Magnolia physician Luke Lampton joins Marshall to talk about the pandemic, how it is changing health care and to give a doctor’s perspective on House Bill 1303, which is working its way through the Legislature (and is sponsored by Republican Reps. Donnie Scoggin, Dana Criswell and Steve Hopkins). HB 1303 changes the relationship between physicians assistants and nurse practitioners with doctors, who traditionally monitor their work. Lampton, a member of the Mississippi State Board of Health and Mississippi State Medical Association, gives his point of view on why the bill isn’t necessary. Here is a link to a video of Rep. Scoggin, who is a nurse practitioner, explaining his perspective on why it should pass. As technology, the pandemic and ever-increasing medical costs change the landscape of how medical care is delivered, this is an interesting discussion.
Medicaid, the state agency with the largest budget, will be removed from the control of the governor and placed under an independent commission under legislation that has cleared committee and is now before the Mississippi House.
Rep. Joey Hood, R-Ackerman Credit: House of Representatives
“What we are doing with this bill right here is allowing some transparency, allowing some open meetings,” said Rep. Joey Hood, R-Ackerman, who explained the bill to members of the Appropriations Committee. The committee approved the legislation Tuesday.
Tuesday was the deadline for the bill to be passed out of committee in the chamber where the proposal originated. The full House will have until Feb. 11 to consider the proposal.
When asked about potential problems with the legislation that would make dramatic changes to the governance of the agency, Hood said, “There are problems, but we are going to work through those during the process.”
The bill was introduced by House Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, one of the more influential members of the House.
Gov. Tate Reeves said Tuesday he is not familiar with the legislation that could strip away a sizable amount of his authority in the area of health care, but said he would be updated on the proposal by his legislative team in the coming days.
“Entangling the Medicaid program in an ongoing political tug-of-war will not improve health outcomes for Medicaid recipients, elevate quality, lower spending trends, or reduce unnecessary burdens on patients and providers. We are concerned that Rep. Lamar’s legislation could threaten to hinder, if not completely undo, the significant progress that the Medicaid program has made in recent years,” said Drew Snyder, the current Medicaid executive director in a statement to Mississippi Today.
At times in recent years, Lamar and Reeves have been at odds over multiple issues, ranging from the source of funding for transportation needs to Reeves vetoing legislation to provide funds to help re-open a hospital in Lamar’s district. Reeves maintained it was improper to spend federal COVID-19 relief funds for the re-opening of the Tate County Hospital. Lamar and others argued spending the federal funds on the re-opening of the hospital during the pandemic was a proper expenditure of those dollars.
As far as the establishment of the Medicaid Commission, Lamar said it is his goal to bring more transparency to the $6 billion agency. The Medicaid Commission would be subject to open meetings requirements of state government. The agency under the direction of the governor does not have to conduct public meetings.
Some state agencies, such as the Department of Corrections, Human Services and Medicaid, are under the control of the governor. The executive directors of those agencies are appointed and terminated by the governor, though they must go through Senate confirmation.
Other agencies, such as the Board of Health and education from the kindergarten through university level, are governed by boards whose members are appointed by governors for staggered terms. In some instances the lieutenant governor and the speaker make appointments to those boards. The executive directors or heads of those agencies are answerable to the board or commission.
In terms of total funding, in both state funds and federal funds, Medicaid is the largest state agency with a budget of $6.61 billion for the current year. Both K-12 education and universities receive more than $3 billion in total funding from state and federal sources.
In essence, Lamar’s legislation is a back to the future proposal. The Legislature created the current Division of Medicaid, under the auspices of the governor, in the 1980s.
As part of a landmark 1983 state Supreme Court case, the old Medicaid Commission and multiple other boards and commissions were ruled to be in violation of the separation of powers clause of the Constitution because legislators were serving on executive agencies.
But the commission that was proposed in Lamar’s bill would consist of seven non-legislative members – four appointed by the lieutenant governor and three appointed by the governor. All seven members would face Senate confirmation.
Two of the lieutenant governor’s recommendations with be made upon advice from the speaker. The speaker constitutionally cannot make an appointment to the board in the executive agency since the speaker is in the legislative branch. The lieutenant governor is considered as part of the executive agency, though the position also has legislative responsibilities.
It is not clear how the process of the lieutenant governor making an appointment for the speaker would work.
Under the legislation, appointments to the commission would be made after July 1. But the legislation calls for Snyder to remain in place until January of 2024 when a new gubernatorial term begins. At that point, the Commission could choose to re-appoint Snyder, if he wanted to continue in the post, or select a new executive director.
KOSCIUSKO — Dr. Tim Alford knew that Mississippians were struggling to get health care before he began working in the emergency room in this small town five years ago.
It’s far worse than he thought, said the longtime family physician and past president of the Mississippi State Medical Association. “People are not being able to get their primary care, so they default to the emergency room. People are flocking here because so many people are locked out of the system.”
More than one in five Mississippians don’t have health insurance, one of the highest percentages of uninsured in the U.S. The five highest are all Southern states, none of which has expanded Medicaid, except Oklahoma, where the expansion starts in July.
“The emergency room is the wrong place for people to get primary care,” Alford said. “It’s wrong in every way.”
For starters, there’s the cost. The same hospital services may run 10 times higher in an emergency room.
The relationship between a medical care provider and the patient is a key to good primary care, and that’s difficult in an emergency room, Alford said. “Emergency rooms have their place, but the operative word is ‘emergency’ and not primary care.”
When he knows a patient needs a follow-up visit with a doctor and that patient can’t pay for such care, he said, “I feel as if I am referring them into the eternal abyss.”
Each day at the emergency room, the people pour in, he said, many of them “the salt of the earth — teachers’ assistants, truck drivers, check-out cashiers, people you run into in a small town who don’t have an ability to pay a (monthly) premium.”
They don’t have the ability to pay huge medical bills, he said. The average patient hospitalized for COVID-19 gets slammed with a bill of more than $73,000.
It comes as no surprise then that Mississippi, the nation’s poorest state, has the highest number of people with past-due medical bills, 41%, nearly twice the national average.
So far, 38 states have expanded Medicaid, many of them creating their own version, including Indiana when Mike Pence was governor.
If Mississippi had followed Indiana’s lead, it would have added more than $1 billion a year to the state coffers, Alford said. “We have squandered billions away that could have saved lives and helped our economy. It’s a real tragedy for our state to see politics prevail over what is right and good.”
Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney sees a health care crisis in Mississippi. “There are 30 to 35 hospitals that could close because they have no income,” he said.
Since 2014, five of the state’s 64 rural hospitals have closed their doors. Two-thirds of those that remain are losing money, with four of them filing for bankruptcy in 2018.
Arkansas, which did expand Medicaid, has seen one rural hospital close. In contrast, 52 rural hospitals closed in surrounding states over the past decade.
Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson Credit: Gil Ford Photography
State Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, said holes in the state’s health care system are leaving rural hospitals and many Mississippians in danger. “We’re the sickest state in the country,” he said. “It’s a very calloused approach that we’re still taking.”
When talk arose of expanding Medicaid in 2014, the state economist told lawmakers the expansion would have a $9 billion impact on the economy and create at least 9,000 new jobs, he said, but then-Gov. Phil Bryant balked at the change.
Current Gov. Tate Reeves has also voiced his concern about rural hospitals, more than half now at risk of immediate closure.
“I am very concerned about access to health care in rural parts in Mississippi,” he told MCIR. “I think it’s critically important that we focus our conversation around not only affordability but accessibility to rural facilities around Mississippi.”
Despite this expressed concern, the Republican leader has rejected Medicaid expansion.
Alford said if Mississippi’s leaders would expand Medicaid, “it would really be a shot in the arm. It would save rural hospitals that are at the brink of closure.”
Overall, Mississippi hospitals have to pay more than $600 million a year for uncompensated care, according to the Mississippi Hospital Association. The association commissioned the Perryman Group, which concluded that Medicaid expansion would reduce these losses by more than $251 million.
Alvin Hoover, CEO of King’s Daughters Medical Center in Brookhaven, said expansion would cut his more than $12 million a year in bad debt in half.
Since the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”) went into effect in 2013, “we’ve taken cut after cut from the federal government,” he said. “Back in the day, we’d have a 3 to 5% operating margin.”
A hospital needs at least a 3% margin to reinvest in expensive medical equipment to keep up to speed, he said. “Since 2013, it’s been tough to eke out a margin.”
Additional funds would make it possible for health care providers to do more preventative care, he said. “A lot more hospitals could make an impact in our communities.”
If Mississippi expanded Medicaid, the state would receive more than $1 billion a year, according to estimates. This money would make up the 90% the federal government is paying toward health care while the state would be responsible for the remaining 10%.
The governor cites the state’s cost to expand Medicaid, which he puts at $220 million a year, to justify his opposition.
“With that amount of money, every teacher in the state could receive a $4,330 raise per year,” he said in his fiscal 2022 budget proposal. “We must work to find ways to provide healthcare for all Mississippians, especially in rural areas, but Medicaid expansion is not the answer.”
MississippiCares — which proponents say is modeled in part after what Pence did in Indiana — seeks to solve that objection by having hospitals and patients cover the state’s 10% through a tax on the hospitals and a $20 monthly premium for patients.
“If it worked with Indiana,” Hoover asked, “why can’t it work in Mississippi?”
Indiana has made many changes that differentiate it from the traditional Medicaid program, Hoover said. “The Pence plan is not Obamacare.”
Reeves said he has yet to see the MississippiCares proposal, but opposed it in general. “I’m not for Medicaid expansion,” he reiterated.
The Perryman study estimates MississippiCares would save lives, boost tax revenue more than $200 million over a decade and create more than 19,000 jobs. Mississippi’s unemployment rate topped 9% this past summer and has slowly edged downward, but a severe nursing shortage remains, with more than 1,000 jobs open.
Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, expresses his concerns about a potential state lottery during a special session of the Legislature at the Capitol in Jackson Friday, August 24, 2018. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Hob Bryan, chairman of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, said supporters “sometimes overstate the economic benefits, which always worries me.” Opponents, however, “ignore them entirely,” he said. “It’s frustrating.”
The Democrat from Amory said there is no doubt the change would save Mississippi “100 cents on the dollar to Medicaid, thereby saving 90 cents on the dollar. There is the additional state revenue, but there also is revenue for cities because of increased sales tax. Then, of course, there is the reduction in human suffering, if that counts for anything.”
The problem is not the cost, he said. “The problem is that the governor, and the (House) speaker, both are opposed to having any additional people receive health care if the government is involved.”
Leah Rupp Smith, deputy chief of staff for Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, said their office is “reviewing Senate bills and working with chairs to meet the committee deadline next week. We will review any legislation the House decides to send to the Senate.”
Chaney predicted that MississippiCares faces an uphill battle, first with state leaders and next with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which would have to grant a waiver to enable a hospital-owned health plan to manage it.
Richard Roberson, the association’s general counsel, disagreed. “Our understanding is that provider-led plans are viewed favorably by CMS,” he said, “but we have not presented our plan to them because that’s really the state’s role.”
Under the bill, Medicaid would provide 90% with the rest contributed through premiums and hospital taxes.
Asked what would happen if Medicaid stopped paying 90%, Roberson replied that the federal share cannot be lowered without the approval of Congress. “If the feds did reduce their share, the conditional language as we wrote it wouldn’t allow the state to continue to participate,” he said.
Asked if hospitals are willing to promise they are not simply passing on these costs to the consumers, Roberson replied, “The irony in that statement is that the costs of not insuring these individuals is already being passed along to the consumers. When a hospital is trying to meet its fixed operational costs and 10 to 15% of its patients pay nothing, who do you think pays more?”
Estimates put the amount that Mississippi has already forfeited for rejecting Medicaid expansion at about $7 billion. If the state continues to reject expansion, the state would forfeit another $13 billion, Chaney said.
Alford said if patients are being denied care when “an obvious solution to that denial is at hand, then that is just flat wrong.”
He fears that state leaders will continue to reject Medicaid expansion. “I’m afraid we’re going to be last again,” he said. “I do feel like the house of medicine abdicated its role in 2014, rather than holding up the torch and going in the right kind of direction.”
In 2016, members of the medical association voted to support expansion of health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, but the association’s leaders didn’t push for expanding Medicaid coverage.
Dr. W. Mark Horne of Laurel, president of the Mississippi State Medical Association, said the organization of more than 5,000 physicians continues to support expanding access to healthcare in Mississippi. “We’re not saying Medicaid per se,” he said.
There is no question that more Mississippians need access to health care, he said. “We’re open to working with all parties that have similar goals. … Let’s find what we agree on.”
Brianna Birdwell, a 20-year-old nursing student from Batesville diagnosed with diabetes, went uninsured nearly two years, unable to afford the $1,000-a-month bill for insulin and supplies on her $8,000-a-year salary. She said if it weren’t for the generosity of a local doctor who shared free samples of insulin, she never would have made it.
So what would increasing this access mean to Mississippians like Brianna Birdwell?
In March 2019, the nursing student from Batesville was taken off Mississippi’s Medicaid rolls because she turned 19. The timing couldn’t have been worse. She had just been diagnosed with diabetes.
As a result, she went uninsured for nearly two years, unable to afford the $1,000-a-month bill for insulin and supplies on her $8,000-a-year salary.
Except for the generosity of a local doctor who shared free samples of insulin, she never would have made it, she said. “Every single time I went, I thought, ‘What if she doesn’t give me my insulin?’”
The longer she went without health insurance, the more she wondered if she would have to drop out of nursing school, she said. Last month, she finally obtained health insurance through a job at the Panola Medical Center as a patient care assistant.
Expanding Medicaid would help many Mississippians “who fall in the cracks” like students who can only work part time, she said. “I could only make maybe $8,000 a year with the job I was at and with how heavy of a course load I took in college.”
Aside from “the insane costs of managing Type 1 diabetes without insurance, there’s the fact that anyone without insurance has to pay $100 or more just to be seen by a doctor, not including treatment or medicine,” she said. “This causes those without insurance to face possible long-term issues.”
Governor Tate Reeves is polling about as well as canker sores and toe fungus and I know people are asking who might run against him in three years — but let’s be honest; who would want the job?
The governor said last year’s measures — House Bill 658 and Senate Bill 2123 — were “well-intentioned” but “went too far.”
Between overcrowding, violence, an ongoing Department of Justice investigation and the coronavirus pandemic, Mississippi’s prison crisis still persists. If the Legislature doesn’t take action soon, the state is facing potential federal intervention. In Alabama, a similar prison crisis has resulted in taxpayers facing a $1 billion bill to meet federal mandates to fix the system.
In Mississippi, the Legislature is trying this year to pass new criminal justice reform measures to expand parole eligibility and reentry programs for people in the state’s prisons.
Rep. Kevin Horan, D-Grenada, authored two criminal justice reform bills currently moving through the Legislature — House Bill 525, the omnibus criminal justice reform bill, and House Bill 465, the Compassionate Parole Eligibility Act.
Rep. M. Kevin Horan speaks during a special session of the Legislature at the Capitol in Jackson Friday, August 24, 2018. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Horan, who is chair of the House Corrections Committee, said HB 525 primarily focuses on “reentry and programming of inmates prior to release and uniformity in parole,” particularly aiming to streamline the differences in parole eligibility for those who were convicted and sentenced before and after 1995.
“Prior to 1994, nearly everyone sentenced to prison in Mississippi was eligible for parole after serving 25% of their sentence or 10 years. In 1995, Mississippi joined the ranks of states who moved to abolish parole and mandate that everyone serve at least 85% of their sentence in prison,” according to a January 2021 report by FWD.us, a bipartisan criminal justice reform advocacy organization.
Horan said his legislation hopes to address this.
“I’m looking to make those individuals that have (parole) eligibility prior to ‘95 for those individuals after ‘95 to have the same or similar parole eligibility. That would be the goal, just like Senate Bill 2123 last year,” Horan said. “It treated everybody the same, and I think that’s a fair way to approach parole eligibility.”
Horan said his parole reform bill would incentivize good behavior for people in prison, considering they may have the opportunity for parole, but it would only impact people in prison convicted of certain offenses.
“(HB 525), like last year, won’t have any additional provisions allowing sex offenders or those convicted of capital murder to gain any type of consideration (for parole),” Horan said.
Horan’s other bill, HB 465 — the Compassionate Parole Eligibility Act — would allow people in prison who were not convicted of a sex offense, capital murder or sentenced to death to be eligible for parole if they have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and have a life expectancy of a year or less or are completely disabled.
With over 17,000 people incarcerated in Mississippi, the state has the second-highest incarceration rate of all 50 states in the U.S., which is “due in large part to Mississippi’s parole laws, which are among the most restrictive in the nation,” according to the FWD.us report on parole in Mississippi.
The report also said the state’s prison population “more than doubled between 1994, the final year in which most people in prison were eligible for parole, and 2008.”
Today, more than 12,000 incarcerated Mississippians, or about two-thirds of the prison population, are not eligible for parole, according to FWD.us.
Four of the 109 people who died in MDOC facilities last year — O.D. Washington, 74, Melvin Thomas, 66, Owen Nelson, 57, and Bobby Vance, 54 — would have been eligible for parole if the governor had not vetoed last year’s criminal justice reform measures, according to FWD.us.
Alesha Judkins, Mississippi state director of criminal justice reform at FWD.us Credit: FWD.us
“It’s heartbreaking because it didn’t have to be that way,” said Alesha Judkins, FWD.us Mississippi director for criminal justice reform. “I think the lesson learned is that what we’re doing right now isn’t working, and we can’t continue to do it at the expense of losing people’s lives.”
Tuesday is a deadline day at the Legislature and HB 465 — the Compassionate Parole Eligibility Act — hasn’t been taken up yet, meaning it will likely die in committee. But Horan told Mississippi Today some of what the bill entails would likely be folded into other criminal justice reform bills later in the session.
“I haven’t decided that I will bring that out of committee yet because those code sections are in the omnibus bill, but as far as the compassionate care provisions, we’ve worked on language with the Senate,” Horan said. “Those policy positions regarding compassionate care release eligibility will be in the bill, but it may not be in the same form as (it is in HB 465).”
Judkins said expanding parole eligibility could restore a sense of hope for people in prison and their families, alluding to a possibility of decreased violence in Mississippi’s prisons.
“I think that’s a huge part because I feel like a lot of violence is from desperation and lack of hope,” Judkins said. “I think people living in those situations feel hopeless, and there’s this huge sense of despair, like what’s the point? Why should I care? And I think we’re able to expand parole to people, you will see a lot of change.”
Horan said the omnibus criminal justice reform bill focuses on reentry and workforce training for people in prison who may be eligible for parole, increasing the potential of a decreased prison population and more partnerships with Mississippi’s business community and people in prison.
“I think we need to give the opportunity to those individuals that can earn some type of (parole) eligibility that don’t have it now, or to give them eligibility where they can prove the case that they’re worthy of it,” Horan told Mississippi Today said. “Percentage-wise, we have an extremely large number of (parole) ineligible inmates disproportionate to our population in MDOC…compared to other states.”
A recent poll showing Gov. Tate Reeves underwater with voters at his one-year mark in office had something of a political blood-in-the-water effect, prompting much discussion among politicos in recent days of potential GOP primary challengers when 2023 rolls around.
Last month’s poll reported Reeves is “hemorrhaging support among voters at the close of his first year in office,” with 34% of Mississippi voters approving of his performance and nearly 50% disapproving. This shows a sea change — his net approval declined from +28 points in June 2020 to -15 in January 2021 — mostly driven by low marks for his handling of the pandemic.
Now in politics, the saying goes that a week is a lifetime. Two and a half years? That’s like a millennium. Pandemics end. Voter attitudes change. Challengers get cold feet. And at this point, talk is cheap. Challenging an incumbent, well-funded Republican governor in a primary is a heavy lift.
“If you go back and look at the history of all 50 states, you will find maybe one, two or three incumbent Republican governors who lost in their primary,” said Austin Barbour, a national and state GOP strategist. “A sitting governor is almost impossible to beat in a Republican primary. Whether someone thinks Tate Reeves is popular or unpopular — it’s a long time until election day, and history is on his side.”
Some of the GOP gubernatorial primary speculation is the result of the state Democratic Party not being much of a going concern in recent statewide election cycles. Serious internecine Republican challenges for top offices at this point appear more likely than serious general election ones.
Given that most prognosticators’ crystal balls are still cloudy on 2023, here are names most frequently mentioned as potential Republican GOP gubernatorial challengers:
Bill Waller Jr.
Could there be a rematch between Reeves and Waller, a former state Supreme Court chief justice who lost to Reeves in a primary runoff in 2019? It’s possible. Waller ran strong in several, mostly urban areas last time, but he got shellacked mainly on the Coast and in rural areas, largely because of Reeves’ support from President Donald Trump’s voters. Trump may still be a factor in 2023, but likely far less a factor in statewide Mississippi races. Waller has decent name recognition, but he would face challenges raising money. And if he were going to make a serious run again, he’d have to get started working on it soon.
Robert Foster
With little campaign funding or name recognition, Foster in 2019 managed to tap into more right-wing dissatisfaction with the frontrunner GOP candidates and pulled a respectable 18% of the primary vote, serving as a spoiler that helped force Reeves into a runoff with Waller. Foster remains active in politics on social media and has been pointedly critical of Reeves’ handling of the pandemic and of his concessions on changing the state flag. Foster, when interviewed by Mississippi Today recently, wouldn’t rule out another run, adding, “I would be very surprised if Tate Reeves does not receive a strong primary challenge. Very surprised.”
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann
Hosemann would be a formidable candidate, can raise campaign money and has nearly universal name recognition thanks to the “Dilbert … Filbert … Egbert” ads he ran during his long stint as secretary of state. But he’s in a powerful position now — arguably more powerful than the governor’s office. He was widely discussed as a possible gubernatorial candidate in 2019 and instead ran for lieutenant governor. At 73, if Hosemann has eyes on the Governor’s Mansion, 2023 would be his most likely shot.
House Speaker Philip Gunn
Longtime Speaker Gunn is frequently mentioned for statewide/higher office, and would be another formidable candidate in terms of fundraising and name ID. He already has close relationships with the state’s big money donors and has done well with fundraising, at least by House speaker measures. In the past, Gunn’s early and unwavering support for changing the state flag was seen as a major impediment for a Republican primary. But with a large majority of voters endorsing the new flag on the ballot in 2020, and that issue likely far in the rear view mirror by 2023 — or being as big a drag on Reeves and it would be him — Gunn appears more viable.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch
After serving a long hitch as state treasurer before being elected last cycle as attorney general, Fitch has built up name recognition. She’s long struggled with fundraising, but serving as an incumbent AG makes that task easier, and she’s shown an ability to put her incumbency in office to good public relations use for the state’s Republican base. With her name recognition and the bully pulpit the AG’s office provides, Fitch wouldn’t have to make a decision or move until later — say the end of 2022 — for a gubernatorial run.
Billionaire Thomas Duff
Businessman Thomas Duff, who’s listed by Forbes as the richest Mississippian along with his brother James, is frequently mentioned as a possible GOP gubernatorial candidate. Duff reportedly considered a run against Reeves in 2019, although he has been a big financial supporter of Reeves’ campaigns in the past. Duff could easily self-fund a serious campaign. Oddly, hosts of the nationally syndicated Walton and Johnson morning comedy and commentary radio show have been critical of Reeves and urged Duff to run for governor against him.
Secretary of State Michael Watson
Former longtime state Sen. Michael Watson’s name has been floated for years for higher offices, including governor. He’s in a fairly safe, high-profile spot as secretary of state and probably more likely to wait on such a move. Once an impediment to running for statewide office, being from the Coast and having strong support there has become more of a boon, particularly in a statewide GOP primary. If Watson could generate broad support on the Coast, he could pose a challenge for Reeves, who enjoyed large support there.
Auditor Shad White
White is considered a young, rising Republican star in Mississippi politics and is making a name for himself and headlines busting public servants with their hands in the till. He’s obviously ambitious and a likely candidate for higher offices. But at 35, he also has time to wait and build name recognition.
Other names are oft mentioned in any GOP higher office discussions in Mississippi: state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who’s made a couple of unsuccessful though high-profile runs at U.S. Senate; U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly of North Mississippi; wealthy and politically active businessman Gerard Gibert; and former U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering, who’s had a long hiatus from politics. These would all seem long shots for a GOP primary challenge that would in itself appear a long shot.
Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Frank Bordeaux said speculation about primary challenges this far out is common but often just that — speculation. He doesn’t at this point foresee any major GOP primary gubernatorial battle or downticket for other statewide offices for that matter.
Bordeaux, who was backed by Reeves to become MSGOP chairman, said the recent dismal polling of Reeves “doesn’t match what we’re seeing.”
“I don’t believe that Mississippians are that opposed to the current leadership in this state, from the governor on down,” Bordeaux said. “… I think the further we get out of the (COVID-19 pandemic), the better things are going to be in the state of Mississippi, compared to states that did not have our same policies … I’ve been traveling the state, meeting with grassroots groups in every large and small county, and I don’t hear complaints about the governor. I hear complaints about Washington, D.C.”
Again, challenging an incumbent governor — even one who sometimes struggles with favorability and has a penchant for making political enemies — is not for the faint of heart nor shallow of pocket.
“… And 2023 is a lifetime away in state politics,” Bordeaux said.
The last time I talked at length to the Mississippi State football legend Art Davis was in September 2014. Art was living in Oregon, but his heart was in Mississippi where his old friend, Jack Cristil, had died.
We talked the morning of Jack’s funeral.
Rick Cleveland
“Days like today, I miss Mississippi the most,” Davis told me, speaking softly. “I live in Oregon and have for 13 years, but Mississippi is my home. It hurts not to be there today to celebrate Jack’s life. He meant so much to Mississippi and Mississippi State.”
Conversely, Art Davis, who died Jan. 29 at the age of 86, meant so much to Jack Cristil. It is a matter of fact that big Arthur Davis scored the first touchdown Cristil ever called at State. This was 1953. Dudy Noble had just hired Cristil to do State’s radio broadcasts for a whopping $25 per game. Noble told Cristil: “You tell that radio audience what the score is, who’s got the ball, how much time is left, and you cut out of the bull.”
So State opened the season at then-Memphis State, where Cristil dutifully told the audience how big Arthur Davis, so fast and so strong, ran 38 yards for a touchdown to give the Bulldogs an early lead en route to a 34-6 State victory. Who could have guessed: Cristil would go on describing State touchdowns for 58 years. He never forgot the first touchdown or the man who scored it.
Art “honeybee” Davis wore No. 22 as an All American at Mississippi State
Years ago, Cristil talked about the man who quite possibly was his favorite Bulldog of all-time, saying Arthur Davis “was an All-American on the field and a true gentleman off it.” Cristil said he had never felt closer to any individual, that Davis personified the best of Mississippi State.
Davis, who stood 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighed just under 200 pounds and ran a 9.8 100-yard dash, was named the Southeastern Conference’s Player of the Year in 1954 and was a first team All American in 1955. He starred on both offense and defense. Once, at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Davis scored all four touchdowns – three on runs and one on a pass interception – in a 25-0 State victory. Look Magazine named him college football’s Player of the Year in ’55. He was the fifth player taken overall in the 1956 NFL Draft, despite a crippling knee injury suffered as a senior at State. In 2018, Art Davis was inducted into State’s exclusive Ring of Honor.
The death of Art Davis follows by 34 days the death of his older brother, Harper Davis, another Mississippi State football legend and Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer. Harper was nine years older. Amazing that so much football talent could come from one Clarksdale family. Harper was once considered the fastest player in pro football. Turns out, his little brother was equally as fast, was three inches taller, and weighed 20 pounds more.
Art (left) and his older brother Harper.
As a child in Clarksdale, Art was nicknamed “Honeybee.” A nurse in his pediatrician’s office said the little boy was “as cute as a honeybee.” The name stuck, even as he grew into a big, strapping man.
He entered his senior year at Clarksdale High as one of the most highly recruited players in the country, then suffered a broken leg in the first game of the season. Many of the out-of-state college suitors backed off, but State and Ole Miss still offered him a scholarship and Art chose State.
There, he played for a young Darrell Royal. Years later, he would help Royal coach a national championship team in 1963 at Texas. Before that, he also coached with Paul Dietzel at LSU and Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech. After the national championship at Texas, he retired from coaching and came back to Mississippi where he worked, at various times, in Cleveland, Clarksdale and Starkville.
He moved to Oregon in 2001 to be closer to his grandchildren.
But he never quit missing Mississippi, says his son Doug Davis, who still lives near Portland.
Last year, Art made the decision, as son Doug Davis, describes it, “He wanted to end his life on home turf.”
So Art Davis moved back across the continent to Starkville, where he will be buried today not too far from where he scored so many touchdowns and where his name appears on the huge stadium.
I remember, almost hauntingly, what Art Davis told me more than seven years ago when we talked on the morning of Jack Cristil’s funeral.
“I miss Mississippi,” Art said, still speaking ever so softly. “You know people out here hear my accent and ask me where I am from and I tell them Mississippi. Invariably, the people screw up their face and say something like, ‘Really?’
“So I tell them, ‘Yes I am from Mississippi, just like Walter Payton, Jerry Rice, Archie Manning, Brett Favre, William Faulkner, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, John Grisham and Eudora Welty. They are always surprised when they hear those names. And then I’ll always tell them: ‘There’s no place like Mississippi.’”
Today’s (Feb. 2) memorial service for Art Davis will be held at Odd Fellows Cemetery on University Drive in Starkville with a visitation at noon, followed by a short service at 1 p.m. Memorials can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and/or the Parkinson’s Foundation.
In honor of Groundhog Day (the day and the amazing Bill Murray movie), I figured I’d draw Mississippi’s own State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs trapped (like the rest of us) in the pandemic. Now cue Sonny & Cher…
The all-Black board in charge of running Holmes County, one of the consistently poorest and blackest communities in the United States, didn’t have a problem voting unanimously to remove the Confederate soldier monument outside the courthouse last July.
They did, however, have a problem allocating $80,000 — the amount contractors estimated it would cost to remove it — within a paltry budget made up mostly of property taxes on the average $56,000 lot.
The statue honors the men who fought to keep roughly 12,000 Black people in Holmes County — nearly 70% of the county’s population in 1860 — enslaved.
And it’s still standing, drawing protestors Monday.
Representatives from the Freedom Democratic Party, originally co-founded by civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964, Black Lives Matter Mississippi and other activists groups gathered by the statue on a 40-degree morning, the first day of Black History Month, to demand its removal.
Ciann Hooker, Lexington Freedom Democratic Party president (second left), Cardell Right, a Freedom Democratic Party president (center) and Reginald Virgil, Black Lives Matter of Mississippi, president and co-founder, along with other protesters, make their way to the square in downtown Lexington Monday morning to voice objections to a monument honoring Conferate soldiers on the Courthouse lawn. They also showed solidarity for the Black Lives Matter Movement. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
But the residents of Holmes County, named for Mississippi’s first governor David Holmes and built on a plantation economy, are fed up with much more than the stone sculpture.
“It’s time for these statues to come down. It’s time for them to do better by our kids. It’s time for them to do better by our community,” Dolecia Cody, a single mother of three and the president of the Tchula chapter of the Freedom Democratic Party, said outside the courthouse Monday. “I’m tired of seeing our kids standing on the corner with nothing to do.”
“We have nowhere to work. You have to go so far to get a job and you don’t have transportation because you don’t have a job,” Cody told Mississippi Today. “You know, they’re always saying, oh, we’re on welfare; we’re on food stamps. The thing of it is, if y’all will make jobs available in our community, a lot of us wouldn’t have to be on welfare or food stamps.”
Already concerning unemployment in the county rose as high as 28% at one point during the pandemic, nearly twice the state’s highest monthly rate last year. On the state’s prized job search engine Monday, there were 31 openings in Holmes — mostly for farmworker positions paying $11.83-an-hour — but there are roughly 700 people looking for a job.
Rainwater leaks through the roofs of the public schools and while residents failed to pass a bond issue in November 2019 to fund new buildings, the larger disinvestment in education for Mississippi’s poor Black children is evidenced by the state’s historic shortchanging of its own statutory education funding formula. The loss totals $15 million over the last decade in Holmes County alone.
Eradicating a symbol of white supremacy is just a first step in addressing the larger inequities resulting from systemic racism, said president of Freedom Democratic Party’s Holmes County chapter Cardell Wright. “Symbols do matter,” he said.
“Taking a statue down ain’t hard,” Wright said into a mic outside a brick building, partially patched with unfinished plywood, where supervisors were meeting. “Maybe dealing with poverty and trying to bring in jobs — maybe that’s difficult. But this right here? This is not difficult. It just takes a decision.”
Wright and Cody say they believe that while Holmes County’s leadership is all-Black, the local politicians are intimidated by the powerful white figures who control most of the area’s wealth.
Freedom Democratic Party president Cardell Right (left), Black Lives Matter of Mississippi president and co-founder Reginald Virgil (center) and Lexington Freedom Democratic Party president Cianna Hooker, along with other protesters at the Lexington Board of Supervisors Monday morning demanding the removal of a Confederate statue at the Courthouse. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“So behind the scenes, they’re calling the shots. And we who live here, we understand that. And we know it. So that’s why its important to fight it,” he said.
Holmes County Supervisor Leroy Johnson, co-founder of low-income advocacy group Southern Echo, is a member of the Freedom Democratic Party, though he was not included in the group’s demonstration. Johnson told Mississippi Today that to fund the relocation of the statue, the county would have to make cuts elsewhere.
“What services are you not going to provide?” he said.
The board has solicited bids from two companies but has yet to submit a plan for approval by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, a required step in moving the monument.
Meanwhile, solutions to the area’s opportunity desert remain elusive. Johnson said the board lacks connections needed to recruit promising industry to the area, such as Hinds County luring Continental Tire to build a $1.45 million plant in Clinton — a deal that hinged on generous state tax incentives and the blessing of the state’s white leaders.
“Sometimes it’s not Holmes County leadership’s fault, it’s a race problem,” Johnson said.
Set on Interstate 55, Johnson says while Holmes County has the right geographical access and connection to transportation to support business investment, what it lacks is “the connections with the right white folks who still control economics in the state.”
Johnson continued: “The reality is those connections are based on race and based on class and Board of Supervisors cannot change race or class. It just cannot.”
The white flight and rural decay characteristic of parts of the Delta today do not erase the area’s significant contributions to the state’s economy, Johnson said. “We built this state, dadgummit.”
“There’s some belief that if the Delta didn’t exist, Mississippi would be a different place,” Johnson said. “And the answer is that if the Delta didn’t exist, Mississippi wouldn’t even be Mississippi.”
Mississippi Home Corporation has opened a waitlist for tenants seeking some of the $200 million allocated in the latest stimulus package from Congress for rental assistance in Mississippi.
To get on the Rental Assistance for Mississippians Program (RAMP) Emergency Rental Assistance waitlist, renters may fill out an application on ms-ramp.com.
The program hasn’t officially launched, but the Home Corporation announced that Gov. Tate Reeves had chosen the organization to administer the funding from the U.S. Department of Treasury.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium will remain in place until March 31 under an extension the agency announced last week. To avoid eviction, a renter must provide a declaration to their landlord or property manager, certifying that the order applies to them.
Kentucky Equal Justice Center developed a tool that allows people facing eviction to fill out and sign the CDC document online and email it to their landlord. Click here to use the tool.
Whereas the existing RAMP program, funded by an Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, included strict eligibility guidelines that caused several thousand to be denied, the treasury money is more flexible. For one, it raises the income limit for eligibility from 50% to 80% of the area’s median income.
In Hinds County, families of four would qualify if they earned under $56,700, instead of the previous $35,450.
Mississippi has also yet to begin pushing out its additional $38 million in Community Development Block Grant funding, which Reeves committed entirely to rental assistance in October, Mississippi Today reported.
By last week, HUD had yet to provide guidance to states for how to use those funds to pay off past rent debts, according to a spokesperson from the federal agency. “That component is expected soon,” an email read.
