Mike Espy and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith

An internal poll released by Democrat Mike Espy’s U.S. Senate campaign on Thursday reports he’s gaining ground and is within five points of incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, to whom he lost by more than seven points in a 2018 special election.

But Hyde-Smith’s campaign released its own internal poll later Thursday, reporting she has a 20-point lead, and her camp questioned the methodology and veracity of Espy’s poll. Many statewide and national politicos don’t consider the race to be competitive, and previous polling has shown the incumbent Republican with healthier leads in one of the reddest states in the country.

Espy is challenging Hyde-Smith in the November general election.

The Espy telephone poll of 600 likely Mississippi voters from July 30 to Aug. 9 reports Hyde-Smith leading with 47%, Espy with 42% and about 3% supporting a third party.

The survey is Espy’s best showing in released polling to date, and he discussed it on a national MSNBC show on Thursday morning.

“The ground is shifting here in Mississippi,” Espy said on MSNBC Thursday morning. “We recently saw it with the taking down of the Confederate flag. Most Mississippians now want to turn the page and move us toward progress … We’re closing the gap.”

The poll, which shows a margin of error of 4.1%, was conducted by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, a pollster for high profile Democrats around the nation like New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

FiveThirtyEight, which rates national pollsters, gave the firm a B/C rating. 

In a release Thursday afternoon, the Hyde-Smith campaign said “the methodology is awful” on the poll Espy released. The campaign noted that a poll of 600 people should not have taken 10 days to complete, and said it “cherry picked” demographics among independents.

“(The poll) emphasizes that they are on track to lose by less this time,” the Hyde-Smith campaign wrote. “Not sure that’s much to brag about … Mississippi is not a state where you win by mobilizing independents. You win by turning out your base voters, which they admit Espy is failing to do.”

A May Public Policy Polling survey for the Mississippi Democratic Party showed Hyde-Smith leading Espy 49% to 41%, and a May poll by Impact Management Group for Y’all Politics showed Hyde-Smith leading 58% to 31%.

In 1986, Espy became the first African American elected to the U.S. House in Mississippi since Reconstruction and later served as U.S. secretary of agriculture in the Clinton administration. Hyde-Smith, first appointed to fill the Senate seat by Gov. Phil Bryant, in 2018 became the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi.

This week’s Espy survey notes previous polls were conducted before protests across the country and in Mississippi over the police killing of George Floyd and the historic decision by Mississippi lawmakers to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag.

The Espy campaign is making race a major issue amid the national debate of racial inequities in government. The campaign has focused on comments Hyde-Smith made in 2018 about public hangings and has accused her of “glorifying Confederate symbols.” The November ballot will also include a referendum on replacing the Mississippi flag, predicted to be a factor in turnout and voting.

“We do have the numbers, and we can win,” Espy said. “We will not only take down the flag in November, we’re going to take out Confederate Cindy and send her back to the museum.”

Some other findings reported in the survey the Espy campaign released Thursday:

• Espy is up by 8 points over Hyde-Smith with independent voters, and tied with Hyde-Smith among young white voters, aged 18-34.
• Espy has about 85% support among Black voters.
• Espy polled 40% positive, 22% negative; Hyde-Smith at 37% positive, 34% negative.
• The poll included 35% Black likely voters, and its sample reported voting for President Trump in 2016 54% to 39%. Trump won in Mississippi in 2016 with 58%.

The Hyde-Smith campaign said: “A well-known African-American candidate who just ran last cycle should be getting more than 85% of the African-American vote.”

Espy’s pollsters also said “Donald Trump is weaker in Mississippi than he was in 2016,” saying he polled 53% to 43% versus a generic Democratic candidate. In 2016, Trump won Mississippi with 58%.

The Hyde-Smith campaign called this point “nonsensical.”

“If Trump wins Mississippi by 10 points, there are not many paths to victory for Espy,” the statement said. “It’s hard to imagine many, if any, voters deciding to vote for Trump and then on the next line of the ballot deciding to not vote for one of Trump’s best allies in the Senate.”

The survey Hyde-Smith released was conducted by the Republican pollster the Tarrance Group, and was also of 600 likely Mississippi voters. It was conducted from June 22-25, with a margin of error of 4.1%.

Tarrance has a FiveThirtyEight rating of B/C.

The poll reported:

• Hyde-Smith with a favorable/unfavorable rating of 51%/35%, compared to Espy at 47%/33%.
• Hyde-Smith with strong approval ratings among key blocs, such as seniors, 59%; conservatives, 64% and white voters, 70%.
• Hyde-Smith with a higher lead margin than President Trump, who polled 55% to 40% against Joe Biden, and with 97% of Trump voters reporting they plan to vote for Hyde-Smith.

“(Espy’s) numbers are obviously an attempt by a failing campaign to manufacture press stories and to try to boost fundraising,” Hyde-Smith’s campaign said in a statement. “We don’t blame them for trying, but we think the results on Election Day will be most similar to our polling, just as happened in 2018.”

Espy campaign manager Joe O’Hern, in a statement said: “Things only keep getting worse for Sen. Hyde-Smith. After outraising her 3-to-1 and raising more in July than Hyde-Smith did the entire second quarter, momentum continues to build for Mike Espy … It is clear that Mississippians are tired of Hyde-Smith’s weak leadership and partisan political games ….”

The post Espy, Hyde-Smith campaigns release dueling polls in Mississippi Senate race appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Over half of Mississippi renters could face eviction during pandemic without protections from Congress

Data shows most renters were teetering before the pandemic, and much more rental assistance is needed to fill the gaps.

BY ANNA WOLFE | AUGUST 13, 2020

More than half of Mississippi’s roughly 352,000 renter households are at risk of eviction if Congress doesn’t extend protections for families struggling as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers estimated.

More than a third of all Mississippians said they missed last month’s rent or mortgage payment or believed they wouldn’t be able to pay the next on time, Census survey results show, making Mississippi the third most vulnerable state in the nation for housing.

By Thursday, Congress remained locked in stalemate over issuing more COVID-19 relief to states after crucial protections expired at the end of July, thrusting many families into greater economic uncertainty.

The state is doling out millions in rental assistance to people impacted by the virus, but the program’s current funding is a small fraction of what’s needed to keep people housed during this recession.

Eviction filings were fairly rare when Rachel Harris, newly appointed Lee County Justice Court Clerk, started working at the court nearly 20 years ago. She’d receive these removal requests from landlords maybe once or twice a week.

In more recent years, she said the court sees two or three each day among a population of about 85,000.

Some landlords in the county were so determined to oust tenants who had gotten behind on rent, even as the pandemic began, they shut off the lights in some units to compel them to leave. A judge ordered the owners to restore power after an emergency motion by the Mississippi Center for Justice, and a statewide eviction freeze took effect shortly after. The state’s moratorium lifted June 1.

“We had a lot of them (landlords) that were aggravated when they couldn’t do evictions during the shutdown and everything,” Harris said. “But I think since everything’s kind of opened back up and they’re allowing evictions now, it hasn’t really picked up any more.”

“They picked up basically where they left off,” she added.

Housing researchers say the existing housing affordability crisis is about to get much worse now that the people seeking unemployment benefits by late July — some 200,000 in Mississippi, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Labor data — have seen their weekly benefit drop to as low as $30.

“The problem feels like an iceberg. It feels like we see some of it, but there’s a much greater portion of the problem that’s under the surface that we don’t see yet,” Scott Spivey, executive director of the Mississippi Home Corporation, said in mid-July.

Renters, who are disproportionately low income-earners, have been harder hit by the pandemic because job and income losses caused by shutdowns are concentrated in industries employing lower wage workers, such as food service, entertainment and hospitality. Evictions also disproportionately affect Black Mississippians, who are overrepresented in low wage jobs and nearly three times as likely to live in poverty and to be unemployed than white people.

A little less than a third of the state’s population — 915,000 people — live in Mississippi’s 352,000 renter households. A study by global advisory firm Stout Risius Ross shows as high as 58% of those households are at risk of eviction. The national figure is about 43%.

By mid-July, more than a third of all Mississippians either missed their previous month’s rent or mortgage payment or believed they would not be able to make the next month’s payment on time, according to a weekly survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Based on these most recent survey results, Mississippi is the nation’s third most housing insecure state, behind just Texas and Louisiana. Nationwide, about a quarter of Americans said they faced this scenario.

Over half of Mississippians also said they had lost income through their work since March 13, just slightly more than the national average.

“If you’re not going to continue the boost in unemployment, there has to be a plan B to provide for basic necessities in the middle of a pandemic when a lot of people don’t have the choice to go back to work,” Spivey said. “They have to do something. And being paralyzed by indecision is going to leave a lot of people in a really bad situation.”

Most renters in Mississippi were already teetering, spending more than 30% of their income on housing before the pandemic screeched the economy to a halt in March. This is increasingly the case as housing costs continue to rise while wages stagnate.

As a result, thousands are evicted every year — resulting in hasty moves, lost belongings, displaced family members and homelessness. In Jackson, the capital city, between seven and eight families are evicted from their homes every day, according to 2016 data, the most recent available, gathered by the Princeton University-based research group the Eviction Lab. Of all large cities in the nation, it had the fifth highest eviction rate that year.

While Congress continues to negotiate the details of the next stimulus package, President Donald Trump issued an order on Saturday indicating he would consider extending the federal eviction moratorium, which expired July 25, but it only applies to renters living in federally subsidized housing.

He also ordered to continue a boost to unemployment benefits by $400-a-week, down from $600. But because Trump is requiring that states pay 25% of the supplement, Gov. Tate Reeves said he wasn’t sure if Mississippi would participate.

In an earlier relief package, the federal government offered states almost $3 billion in rental assistance grants to cover the gaps for people who found themselves unable to afford rent due to the pandemic. Mississippi initially received $8 million — which it began administering through three housing programs in northern, central and southern regions of the state in late June — and then another $10 million.

Housing advocates say these programs provide the maximum benefit by keeping tenants housed and landlords financially secure, preventing the hefty back-end costs of evictions and homelessness.

But it will take at least $100 million to meet the enormous need across the state, researchers estimate.

Many landlords say they’re committed to working with tenants who are struggling and have shown an attempt to pay. Becky Ivison, who owns about 1,200 units across the state, said some renters were confused by the moratorium, believing they did not have to pay rent during those months. Now they’re several months behind, but Ivison said her property managers have set up payment plans as opposed to rushing the tenants out.

“Our goal is not to have to process any evictions,” Ivison said. “These people are trying to get back to work, trying to take care of their families … the last thing that they need is for us to have to process an eviction.”

The organizations administering rental assistance also say they’re communicating with landlords so they know how to direct their tenants to seek help.

By July 31, these organizations had received 2,934 calls, were processing 2,037 applications and had committed just $342,500 to needy renters. The program typically covers an approved applicant’s rent for three months, unless they become ineligible in the meantime. And they must demonstrate they are short on rent because of the pandemic.

While the state has issued grants to small businesses, paid for broadband expansion and distance learning and funded colleges and workforce development, advocates argue it has done little to enact protections or direct aid to families facing hardships to ensure they can continue to support themselves.

“The Mississippi Legislature looked fully at institutional needs and kind of ignored basic household needs in their allocation of coronavirus relief funds and are leaving it up to the federal government to make sure that families have a roof over their head and food on their plate,” John Sullivan, a policy director with national affordable housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners Gulf Coast, said.

Enterprise estimates it will cost between $107 million to $194 million to provide rental assistance to Mississippi households who will need it between now and the new year. The cost is between $196 million to $408 million to cover rents through July 2021, based on unemployment projections from the Congressional Budget Office and average rent costs.

According to these estimations, unemployment impacted roughly 80,000 renter households in April and will continue to impact around 50,000 well into 2021.

Mississippians in need of rental assistance should contact the Continuum of Care program covering their region: Central Mississippi Continuum of Care (769-237-1012) covers Hinds, Rankin, Madison, Warren and Copiah counties; Open Doors Homeless Coalition (228-604-2048) covers Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River, Stone and George counties and Mississippi United to End Homelessness (601-960-0557) covers the rest of the state.

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This past week Mississippi’s state health department has reported the lowest daily case totals of COVID-19 in about a month, but the state’s test positivity rate remains one of the highest in the nation.

The seven-day rolling average for new cases reached 847 on Wednesday, its lowest point since July 15. However, as testing numbers mirrored a similar decrease since the start of August, Mississippi’s weekly positivity rate — the number of new cases divided by the number of new tests, over a week’s span — has remained roughly the same over the last two weeks, at around 20%.

“We know we had another very good day of numbers today, at least relative to where we had been for the last four or five weeks,” Gov. Tate Reeves said in a Tuesday press conference, after the state health department announced 644 new cases that day. “We can celebrate that fact, but we must also realize that the trends will only continue if we do the right things.”

As Gov. Reeves mentioned, the seven-day new case average has dropped by over 30% since peaking in late July. The seven-day average for new tests dropped by 21% in that time.

Mississippi ranks sixth among all states in the seven-day average for positivity rates, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The state ranks 20th in new tests per 1,000 people.

When asked about the decline in reported tests, State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said that Mississippians often only get tested when they experience symptoms.

“A lot of people in Mississippi don’t have a primary care doctor, and a lot of people don’t get care unless they’re sick,” Dobbs said. “So the high testing numbers a lot of the time reflect the number of people who are ill and symptomatic.

“So I think it’s a good sign to see the decline in testing demand, that’ll also help with the private lab capacity and their ability to get faster results.”

Dobbs added that the state doesn’t have a set target for the number of new tests, instead focusing on maximizing tests in highly impacted communities. For instance in Holmes County, which has the highest case rate per capita in the state, MSDH tested over 500 people this past weekend in Lexington, or roughly a quarter of the city’s population.

Regionally, counties in Central Mississippi and the Delta continue to have the highest rates of COVID-19 in the state, although some counties in the southern third of the state, especially Claiborne and Wayne counties, also rank highly.

Hospitalizations from the disease have slowed, as the seven-day rolling average has decreased for ten straight days, although patients in ICUs and using ventilators have increased in recent days.

As of Monday, Mississippi ranked third in new cases per capita, according to the Harvard Global Health Institute’s tracker.

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Mississippi Today is pleased to announce Michelle Alexander as Donor Relations Director.

Alexander will lead Mississippi Today’s impact donor fundraising initiatives, working closely with senior leadership to further grow individual investment in our nonprofit newsroom. 

“Hiring a Donor Relations Director is a key element of our strategic growth, and we couldn’t be in better hands with Michelle Alexander,” said Mary Margaret White, Mississippi Today CEO & Executive Director. “Michelle intrinsically understands the critical mission of our nonprofit newsroom and brings high-level experience and expertise to our business team.”  

Alexander brings 15 years of not-for-profit fundraising experience to Mississippi Today. She has held leadership positions with Children’s of Mississippi, the American Heart Association and JDRF where she was instrumental in philanthropic development, as well as implementing mission-related strategies. In addition, Alexander ran a successful fundraising consulting practice. She has been responsible for securing over $14 million in gifts during her fundraising career and has earned a reputation for professionalism, engagement and an authentic passion for the missions of the organizations she has served. 

“I have been fortunate to work in wonderful organizations that strive to improve the lives of others,” said Alexander. “The meaning I find in my work and the opportunity to match a donor’s desire to make a difference with an organizational mission and purpose is extremely important to me. I look forward to accomplishing that type of work at Mississippi Today as we approach journalism in a way that informs and inspires our citizens to expect and learn more in order to achieve progress and positive change.”

Originally from Atlanta, Alexander is a 25-year resident of Jackson, where she relocated after beginning her career in Memphis. She is both a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Fund-Raising Executive. 

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