Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down for a Zoom conversation with Mississippi’s State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs.
Dobbs, in his second year on the job, discusses his background, the challenges of the pandemic, how he stays healthy during it (exercise and staying away from social media), where we are now and where we are headed in the near future. He also talks about how to vote safely, tips for Thanksgiving and treatments.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
President Donald Trump embraces Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith during a campaign rally at BancorpSouth Arena in Tupelo, Miss., Friday, November 1, 2019.
President Donald Trump, who helped Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith win her seat in a 2018 special election with three visits to Mississippi, on Wednesday tweeted his endorsement of her.
“(Hyde-Smith) delivers for Mississippi!” Trump tweeted. “She helped us Cut your Taxes, Secure our Border, and Defend the Second Amendment. Cindy’s opponent, Mike Espy, is a Corrupt Politician who will Raise your Taxes and Open your Borders! Vote for Cindy!”
Senator @CindyHydeSmith delivers for Mississippi! She helped us Cut your Taxes, Secure our Border, and Defend the Second Amendment. Cindy’s opponent, Mike Espy, is a Corrupt Politician who will Raise your Taxes and Open your Borders! Vote for Cindy! #MSSENhttps://t.co/8YzRzj3ngC
A Trump campaign visit to Mississippi, considered “safely red” by most politicos for both Trump and Hyde-Smith’s re-election, is unlikely this cycle, with Trump’s campaign focusing on larger swing states.
Hyde-Smith’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s endorsement, but she tweeted Wednesday, “Thank you for your support @realdonaldtrump!”
Hyde-Smith has been one of Trump’s staunchest allies in the Senate, unwaveringly supporting most of his policies and defending him during impeachment hearings. Hyde-Smith has done little in person, open to the public campaigning in Mississippi this cycle, and her Democratic challenger, former U.S. Rep Mike Espy has raised millions more than her in campaign donations. But the Hyde-Smith campaign is banking on proxy support from Trump’s popularity in Mississippi and an electorate that has voted Republican in most federal elections for the last 30 years.
Trump’s endorsement of Hyde-Smith was part of a string of 11 endorsement tweets he made on Wednesday afternoon, including Republican congressional candidates Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota, Jim Oberweis of Illinois, Eric Esshaki of Michigan and Jim Marchant of Nevada.
Also on Wednesday, Hyde-Smith’s Democratic challenger Mike Espy was endorsed by former President Barack Obama. Hyde-Smith responded to this on Twitter, saying, “A vote for Mike Espy is a vote for failed Obama policies. It’s that simple.”
Throughout the month of October, Mississippi Today is hosting some of Mississippi’s most celebrated authors in conversation with Mississippi Today editors and journalists.
The second event in the Mississippi Writers on Mississippi Politics series was a conversation between Mississippi author W. Ralph Eubanks and Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau.
W. Ralph Eubanks is author of Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past and the forthcoming A Place Like Mississippi (Timber Press, March 2021). A 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently a visiting professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi
Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today / Report for America
Mike Espy speaks to reporters at New Horizon Church in Jackson on Nov. 14, 2018.
WASHINGTON — Democratic Senate candidate Mike Espy is officially coming out in favor of the state’s medical marijuana legalization initiative, telling Mississippi Today that he believes sick patients should be entitled to what amounts to medicine.
“I support Initiative 65 because it provides a well-regulated treatment option to those that need it,” Espy said in an emailed statement. “Medical marijuana can provide relief for many Mississippians who suffer from nausea during chemotherapy, arthritis, the effects of autoimmune illnesses, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, anxiety, and many other conditions.”
The comment marks Espy’s first confirmation to a news organization about the reasons he is in favor of Initiative 65 since its supporters gathered enough signatures and submitted it September 2019 to be on the ballot this November. Espy is using a four-to-one cash advantage to try to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and become the first Democratic senator since 1989.
Hyde-Smith’s campaign did not reply to a request seeking comment on her stance on medical marijuana. Hyde-Smith, though, told WJTV on Oct. 16 that she opposes Initiative 65 and that regulation of marijuana should be left up to the federal government.
“We need, first of all, something that the (Mississippi) Legislature can control,” she said. “And if cities and municipalities don’t want that in their communities, they need to have some local control over that, as well. So I do oppose what is on the ballot right now.”
Espy’s support of the program could provide a small boost to his campaign, which likely needs to attract any and all voting blocs to win in November. A recent poll had him within the margin of error in the rematch against Hyde-Smith. But gauging just how much support he could gain from moving on a single issue is difficult this year because of national trends — and especially in Mississippi, where several other initiatives are on the ballot this election.
Nationwide, there is some thought and research backing up the idea that Democratic candidates can increase youth turnout by using marijuana as a wedge issue, but the data is far from definitive. Medical marijuana, in particular, has enjoyed increasingly bipartisan support nationwide. And in Mississippi, some libertarian and right-leaning groups have backed Initiative 65 since its inception, so there’s no guarantee any turnout bump would bring only Democrats to the polls.
Mississippi voters are also being asked to approve a new state flag design, which would for the first time in more than 126 years not include the Confederate emblem. Another ballot initiative would do away with a state-level electoral college. And there is the small matter of who will be president, too.
National issues like the presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic, along with local issues like the medical marijuana initiative, the flag and the effort to repeal what critics have called a Jim Crow-era statewide election rule are all working in unison to motivate young people to turn out, said Kendall Witmer, the Espy campaign’s communications director.
Jarrius Adams, president of the Young Democrats of Mississippi, said he has been pushing Initiative 65, but a lot of people he meets don’t even know one measure is on the ballot, let alone two. He said he has also been pitching Initiative 65 as just the first step, telling voters that if they want to see marijuana legalized outright in the next few years, they have to start here. But it has been a hard sell, he conceded.
“There hasn’t been as much buzz,” he said. “I’m sure if it was legalizing marijuana that would be a whole different story, but yes, for sure, medical marijuana has been a challenge to get folks out for that sole reason.”
In 2012, Colorado and Washington saw massive youth voter increases when they had legalization initiatives on the ballot. But candidates this year looking to rev up Democrats need say little more than “President Donald Trump,” according to marijuana experts.
“One would think that, on the Democratic side, there would be more enthusiasm, and there probably is. However, this particular election, we are seeing huge amounts of Democratic enthusiasm, which is probably, you know, hatred of Trump,” said Nathaniel Gurien, a cannabis expert who works in the marijuana banking sector. “So, the question is, is cannabis going to increase the number of people who show up who are Democratic? I would be inclined to think no because they are going to show up anyway.”
But in Mississippi, pro- and anti-Initiative 65 advertising blitzes have ramped up in the state. And what limited polling does exist around the issue shows it is vastly popular, with a poll from California-based FM3 research showing in the summer that more than 80% of Mississippi voters support medical marijuana in principle.
Although the “Yes on Initiative 65” tag has been part of the Mississippi Democratic Party platform this year, and, according to Espy’s campaign, has appeared on some of his door hangers and other campaign literature since last month, the former congressman had not publicly outlined his rationale for supporting the measure.
The comment shared with Mississippi Today this week shows an evolution in Espy’s public stance on the issue over the last two years. In September 2018, just a month ahead of a special election for the Senate seat he lost to Hyde-Smith, the former U.S. secretary of agriculture said he was open to looking at medical marijuana as something like a cold hard cash crop.
“We need more revenue in Mississippi. So just like legalized betting, I’d be open to reviewing the facts and the economic estimates of what that would bring to the state’s coffers,” Espy told the Jackson Free Press at the time.
But he also expressed some concern about safety for people who do use marijuana, echoing a common argument opponents of the issue have deployed.
“There are a lot of studies out there about how if you are under the influence it still impairs your ability,” he said. “I would just have to know if it was safe and if it was a financial benefit to the state.”
That hesitation no longer seemed to exist in his public stance shared this week. Espy appears now to view medical marijuana as first and foremost a healthcare issue. And his spokeswoman noted that although few in the press have asked where he stands on the issue, he has been having one-on-one talks with constituents about his support for Initiative 65 all cycle.
“If you have an illness or a disorder in Mississippi, I firmly believe you should be able to get the same safe treatment, under a doctor’s orders, in Mississippi, that you can get in many other states,” Espy said in the statement.
Espy’s stance in favor of the initiative makes him one of the few Senate candidates in a close race in a state where a marijuana-related ballot measure is up for a vote this year to firmly back the measure.
Two other close races that will decide the future of the Senate are happening in states where marijuana is up for a vote. Granted, Arizona and Montana are voting on whether to legalize adult-use marijuana after having already had functional medical marijuana programs. But in both cases, the Democratic Senate candidates have been either silent or tepid in their endorsements.
In Mississippi, other Democrats have remained mum on the issue. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who is the state’s only Democrat in Washington, said in September that he would just as soon stay away from the issue, adding, “I’m leaving it up to the public.”
As an exception, Antonia Eliason, a University of Mississippi School of Law professor who is running against GOP Rep. Trent Kelly in the state’s first congressional district, has framed it as a criminal justice issue. She told Mississippi Today, unprompted, in a candidate questionnaire that she wants to “legalize cannabis and release those incarcerated on cannabis-related charges.”
Some trepidation on the part of politicians could be chalked up to the fact that there are diminishing returns for supporting what is, in Mississippi’s case, an initiative legalizing medical marijuana for people with serious conditions, not legal access for adults. John Hudak, an expert on marijuana at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, said when he has observed increased excitement on the ground among young people, it has been for legalizing marijuana outright.
“That is not the case necessarily for medical initiatives,” Hudak said. “Medical cannabis—given that it has such ubiquitous support and is not something that drives liberals in a disproportionate way relative to conservatives—is unlikely to see similar youth effects.”
That may explain Mississippi medical marijuana proponents’ strategy to play both sides. Just this week, the Trump campaign Director Michael J. Glassner sent a cease and desist letter to Jamie Grantham, spokeswoman for Mississippians for Compassionate Care, objecting to fliers asking voters to “‘JOIN PRESIDENT TRUMP’ in supporting legalization of medical marijuana in Mississippi.”
Adding to some of the malaise around the issue, legalizing medical marijuana has been obfuscated by the presence of two competing ballot initiatives up for a vote: Initiative 65, added by virtue of voters signing a ballot petition, and a more restrictive measure, 65A, that was added by the Legislature. The second measure would limit smoking of medical marijuana to terminally ill patients and give the state Legislature more control over how to implement a medical program.
Daniel Newhauser is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, National Journal, Politico, Roll Call, VICE News and several other publications. He can be found on Twitter @dnewhauser.
Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Students from Barack H. Obama Magnet School in Jackson cheer for Mike Espy after a town hall on Nov. 15, 2018.
Former President Barack Obama endorsed Democratic Mississippi U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy on Wednesday, and the Espy campaign announced Obama’s endorsement message will be broadcast statewide in a radio advertisement.
“Mike Espy has a great chance to win this election for the Senate and keep Mississippi moving forward,” Obama said in his endorsement statement. “You were finally able to change the flag. Now, you can change your senator, too. Mike Espy for Senate and Joe Biden for President. It’s your time to be heard.”
barackobama.com
Former President Barack Obama
Obama encouraged Mississippians to make a plan to vote, check their polling place and bring identification.
Espy in a statement said: “I am honored to have the endorsement of the 44th president of the United States of America. President Barack Obama governed with dignity and effectiveness. He is remembered and will continue to be remembered as a very good president.”
Espy had already been endorsed by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. In two recent rounds of endorsements of more than 100 Democratic candidates across the country, Obama had failed to endorse Espy, which Espy has chalked up to oversight on the part of Obama’s staff.
A hallmark of Espy’s 2020 campaign strategy is to get nearly 100,000 Black Mississippi voters who have not turned out since Obama’s first presidential win in 2008 to vote on Nov. 3.
Rogers McClellan votes during the 2018 Mississippi Primary Election at Christ United Methodist Church on Tuesday, June 5, 2018.
Mississippians who vote by mail will be notified of problems with their ballots and given an opportunity to correct them under a new rule adopted by Secretary of State Michael Watson after a federal lawsuit was filed against him.
The federal lawsuit, which was filed in August and sought to expand early voting opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic, was dismissed Tuesday by U.S. Judge Daniel Jordan III. But before the lawsuit was dismissed, Watson, who oversees state elections and was a defendant in the suit, adopted the rule.
Voters must receive correspondence from election officials about problems with the signature verification on the absentee ballot, and the voter will have 10 days to correct it. The voter should be provided an “absentee cure form” to correct the problem.
In addition to the absentee rule, election officials must provide curbside voting opportunities for people experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or who have been exposed to the coronavirus.
“We are pleased that Mississippi has adopted procedures that will protect voters from having their ballots arbitrarily rejected,” said Jennifer Nwachukwu, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Just because a record number of voters in Mississippi will vote by mail this year does not mean there needs to be a record number of disenfranchised voters. This is a key victory in protecting the integrity of our election and ensuring the voice of the people is heard.”
A news release from the groups filing the lawsuit — the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others — said they anticipate the changes imposed by Watson to remain in effect after the pandemic is over.
Two lawsuits have been filed this year in efforts to expand early voting opportunities in the state for people who want to avoid crowded precincts on Election Day. The lawsuits have not been successful in ensuring all Mississippians can vote early.
The Legislature amended state law earlier this year, ensuring that people under a physician-imposed quarantine because of the coronavirus or people who are caretakers for those under a quarantine could vote early. But, according to the Democracy Initiative, Mississippi is the only state not to allow all voters to vote early during the pandemic.
Under state law, Mississippians can vote early in most cases only if they are elderly, away from home on Election Day or disabled. Mississippi is the only state to mandate that a mail-in ballot and an application for a mail-in ballot be notarized.
State officials, including Gov. Tate Reeves, have maintained that people will be able to vote safely at the polls on Nov. 3.
Watson’s office has said the wearing of masks “will be strongly encouraged” but not mandated at the polls, and the poll workers will wear masks and other personal protection equipment. In addition, sanitizer will be available at the polls as well as special pens or styli to sign in and mark the ballot.
“These will be the cleanest and safest precincts Mississippi voters have ever seen,” Watson said earlier this year.
Watson’s office did not immediately respond to the announcement from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center about the election changes he had imposed.
President Donald Trump speaks from the Oval Office of the White House as he gives a prime-time address about border security Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2018, in Washington. (Carlos Barria/Pool Photo via AP)
President Trump’s re-election campaign has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a group pushing to legalize medical marijuana in Mississippi, saying its mailers falsely claim Trump supports a ballot initiative in the Magnolia State.
“The President’s campaign has learned that your organization, Mississippians for Compassionate Care, has been circulating misleading communications using the President’s name, image, or likeness in support of Mississippi Initiative Measure No. 65 and your group’s efforts to legalize medical marijuana in your state,” Trump campaign Director Michael J. Glassner wrote to Jamie Grantham, spokeswoman for Mississippians for Compassionate Care. “President Trump has never expressed support for Initiative 65, and his campaign demands that you immediately cease and desist all activities using the President’s name, image or likeness …”
One major issue being debated in Mississippi is putting medical marijuana in the state Constitution, and the wording of the initiative that would not allow the state Legislature to set regulations or tax its sale.
The campaign said it learned that mailers supporting the medical marijuana Initiative 65 had envelopes that “deceptively — and in bold, capital letters —urge voters to ‘JOIN PRESIDENT TRUMP’ in supporting legalization of medical marijuana in Mississippi …”
But Grantham responded, “President Trump has clearly stated on multiple occasions that he supports medical marijuana. That is all that we’ve shared — the truth.” She provided links to videos and reports of Trump stating he supports medical marijuana and letting states decide the issue.
“We’ve never said he supports Initiative 65 and that would be absurd to do so as I think he is pretty tied up with his own presidential election,” Grantham said.
The Trump campaign said using the president’s name is “unfair to Mississippi voters who may be led to vote Yes … on the false belief that President Trump supports the measure.”
“Therefore, let us be clear about this:” Glassner wrote, in bold. “President Trump has never stated his support for passage of Initiative 65 or the legalization of medical marijuana in Mississippi.”
In a press release sent out by Mississippi Horizon, a group that opposes Initiative 65, Jim Perry, a member of the State Health Board, which also opposes the initiative, claimed “there is a pattern of deceptive statements from the pro-65 campaign.” He claimed the Initiative 65 campaign is “taking the playbook from Big Tobacco.”
Grantham said: “Politicians and bureaucrats who are behind Mississippi Horizon are spreading propaganda every chance they get and they are against people in Mississippi having access to this plant that God made that is safe and effective at treating pain, nausea, tremors, seizures and other debilitating conditions.”
Mississippi voters on Nov. 3 will decide whether to change the state’s constitution to legalize medical marijuana. Voters will have three choices:
Approve Initiative 65, for which more than 228,000 Mississippians signed a petition, which opponents say is too permissive and written to help the marijuana industry, not patients.
Approve Initiative 65A, put forth by the Legislature, which would allow lawmakers to regulate a medical marijuana program, but which opponents say is a rope-a-dope by lawmakers to thwart medical marijuana usage and dilute the vote for Initiative 65.
Vote against both. But voters who do this can still vote for one of the two initiatives, should one pass.
Richard Wright, the Mississippi native and late author of works such as “Black Boy,” is shown here at his typewriter in New York on March 27, 1945. (AP Photo)
We are the stories we tell
An essay by W. Ralph Eubanks | Oct. 20, 2020
If there is one thing my students in Southern Studies grow weary of hearing me say, it is this: Memory is not a passive repository of facts, but an active process of creating meaning about the past. Here in Mississippi, the interplay between the past and the present is always with us should we choose to engage with the varieties of ways in which we envision our history. This state has two magnificent museums to help us do just that, so we’re lucky. Still, active engagement with the past is what can help Mississippi move forward.
American cultural memory exists within segregated realms and goes hand in hand with the construction of our individual identities. Black and white Americans frame their personal histories differently, rather than seeing a common historical narrative rooted in our origin in Mississippi and the American South. So, when I am asked why I teach and write about Southern identity and memory, I say it is to foster a better understanding of this shared past and to help us all develop a more nuanced idea of the recent past. As a writer, I am constantly in search of memory that is not seen or has been silenced.
But Mississippi’s past is a painful place to visit. Since my time back in the Magnolia State, I’ve come to realize that the Holocaust feels more real to most of my students than the Jim Crow era. They can quickly tell me the historical significance of Auschwitz, yet know little of Mississippi’s legacy of lynching or even the murder of Emmett Till. If we truly want Mississippi to advance, we have to embrace all of its stories, even the ones that make us uncomfortable. As a professor I teach those stories, often beginning with Mississippi’s own Richard Wright.
Reading Richard Wright’s experience of hunger, poverty, and racism in Black Boy often feels otherworldly. This is a book that stares into the deep abyss of life under segregation, one that explores the ethics of living under Jim Crow, probing the question of “how do you remain an ethical person in an unethical society?” Dante’s Inferno takes the reader through nine circles of Hell and so does Richard Wright, with Mississippi standing in for the flaming fires of Gehenna. Yet to my students, because the book’s narrative shape mimics a novel, they can’t imagine that a world like the one Wright describes ever existed.
The rage and insecurity of the narrator in Eudora Welty’s short story “Where is the Voice Coming From?” shocked my students, leading one to remark that they could not conceive of anyone harboring so much hatred. Welty wrote the story the same night that she learned of the murder of Medgar Evers. When she heard the news, it occurred to her that she knew what was going on in the mind of the man who pulled the trigger. Welty’s story is so effective at putting readers inside the mind and heart of a murderer that it evoked both psychic and emotional discomfort during our class discussion.
Some might think that it is a good thing that the torrid reality of the Southern past under Jim Crow elicits disbelief to those who never lived under the system. But it concerns me that until some of these students read Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream, and Eudora Welty’s “Where is the Voice Coming From?” they are learning for the first time how racism manifests itself in tangible acts of bigotry. They also have little awareness of how racism haunts us and sometimes is invisible in our society, whether it is a building named for James K. Vardaman or a Confederate statue proclaimed as a symbol of heritage. And while they may be unaware of the invisible nature of racism, they have all largely embraced the simple triumphant narrative of the Civil Rights movement rather than the more complex layered narrative that is historical reality. We all do a disservice to the past if we don’t think about the risks people took for us to co-exist in integrated spaces. It is my job to remind them that before there was even a glimmer of a dream, we all lived in a nightmare.
But it is also my job to remind them of the ways in which Americans have not achieved elements of that dream. Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped stands as a towering reminder of how much farther we have to come. Like Black Boy, Men We Reaped is not a book to be engaged with casually. When Ward relates the unconnected deaths of five young men in four years, you quickly realize the story she tells demands attention. “By all official records,” Ward writes, “here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing.”
In Mississippi we can no longer write off Black lives as being worth nothing. We cannot continue to underfund our public schools, which are 47.6 percent black. And we must stop avoiding our history, shrouding it in mythology, or sanitizing it. Last year, the writer Randall Kenan spoke at the University of Mississippi about his work as a writer and the role of the writer in society. Kenan said “for a community to change they have to understand the devastation they are wreaking on certain people.” We in Mississippi often don’t realize the ways we are destroying ourselves through benign neglect of education, health care, and our social safety net. One way we can begin to understand each other is through the stories we tell about this state. And my hope is that by understanding each other, we might also develop sounder and humane public policy.
Stories shape the way we look at and perceive the world and help us to gain a shared perspective. That is especially true in Mississippi. Yet here and throughout the South we also use narratives to obscure the truth. Now that we have changed our state flag, Mississippi needs to begin a dialogue on how we memorialize the past, whether it is Confederate monuments or large bodies of water named for rabid segregationists.
When students finish my course on Southern identity and memory, they begin to think of Mississippi and of their own personal identities in a new way. “We all construct our identities from a toolkit of options,” I tell them, echoing philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. I’m always hopeful when the class ends, since I see how they are beginning to construct their own toolkit of Southern identity. But I also realize these are only a dozen or so students in a large university. And in this state—and across the country—only about a third of the population ever gets a college education. My hope for Mississippi is that the active engagement of our young people with our history, even as painful as it is, will begin earlier and become part of our state history curriculum. For it is through our stories and the memories we may neglect to see or hear that we can begin to find a clearer path in which to forge our future.
Editor’s Note: We are sharing our platform with Mississippians to write essays about race. This essay is the second in the series. Read the first essay by Kiese Laymon. Click here to read our extended editor’s note about this decision.
