors cannot succeed themselves but can serve multiple terms. Plus, the state has a long history of electing governors opposite of the party of the president at the time.
For instance, a Republican won the governorship in 2009 despite the fact Democrat Barack Obama won the state only a year earlier when running for president. Now granted, Democrats did get trounced a year later in the 2010 midterms, but two years after that shellacking Obama comfortably won re-election.
In New Jersey, Murphy was vying to be the first Democratic governor to serve consecutive terms since the 1970s.
But there are other examples of states electing governors and other statewide officials opposite of the party they most often strongly support in presidential elections. Kentucky and Louisiana, solid Republican states in national elections and in most other instances, have Democratic governors just as strong Democratic states like Massachusetts and Maryland have Republican governors.
So perhaps there is hope yet for Mississippi Democrats.
Sponsors of an early voting ballot initiative are asking the federal courts to revive the state’s initiative process after it was rendered invalid in May by a ruling of the Mississippi Supreme Court.
The motion, filed Friday by attorneys Wilbur Colom of Columbus and Aphrodite Kavyas McCarthy of Pass Christian, would, if approved by the federal court, amend federal court rulings from 2002 and 2011 that redrew Mississippi’s congressional districts. The amendment would state that the 2002 and 2011 actions of the courts redrawing the congressional districts were meant only:
To be used for the redrawing of the congressional districts.
Did not change the five districts that existed before the federal court’s 2002 action for any reason but for the election of members of the U.S. House.
Did not “void any provision of the Mississippi Constitution” that dealt with the initiative process.
The Supreme Court ruled in May that Mississippi’s initiative process was invalid because it required that the mandated number of signatures of registered voters to place proposals on the ballot be gathered equally from the five congressional districts that existed before 2002.
As of result of the 2000 Census, the state lost one of its five congressional districts. When the Mississippi Legislature was unable to agree on a plan to eliminate one of its congressional districts as mandated by the 2000 Census, the federal courts stepped in to draw the map. And after the 2010 Census, the Legislature again was unable to agree on a plan, and again the federal courts drew the map.
Supporters of the early voting initiative now are asking the federal court to amend those 2002 and 2011 orders to say those orders did not apply to the ballot initiative and presumably, then, reinstate that process.
The early voting initiative sponsors reason the federal court could step in and clarify its rulings from 2002 and 2011 were intended only to deal with the election of U.S. House members and for no other reason. Then, the early voting initiative sponsors believe they could get on with their task of trying to gather enough signatures to place the issue on the ballot for voters to decide.
In a motion filed with the U.S. Southern District Court of Mississippi, the early voting initiative sponsors said the actions of the Mississippi Supreme Court meant that “the initiative petition rights of the people of Mississippi have been wrestled from them.”
The motion added, “the initiative petition rights of the people of Mississippi have been sideswiped and killed.”
When the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in May that the initiative process was invalid because of the use of the five districts to gather signatures, that ruling made invalid a medical marijuana initiative that overwhelmingly was approved by voters in November 2020.
In addition, initiatives also had been filed to expand Medicaid, to allow 10 days of early voting, to legalize marijuana for recreational use and other issues.
At the time of the state Supreme Court ruling, legislative leaders said they would work to legalize medical marijuana and to fix the overall initiative process. Thus far, Gov. Tate Reeves has opted not to call a special session to deal with medical marijuana, and legislative leaders have said they do not intend to take up fixing the initiative process until the regular session begins in January. And whatever fix legislators make for the initiative process also would have to be approved by voters, presumably in November 2022.
Chief nursing officers from 36 hospitals across Mississippi are begging Gov. Tate Reeves and other state leaders for help as they stare down closing hundreds of hospital beds this winter due to ongoing labor shortages.
Their latest efforts to get the governor’s attention came in the form of a letter, signed by the nursing officers at three dozen Mississippi hospitals, that was sent to the state’s leaders on Friday.
Reeves, who has the sole authority to call lawmakers into a special session to address pressing matters, said weeks ago he was open to letting lawmakers address the nursing shortage in a special session that he would likely call for medical marijuana. But since then, the governor has remained silent about whether he will call a special session at all.
The nurses are not the only ones waiting to hear back from the governor. Speaker of the House Philip Gunn said he, too, has yet to hear back from the governor’s office about a bill that legislative leaders wrote weeks ago that would create a funding program to assist the state’s struggling hospitals.
“We sent the bill to the governor on Sept. 30,” Gunn said. “I have not heard anything from him or his staff about this bill, medical marijuana or anything else.”
“We had talked about (the nursing shortage) with the lieutenant governor and the speaker,” said Mississippi Hospital Association CEO Tim Moore. “But we couldn’t get any direct communication with the governor. So, we decided let’s just send a letter and let our nursing leaders be a part of that.”
Health care workers have been increasingly drawn away from traditional hospital jobs in favor of temporary jobs with staffing agencies that pay up to four times as much as Mississippi’s average nursing wages. This exodus has strained the state’s hospitals, which say they cannot adequately staff hospital beds.
Nurses say they need immediate help, like a bonus program for in-demand health care workers who agree to stay at Mississippi hospitals. Right now, the state has millions of dollars in federal funds available, but lawmakers cannot allocate that money unless called into special session by Reeves.
While the prospects of the Mississippi nursing crisis worsens, other states are using federal pandemic funds to address nursing and other health worker shortages. Louisiana, for example, has earmarked $5 million for a healthcare employment fund for paying nurses and helping nursing schools. Texas has earmarked $400 million of its federal funds for additional health care staffing.
In the Friday letter to state leaders, the nursing officers say Mississippi hospitals will close more than 500 beds this winter because there won’t be enough staff to cover them.
“We write to both alert you to the forecasted bed capacity shortfalls for the upcoming months and to also stress the urgent need once again for state assistance in maintaining nursing staff,” says a copy of the letter obtained by Mississippi Today.
On Oct. 31, federally-funded nurses who came to help through the delta wave left as their contracts expired. Nurses statewide immediately felt the fallout from losing the extra help. Even as COVID-19 cases decline, hospitals are still short on staff and more nurses continue to leave.
Reeves made some comments about the shortage during a press conference on Monday. He said he would continue conversations with lawmakers about creating a retention program, but he talked more about investing in creating and educating more future nurses.
Reeves’ office did not respond to requests for further comment about the possibilities of a bonus or retention program.
“This is a crisis that won’t wait until we have workforce development six months, a year from now,” said Susan Russell, Singing River Health System’s chief nursing officer. “People’s lives are being put into jeopardy right now.”
Russell is one of the nurses who signed the letter to Reeves. She said the state needs both immediate and long-term plans to address the shortage.
“We need to have reward programs now,” Russell said. “Something that says we want you to stay in this state, we need you to stay in this state.”
Singing River, which has three hospitals on the Gulf Coast, has lost a dozen of its fully staffed hospital nurses in the last week alone. That’s in addition to the 73 temporary nurses that left following the end of their state-funded contracts.
Singing River has put itself at the center of the nursing crisis, calling for the Legislature to use part of the $1.8 billion in American Rescue Plan funds given to the state to create $20,000 bonuses to be given to health care workers over two years.
“I visited University of Mississippi Medical Center, Forrest General, Gulfport Memorial, and Singing River,” Gunn told Mississippi Today. “I saw with my own eyes the citizens who were in need of help. The motivation here (with this bill) is to help our citizens, to make sure they have health care available to them during this pandemic.”
The bill that the speaker’s office and lieutenant governor’s office drafted doesn’t go as far as Singing River’s proposal. But it does call for $56 million of the federal rescue plan funds to allow Mississippi hospitals, long term care facilities and ambulance companies to give up to $5,000 in bonuses to those who agree to stay for a period of five months.
The creation of any type of bonus program would require legislative approval, which cannot happen until January 2022 unless the governor calls a special session before then. Both Gunn and Hosemann have asked Reeves to call a special session to address COVID-19 concerns and the medical marijuana program.
Reeves has announced no plans to do that.
Nursing officers, like Russell, are panicked. They know contract nurses who are not tied down will likely opt out of contracts this holiday season to take a break. Some can afford to take months off, given the high wages they earned working as temp nurses with staffing companies.
Russell, who has spent 38 years in nursing at Singing River, has never seen anything like the current staffing crisis.
“Our hospitals are doing their best, but their funds are also limited, and the costs of labor has increased significantly,” the nurses wrote in their letter. “Such a program would demonstrate your commitment to and appreciation of those workers who have taken care of all of us during the pandemic. These are the workers who have healed and comforted over the last eighteen months and who will be relied upon to continue doing so in the months ahead.”
Gov. Tate Reeves on Friday announced the filing of a lawsuit challenging President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees of companies that have contracts with the federal government.
The lawsuit, first filed by the Indiana attorney general, is joined by the attorney general from Louisiana and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Western District of Louisiana.
Reeves also promised he is working with Fitch to file another lawsuit challenging the president’ vaccine mandate for companies with 100 or more employees.
For much of the pandemic, Reeves imposed mask mandates and other mandates for large swarths of the state. But this past summer as the COVID-19 delta variant surged and overwhelmed hospitals, the Republican governor refused to impose any mandates even as Mississippi became the state with the highest fatality rate per capita from the coronavirus. Mississippi also is one of the nation’s least vaccinated states.
The lawsuit claimed Biden’s efforts at stemming the spread of COVID-19 are unconstitutional.
“The Biden regime has used World War II era procurement laws to impose a vaccine mandate on one-fifth of all Americans,” Reeves said in a statement. “The unprecedented and clearly unconstitutional contractor vaccine mandate is the desperate act of a fading tyrant frustrated by Americans exercising their fundamental rights of freedom and self-determination.”
The mandate for private companies employing more than 100 people is based on provisions of law giving the federal government the authority to impose regulations to ensure worker safety.
The guidelines for the mandate allow exemptions for religious and health reasons.
Various Republican leaders nationwide have filed lawsuits and voiced opposition to the Biden mandate. Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn sent a letter to House members expressing his opposition.
“I believe strongly the government should not force any Mississippian to take the vaccine against his or her will,” the speaker wrote.
As political leaders of the state for multiple years, both Gunn and Reeves have been imposing vaccine mandates. For decades there have been multiple vaccine mandates in the country, including in Mississippi. Vaccines are mandated to enter secondary schools and universities. On the national level, the military for years has required vaccines and vaccines have been required for American citizens to travel to certain countries.
Ninety-one percent of Jackson Public Schools employees are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 after the district set a deadline of Nov. 1 for staff to get the shots.
Of the district’s 3,468 employees, approximately 325 remain unvaccinated and are tested weekly, according to Sherwin Johnson, executive director of public engagement for JPS.
Just over half of Hinds County residents are fully vaccinated, according to the Mississippi Department of Health.
The JPS policy also says that if a fully vaccinated employee contracts COVID-19 that person will be entitled to paid leave. Unvaccinated employees will not receive that benefit unless they are legally exempt because of a medical issue or sincerely held religious belief, per federal law.
They all cited the loss of instructional time as a result of quarantining or sick teachers and students as one major reason for encouraging staff get vaccinated.
Jackson Public Schools and Natchez-Adams School District are the only districts the Mississippi Department of Education is aware of that have implemented such a requirement, according to Department spokeswoman Jean Cook.
A little-known education board that oversees college financial aid in Mississippi has recently proposed a drastic overhaul of the state’s existing programs.
In lieu of three separate programs, the Post-Secondary Board put forward a single program called the “Mississippi One Grant” that would award financial aid based on a student’s income and ACT score.
Mississippi Today reviewed past conversations that led to this recent proposal, which is designed so that more students will qualify for financial aid, but it has raised concern among advocates for college access. Under the new program, the minimum ACT score that a student will need to qualify for any financial aid will be raised to 18 from the 15 that is currently needed to get the Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant. For students in a state that only recently cracked an average ACT score of 18, that’s a significant barrier.
To the Post-Secondary Board, it’s simple economics: Raising the ACT score is one strategy to ensure the new program will stay in budget.
And to Mark Keenum, the sole university president on the eight-member board, it is a way to ensure students with “true merit” have the best shot at attending Mississippi State University.
At a Post-Secondary Board meeting recorded over Zoom in December 2020, Keenum articulated his vision for state financial aid during a discussion of how the programs should be rewritten: Too often, Mississippi’s financial aid programs go to poor, lower-performing kids and take money away from students with high ACT scores.
“When you look at MTAG, the dollar amounts that are provided are so small,” Keenum said, “and, you know, a student can get an MTAG grant that has say maybe a 15 or 16 on their ACT, and they can come and bring those dollars to Mississippi State University.
Keenum addresses the Post-Secondary Board at a December 2020 meeting. Credit: Mississippi Today
“I’ll just tell all of you, that student does not need to come to Mississippi State University. But we’ve given funding, although a small amount, to that student, and we ought not do that,” he continued. “We urge students to not come here — if it’s a Mississippi student, I cannot turn them away under state law. They show up here with a 15 or 16 or 17 on their ACT and a 2.0 grade point average, barely get out of high school. They’re not a candidate to come to Mississippi State, but I can’t deny them enrollment. But we’ve given them funding to come to Mississippi State. We should not do that.”
As currently written, Keenum continued, Mississippi’s financial aid programs don’t provide enough aid to students with higher ACT scores. If the state does not start providing more financial aid to “high-achieving” students, he said he feared they will go elsewhere for college.
“I wish we could come up with a way that we could reward true merit across a wider spectrum than we do, all the way up to that 36-ACT student, who everybody in the country wants and who we desperately have got to keep in the state of Mississippi if we can,” he said.
Keenum acknowledged the board needs to help working-class students in Mississippi, but the priority should be placed on retaining the best and the brightest.
“We’re a poor state, and we’ve got the lowest per-capita income in the nation, and we’ve got just poor people, and they need help, and we need to do what we can to support them and give them opportunities in life,” he said. “Thank goodness there are federal aid programs that provide a lot of support.”
Keenum is not alone in his desire to prioritize awarding financial aid to students with high ACT scores over addressing the needs of low-income students. The idea of using financial aid to reward “high-achieving” students has been popular since the 1990s when Georgia introduced the HOPE Scholarship. At an institutional level, public universities across the country have shifted their dollars to place a greater emphasis on awarding students with high ACT scores — the kind of students who are favored by rankings in U.S. News and World Report.
Mississippi Today asked to interview Keenum for this story, but he was not available to comment before press time.
Many policymakers are starting to place a greater emphasis on equity when it comes to financial aid, said Tom Harnisch, the vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Does it make sense to award financial aid to students whose families can afford to pay for college? And what does “merit” mean in an unequal society?
“The whole concept of merit can be very problematic,” Harnisch told Mississippi Today. “These can be students who go to K-12 schools with the most resources that may have parents who are very well-educated, and who may have had test prep for the ACT or other college entrance exams. The whole notion of calling it ‘merit-based aid’ can be problematic when you think about some of the privileges these students enjoyed.”
Some states are charting a new path forward. Financial aid is increasingly seen as a tool to help states achieve certain workforce goals, said Frank Ballmann, the director of federal relations at the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs.
Merit aid, on the other hand, tends to favor wealthier white students who can already afford to pay for college. Studies have shown that test scores tend to correlate with income. In Louisiana, a recent report found that the state’s merit grant funded tuition for 11,000 students whose families made more than $1 million a year.
In Mississippi, financial aid is also disproportionately awarded aid to white, wealthier students.
A key argument in favor of merit aid, which Keenum articulated at the December meeting, is that it can keep the best and brightest in state. There are some studies to support the idea that merit aid can stem brain drain. But it’s unclear if this is the case in Mississippi: A study from MSU research center NSPARC commissioned in 2018 found that the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant did not increase in-state enrollment of high-achieving students.
No matter what the studies show, Keenum’s voice is powerful: Out of the eight public universities, MSU receives the largest chunk of state aid. It also has the most students attending on state financial aid. Keenum’s public opinions on financial aid hold a lot of sway — and what he advocates for will negatively affect working-class students, according to data from the Office of Student Financial Aid.
Under the “One Grant,” more state aid dollars will go to white students at the expense of their non-white peers, according to OSFA’s analysis. The average white student will receive $63 more than they would under the current system. The average Black student will lose out on $573 of state financial aid.
Watch: The December 2020 Post-Secondary Board meeting.
Near the end of the December meeting, Jennifer Rogers, OSFA’s director, asked the board what role a student’s income should play in awarding merit aid. If a student meets the requirements for a merit scholarship, she asked, does the board want to award aid “regardless of your ability to pay, regardless of your financial situation?”
“Yeah, I don’t think we want to get into means-testing,” Keenum answered. “Unless we want, to just, to our higher achieving students, just say, well, good luck in Tennessee or Arkansas or wherever you go to school.”
“If our state is not willing to step up like many of our surrounding states are doing, and others, then we’re gonna be really losing ground from a merit standpoint,” he continued. “I support need—no question. But we’ve also got to support achievement and recognize that and make those investments. … We don’t have the resources to make up for what would be taken away if we eliminated merit-based, we don’t just have the resources.”
“But if we looked at well, you’re from a family whose annual income is at this level and because you’re so well-off, we can’t match the out of state opportunities that these students have,” Keenum said, shaking his head. “I can tell you, and I don’t think our friends and leaders in the Legislature want to hear from parents about that either. So, I don’t think that’s, when you get into means-testing, is something I’d like to see us go down that path.”
Rogers replied that if the board wants to expand merit aid to more ACT scores, it will be looking at “a lot more money” than is currently allocated. “I’m just trying to figure out … what that looks like from a cost-perspective, if there’s any parameters on that,” she said. “And I’m hearing that you’re saying, you wouldn’t say so.”
Jim Turcotte, the Post-Secondary Board chairman, cut in.
“I don’t think this whole conversation is going like it needs to go,” he said, “so let me try to restate it here: Merit is merit. To quote Sharon Ross (another Post-Secondary Board member), ‘life is not fair.’”
Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that financial aid in general, not the HELP grant specifically, is disproportionately awarded to white, wealthier students.
