Rogelio V. Solis / Associated Press

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, left, confers with an unmasked Gov. Tate Reeves in Senate Chambers at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, May 26, 2020.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann recently warned members of the Mississippi Senate to wear their masks or risk being photographed or videotaped by media outlets without one.

Whether a politician eschewing the wearing of a mask would be harmful to a Mississippi politician is debatable. But a day before Hosemann warned members of the possibility of being photographed without a mask, Gov. Tate Reeves went maskless while visiting the Senate chamber – his old stomping grounds – where he presided for eight years as lieutenant governor. Not only was Reeves not wearing a mask, but he also appeared at times to be challenging social distancing guidelines as he carried on conversations with members in the ornate Senate chamber.

Bobby Harrison

And yes, there was a photograph of the event taken by Associated Press photojournalist Rogelio Solis of Hosemann, sporting a mask, and Reeves, sans a mask, in deep conversation.

The scene was a bit surprising since the Republican Reeves often has gone out of his way to agree with state Health Officer Thomas Dobbs about the importance of wearing masks in their near daily news conferences conducted to provide updates on the COVID-19 pandemic.

And the argument often is made that politicians asking their constituents to do something that could be a sacrifice – such as social distancing or wearing a mask – should lead by example. Reeves was not that day.

When asked about his maskless foray into the Mississippi Senate, Reeves to his credit did what most modern-day politicians have become reluctant to do – essentially to say he made a mistake. Now Reeves did not utter the words “I made a mistake,” but for a politician it was fairly close.

“What I would tell you is that when I have gone out in public, which has been rare in the last three months, I have tried to wear a mask..,” he said. “I probably should have had on a mask. It is not mandated. It is not as if it is a mandate, but it certainly is more responsible.

“Those of us in the public sector, in government, we have to take some risks, but no doubt I usually have a mask with me and I probably should have had it on (while) on the floor.”

The issue of whether to wear a mask has become politicized in recent weeks with President Donald Trump, who based on polling is more popular in Mississippi than in many other states, espousing the virtues of wearing a mask at times and in other instances belittling people who wear them. Reeves, who it could be argued is a Trump acolyte, has never said anything negative about the wearing of masks – at least not in public.

At the Mississippi Capitol, where extraordinary measures have been undertaken to ensure the building is safe while the Legislature is in session during the pandemic, some politicians and lobbyists wear masks while others do not. Most at least try to practice social distancing guidelines but many often do not. And often the people who don’t social distance and the ones who do not wear a mask are one in the same.

Of course, social distancing and wearing a mask might feel counter-productive to some in a building where communication skills and relationship building are at a premium for passing legislation. Because of all the close contact, the Capitol seems like a prime location for the coronavirus to thrive. That is perhaps the reason it is just as important to wear a mask at the Capitol as say, at the grocery store. After all, most people go the grocery store, buy their supplies and leave. People linger in the Capitol, get in each other’s space to make deals and share gossip.

Against that backdrop Reeves’ action was a bit surprising since he had been a champion of mask wearing and seemed to be a sincere supporter of Dobbs’ plea to wear a mask. At an earlier news conference, he touted his “Mississippi strong” mask that he received from a constituent.

“If we do these simple things, we will be in such a better position than if we are stubborn for no good reason,” Dobbs said of mask wearing. He said a cloth mask can block up to 90 percent of infectious particles from a person who is contagious.

At that point Reeves chimed in to add that the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard had delivered 2.25 million  masks to the state’s 82 counties.

“It is such a herculean effort,” he said, adding that masks were available in the communities for people who need them.

The next day Reeves returned to the Senate – wearing a mask.

The post Reeves concedes he should have worn mask during Senate visit, but he wasn’t only one maskless appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Rogelio V. Solis / Associated Press

Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Mississippi Today rolled out a three-part series on the Mississippi Democratic Party this week based on months of reporting.

Following the historic 2019 loss for Mississippi Democrats, we interviewed more than six dozen prominent Democrats about the past, present and future of the state party.

Part one illustrates how dysfunction and disorganization within the Mississippi Democratic Party led to the historic 2019 loss. Part two illustrates how a political identity crisis within the party is harming candidates up and down ticket. Part three illustrates how the party’s leadership has failed to support and devote resources to black Mississippians, who make up at least 70 percent of the party’s voting base.

On Monday, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Moak talked with Mississippi Today about several concerns raised in those articles. The following transcript is taken from the conversation with Moak. It has been edited for clarity and length.

Mississippi Today: What happened in 2019, from the top of ticket all the way down?

Bobby Moak: You were coming off a 2018 election year where you had the president visit I don’t even know how many times. It was about voter turnout. It was a missed opportunity. You know, we saw Kentucky win. We saw Louisiana win. We saw phenomenal number of dollars spent on their Democratic Party and their candidates because they had sitting governors or U.S. senator or whatever the case may be. The money was not only given to the candidates there, but it was also given to the party. Mississippi didn’t have that ability because we haven’t had those elected officials for 12-16 years.

What do you think the role of the Democratic Party in Mississippi should be?

Moak: In a nutshell, it’s supporting candidates and supporting our elected officials that are Democrats.

If the Democratic Party is going to have success in Mississippi again, how do you get there?

Moak: You get there by starting from the bottom. In 2016, we put together a large number of Democrats to be elected at the municipal level. We didn’t have much competition there from the other side. During the 2019 election, we reached out with different programs to put more candidates on the ballot, which we were successful in doing. It’s getting folks in the game. It’s calling folks off the bench, saying it’s time to get in the game. You’ve got to rebuild the party from the bottom up. You have to have the financial ability, and you have to have the ability to work with local elected officials. You have to have all of that.

Specifically, what have you done since you were elected chairman to rebuild the party?

Moak: Well, we started by putting almost 600 Democrats on the ballot that would not otherwise have appeared on the ballot. That helped us turn out a lot of additional votes in a lot of additional counties. In a lot of places, that was successful. Just like my home county in Lincoln County, where Democratic turnout increased by 10 percent. That might not sound like much, but that’s huge. Same thing happened in Rankin County, DeSoto County, Lamar County, around Tupelo, we saw increases. Even with the loss at the top of the ticket, we saw people turning out to vote as Democrats. We saw independents and white voters coming back to the party also.

Specific concerns have been raised about staffing and overall infrastructure at the party level. There’s no executive director or finance director. Why are those two positions vacant?

Moak: It’s all about money. We’ve got a digital director and data director, and we’ve had people from the executive committee filling in on some of things like the two things you just mentioned. It’s about raising enough money to have an executive director. You know, an executive director isn’t someone who just sits in the office and answers a phone and has a nice conversation with you. It’s a person who has those contacts to raise those funds. It’s hard to find those funds in Mississippi, so it’s going to have to happen in other parts of the nation to bring those funds in. You’ve got to be able to raise that money. You’ve got to know the data systems that are now called upon to be used in our state, just like in every other state. You’ve got to have those kind of abilities, too, and with those abilities comes a cost. But yes, there is also a plan to set out those job descriptions a little tighter in Mississippi. Those will be ready by May 29, and we’ll figure out how to move forward after that.

As you mention, raising money in Mississippi is tough. How do you get to the point that you can, as a party, raise the money you need to get these things done?

Moak: You know, that’s always been an issue. I think our Republican friends have a much easier avenue to go down because they’ve got U.S. senators and governors. People who contribute to them also contribute to the party when asked. So we’ve been getting a lot of financial support from the (Democratic National Committee), but we have to show folks who are willing to put some money into Mississippi that we have a viable program that can match up with any other state. I think we’re doing that with our data program. We’re one of the first 10 states that were contacted by the Biden campaign to come in and do some joint efforts with them. They said it was only because of relationships that we have here in the state with some national figures. So I think we’re on the right track with that and it will come. And listen, we know that it will come because if you take a look at where this party was just three or four years ago, you’ll see the complete difference there.

Some other concerns have been raised about miscommunications that occurred with some county-level volunteers. They said the state party wasn’t always responsive. What would you say to those people?

Moak: Well at the local level, I think we’ve tried to answer those questions. Also what we’ve done, the money we have raised, we’ve tried to send some of it back to them to help candidates. We’ve put them through training, we’ve put them through our VAN program, which is our list of all the voters in the state that would be respective to their county and contact information. We’re becoming more involved with the counties in letting the counties know what we have, and I think we’ve been getting there. The case in point is that we’re seventh in the nation in signup for these training matters. We’ve got some county organizations within the party, too, that like to take a leadership role in doing that. You know, whether that’s been occurring or not, that’s why the party’s become more involved at the county level.

There are some very clear ideological differences within the party — everything from conservatives to moderates to progressives. As chairman, how do you seek to strike that balance and keep the different factions in the state satisfied with the party?

Moak: Well number one, you have to realize you will not keep all the factions satisfied. Okay, that’s just a fact of political life whether you’re at the state party or in the state legislature. The Democratic leaders over there are — I’ve had that, too, and I can tell you this one is a lot more difficult. How I look at it is this: The party is not here to set policy positions. That’s for our elected officials whether at the city, county or state level. The issues they want to push is when the party needs to come in and say, “Let’s do this.” You get behind them. The hardest thing I found after leaving the Legislature after 32 years is that I don’t think the party should get in front of our elected officials. They are looking at things from the bigger view than we are, and they should have more information than the party has. And the party needs to back them up. 

Well right now, there aren’t a whole lot of elected Democrats who have much influence who can set that policy. You’ve got legislative leadership, but Republicans have a supermajority in both chambers. You’ve got Congressman Bennie Thompson, but he’s got federal duties. If the elected officials should set the policy and lead on issues, how do you get there if there aren’t officials to lead? Should the party step in?

Moak: Under those circumstances, I would say yes. We try to pick up on the issues that Congressman Thompson is sending out in daily and weekly email blasts in his role as chairman of Homeland Security. We try to do that through some sort of messaging. We’ll see what may be going on in the Legislature, particularly lately with COVID-19 or prison issues, and we’ll talk to our local folks to try to help them. If there’s going to be a vacuum somewhere and nobody wants to step out on an issue, it may be that they’re not the ones to do it. In that instance, I think the party should step out and take that role. 

If the party does that, how do you determine what the message should be, given the different factions in the party. You’re a moderate Democrat —

Moak: I want to say this, too: There are no coincidences in politics. I learned that a long time ago. So if you see the party step out ahead of our elected officials, it’s because somebody, somewhere has had a conversation with an elected officials. That’s where you’ll see the party step up, step ahead of some elected officials. 

So it might not be direct messaging coming from the party as much as it’s coordination behind the scenes with those elected officials?

Moak: There are no coincidences in politics. So I think that makes it easy for the party to message.

How would you say most regular Mississippi Democratic voters fall on the political spectrum? Are they more moderate, more progressive?

Moak: You know, I see them sort of all across the board. I see them somewhat of a microcosm of all of those folks out there. I’ll go a step further beyond your question. We see a lot of independents or folks who want to come back, those are more. I think we’ve seen the polling information on that. They are more middle of the road. They’re not far right, they’re not far left. They’re coming back as you saw in the post-election analysis precinct polling in 2019. In different areas of the state, you saw 8-15 percent of voters come back to the party who had not historically been there in the last eight or 12 years.

That’s an interesting point. Jim Hood’s strategy was definitively geared toward white independent voters. I spoke with Janis Patterson, a black woman who is progressive who ran for state House in Prentiss County. That was the center of where Jim Hood was targeting his more moderate messaging. She talked about this disconnect between the policies she was pushing and the policies Hood was pushing. In the end, they received the same number of votes in her district. As party leader, how do you weigh those two different ideologies with how they fared in the end?

Moak: Well in that particular example, I know that candidate. She was a great candidate who was pushed by a lot of friends, including my family up there in north Mississippi. She got hit by the same thing Hood got hit with. Here’s one thing about her going into that race: She knew that district was tough to win. She still stepped out there, and those are the kind of folks you have to appreciate more than anybody running for office. The question that Hood probably had was that those voters would vote for him, whereas they didn’t vote for (Mike Espy) in 2018. That didn’t turn out to be so. So it became Democrat versus Republican rather than candidate. What you have to do as a party is look at numbers before you go into a race. You have to help the candidates if they’ll take the help and say, “Here’s where you need to be to garner the Democratic base.” That’s part of our data and digital program we’ve been putting together the past three-and-a-half years.

The Republican Party is really good at messaging and being on the same page from top to bottom. What’s it going to take to get Democrats in Mississippi on the same page like that?

Moak: I’m not sure Democrats want to follow that Republican lead. Republicans can do that because they’ve got U.S. senators, because they’ve got governors, because they’ve got a speaker of the house and lieutenant governor who can call them and say, “If you don’t vote this way, we’re going to run somebody against you in the primary.” Democrats really never have been that way. They’ve been more free-thinking. They like to think for themselves. Republicans don’t tend to send that kind of aura out there. I think we all know that. They tend to be more in line than Democrats. The thing about Democrats is they’ll fight among each other, and at the end of the day, they’ll almost come back together all of the time. Will we get Democrats to do that? Are Democrats going to fall in line on issues they care about? Yes. You saw that in the last election on issues like healthcare, roads and bridges, education. Those are the kind of things that bring Democrats together are issues.

To be fair, there are some issues that would keep Democrats apart. Abortion, state flag, economic development come to mind.

Moak: To be fair, you’re right. But those are things Democrats just have to work through, and that’s why you have to put together a Mississippi party platform. It’s been so easy for Republicans to say, “Oh you’re a Democrat, here’s your national platform.” Well no. This is Mississippi, here’s what we do. We look at it that way because we think that’s gonna be the best things for Mississippians. Like the things I just harped on: education, healthcare, infrastructure.

Race is a big consideration for the Mississippi Democratic Party. Knowing that 70 percent of Democratic voters are black, and you’re a white man, how do you ensure that you’re representing black Mississippians adequately?

Moak: Let’s get this out of the way: There are sure folks who were not for me getting the job four years ago, and there are folks who don’t want to see me continue in the position. That’s just a fact. It’s also a fact that during the last three and half years, we’ve pulled this party out of financial holes it’s been in. We’ve brought back independents into the fold, we’ve brought back white voters. There’s one thing I believe in, and that’s that we will not stand if we stand alone. We have to have all of us: blacks and white and every mix of moderate or far left or far right Democrats. You have to have all of those folks coming in. One thing you cannot do is you cannot forget the base of the party. I have tried to focus on that and giving back to the counties, which is something we haven’t seen, which is to try to build back the party at the county level. That’s one thing you must continue to do, and you’ve got to make it open and transparent for everybody. And look, I’ve had pushback in recruiting candidates in 2019. The same people who want openness don’t like it when you want to open it for everybody to have a voice. I believe that everybody gets a shot and everybody gets their voice heard. At the end of the day, you have to take care of your Democratic base, but then you’ve also got to try to add to it.

So you want to strike a balance between keeping the base of black voters happy but also reaching out to white voters who recently left? No one’s had success with that. How do you do it?

Moak: I don’t think it’s a tightrope. You must take care of the base. We’ve seen there’s a base there. What we need is a little more accountability, more training. We need to bring in more volunteers on the ground. Listen, we’ve got tons of volunteers in our air force, if you will. We ran about 4.2 million telephone calls or emails or direct postcard messaging during 2018. Putting that on the ground is also something harder to do, and it’s something we’ve got to work on. Giving counties money back. We want counties to be the leaders in putting that vote out at the local level.

Has there been enough support for and enough focus on the party’s base of black voters?

Moak: I don’t think anybody’s done enough, no. That’s evident by the fact that we’re losing some local races that we shouldn’t. There’s just one that immediately comes to mind in the Mississippi Delta. We had a minority candidate that should’ve just run outright, but instead there was a runoff. And during that runoff, I think had the state party not become involved and tried to get in concert with the other groups on the ground, then we wouldn’t have gotten that seat in the special election.

We’re in a transition period, but right now you’ve got two staffers currently. One’s a white man, one’s a Hispanic man. You’re a white man as chairman. Looking forward, how do you staff the party in a way that’s more representative of the population of the state and the Democratic Party?

Moak: We just had a black female who left the party late last year. We do have Fair Fight, Stacey Abrams’ group, under our roof now. A wonderful lady is leading that, a black female. Looking at our structure under our constitution, we make sure we’ve got everybody represented.

Moving forward, can you be a good leader for the Mississippi Democratic Party?

Moak: I think that I have been, and the proof is in the pudding.

The post Q&A: Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Moak discusses concerns raised about political strategy and race appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Oxford-based author’s latest novel is a Southern gothic thriller set in small-town Mississippi

It may be hard to imagine today, but once upon a time, kudzu — the scrappy, stubborn vine that blankets hillsides across northern Mississippi, taking the form of virtually everything it encounters — was praised as a cure-all for challenges that arose from logging and large-scale farming.

Horticulturalists first imported kudzu from Japan and sold seedlings as ornamental plants in the late 1800s, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that it took root in the Southern imagination. That’s when kudzu was championed as a way to stop the erosion of deforested hillsides in the Appalachian piedmont regions of northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

With those inaugural plantings established, it was next hailed as a foraging crop for livestock that would “work while you sleep,” according to the 1949 book “Front Porch Farmer.” The federal government paid farmers up to $8 per acre to plant their land in kudzu. But it proved difficult to bale and the vines were easily damaged by trampling livestock.

Yet, its climb continued. The vine’s popularity peaked in the next decade as the Kudzu Club of America swelled to 20,000 members. The South’s long growing season and abundant sunshine and moisture accelerated growth, and it began to spread out of control. In 1970, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally classified kudzu as a common weed. But it was too late.

Kudzu loomed in author Michael Farris Smith’s peripheral vision while he grew up in small towns in Mississippi and Georgia, dulling the landscapes it covered as it worked to consume them entirely. The “sinister” vine, as Willie Morris once wrote, followed him to Oxford, Mississippi, and down Highway 7 to Water Valley, where he keeps a workspace.

“I’ve seen it and been around it my whole life, but really just began to notice it,” says Smith, sitting in his Water Valley writing studio. “Even the way it grows over trees and power lines and the shape that it tends to take — it seems like a perfect metaphor for life and death and things that you can’t get rid of, things that are chasing you.”

Smith was driving those winding Hill Country highways one morning when his imagination began to wander through the vines and underneath three-leafed growth that resembles poison ivy, another pernicious “leaf of three” common across the South. Once he got to his studio, he sat down and immediately started to describe the landscape he saw.

That burst of inspiration grew into the tangled lives and landscapes of “Blackwood” [Little, Brown], his latest novel and fourth overall. Under a sky that feels permanently twilight, encroaching kudzu is choking the life out of Red Bluff, a declining Mississippi town whose troubled residents are either running away or marching directly into the heart of darkness, guided by a malevolent force that lies under the kudzu.

Smith wrote the book’s original opening scene with a character standing on the edge of a valley imprisoned in kudzu, starting to lose his mind as the vines crept closer to him every night. But the farther along he got, the more the story felt unfinished. Until one day he sat down to figure out why.

“I said, ‘I’m just going to open up a blank document and I’m going to bring them into town and find out where they came from and where they’re going,’” he says. “’I’m going to have that car break down, and that’s why they’re stuck.’ And when I did, I described their car as a ‘foul-running Cadillac.’”

The phrase sounded familiar, so he grabbed a copy of his 2018 novel “The Fighter” [Little, Brown] and thumbed the opening pages. The couple who dropped off their newborn son at a Salvation Army in “The Fighter” drove the exact same car. It was a watershed moment — suddenly the characters in “Blackwood” had a backstory, and the madness that spreads through Red Bluff had a source.

“It changed everything,” he says. “I called my editor and I told him what I had just figured out, and he goes, ‘Don’t worry about sending it to me next week. You just fix it and send it to me when you’re done.’ That was the moment “Blackwood” really became the story that it is.”

Writing about the supernatural can go one of two ways, Smith says. You can either go completely toward it, like in Stephen King’s “The Shining,” or you can leave it ambiguous and undefined, like a present evil you can never resolve. Smith isn’t sure where the supernatural ends and madness begins for the characters in “Blackwood.”

“I think people will hear what they want to hear,” he says. “Any whisper in a small town, in stories that are told over and over from one generation to the next, certain people are going to want to believe them and certain people are not going to want to believe them. The people who are willing go look for it, whether it’s good or bad, or dangerous or safe.”

Smith grew up in a deeply religious family with a father who was a Southern Baptist preacher. Every Sunday morning, he sat next to his mother on a bench in front of a piano while she played and sang. The gospel music and sermons of his youth had a formative influence on how he writes and the lyrical images he conveys in stories like “Blackwood.”

And like in the epigraph he chose for the novel — a biblical passage from the Gospel of Matthew 8:20 that reads, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” — the characters in the pages that follow are restless, in constant search for a resolution they can never find.

“I don’t think I realized that until I was at the end of it and it hit me that, this is a whole ensemble of characters and none of them can get what they want,” he says. “I’m not even sure that they understand what their real problems are. As I kept telling this story, these characters almost began to devolve instead of evolve. Which is a little bit frightening, to be honest.”

The post Michael Farris Smith untangles the vines that bind in ‘Blackwood’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Black voters are the overwhelmingly majority of Mississippi Democratic Party’s base. Why is party leadership white?

The party’s leadership has failed to support and devote resources to black Mississippians, who make up at least 70 percent of its voting base. 

This is the third story in a three-part series about the Mississippi Democratic Party.

By Adam Ganucheau | May 29, 2020

Bobby Moak called into the statewide radio show of uber conservative Paul Gallo on Aug. 6, 2016, for what was his first public interview since taking over as chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party.

Moak, the former Democratic leader in the House of Representatives who was defeated by a Republican in November 2015, was pressed for several minutes by Gallo about his position on the state flag, which is the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem.

Many Mississippians believe the emblem is a symbol of hate and shouldn’t represent the state with the highest percentage of black residents.

Gallo: “Let’s play the ‘what if’ game. If Democrats had power in the Legislature and the Governor’s Mansion, what would y’all do about the state flag?”

Moak: “I think one thing that we can’t do is throw red meat issues out there. We’ve got too many issues with education —”

Gallo: “Now you’re just dancing around it, and that’s what people don’t like. Here’s a yes or no question: If you were in total control, would you, through the Legislature, change the state flag?”

Moak: “Paul, I’m not a member of the Legislature —”

Gallo: “No, but you’re the chairman of the Democrat Party, and I think your views are respected or at least you’d like them to be with the people out there. Would the Democrats change the flag immediately if they were in control of the Legislature?”

Moak: “I don’t have a crystal ball, Paul, I have no idea —”

Gallo: “Would you push for that as chairman?”

Moak: “Well let’s just say this. Your same question is that (Republican Speaker of the House Philip Gunn) is in control of the Republican supermajority. He’s stated that (the state flag change) needs to occur, and we haven’t seen that happen. So let’s look in today’s realities, and let’s talk about some issues that are going to make some difference in people’s lives like education, poverty and jobs. Let’s don’t dance around those issues either, Paul. I mean, my goodness —”

Gallo: “I’m asking because we just had a publisher of a newspaper that thinks we need to change the state flag. I think so, too. I’m asking, as chairman of the Democrat Party, are you in favor, yes or no, of doing that, and will you push for it with the candidates you put forth in the next election cycle?”

Moak: “Well first of all, as chairman of the party I don’t put forth candidates. Number two, I don’t set policy, that’s the Legislature. I used to be there—”

Gallo: “Well what do you do?”

Moak: “Here’s what we do, we try to put the structure in place so that good candidates will come forward…”

Six times in four minutes, the brand new chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party refused to say that Democrats should change the state flag if given the opportunity.

“That was the moment I knew the leadership of the Mississippi Democratic Party didn’t represent people who look like me,” said Tyrone Hendrix, a longtime political strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and helped manage Johnny DuPree’s 2011 gubernatorial campaign.

At least 70 percent of Democratic voters in Mississippi are black, but the top leader of the Mississippi Democratic Party is white.

As white elected officials and voters have ditched the Democratic Party in droves in recent years, white Democrats have maintained their control of the state party. Before Moak was chairman, it was Rickey Cole, a white man. Before Cole, it was Jamie Franks, a white man. Before Franks, it was Wayne Dowdy, a white man. Before Dowdy, it was Cole, a white man. Before Cole, it was Jon Levingston, a white man.

Beginning the evening following the 2019 general election in which the Democratic Party suffered a historic loss, Mississippi Today interviewed more than six dozen prominent Democrats about the past, present and future of the party. In those interviews, a single theme was discussed more than any other: racial tension within the party that has gone ignored by party leadership.

“There’s more racism in this Democratic Party than I’ve seen in the Republican Party,” said Felix Gines, an unsuccessful 2019 legislative candidate who served as chairman of the Harrison County Democratic Party. “I wish I was wrong about that.”

Jared Turner, the only black political fundraiser in the state of Mississippi and one of few in the nation, is considered a must-have consultant for top Democratic candidates in the state. Name a high-profile Democratic campaign in Mississippi since 2007, and Turner likely helped out in some way.

That depth of experience has shown Turner which political strategies work in Mississippi, and perhaps more importantly, which strategies don’t work in Mississippi.

After the 2015 election in which Democrats suffered massive losses, Turner dove into the data. White moderate voters, long the main target of Democratic Party leaders, had all but completed their years-long shift to the Republican Party.

So he developed a theory and became one of the first operatives to share it broadly with prominent white leaders: The Mississippi Democratic Party should not spend another dime on white voter outreach.

“I’m watching Democratic campaigns ignore black voters and spend 90 to 95 percent of their money on reaching white voters, who continue to end up voting for Republicans,” Turner said. “Then after the election, I’m seeing the same people who made those spending decisions blame black voters for not turning out and supporting our candidates. It’s just bullshit.”

Turner continued: “We need an apparatus to actually turn out black voters. Black voters participate in elections more than any other demographic, but there’s a segment who will not turn out unless you have a specific program in place to get them to turn out. There are real gains to be made with them, unlike with white voters, and very few have tried it.”

Few people have tried to run statewide campaigns Turner’s way in large part because they’re received no messaging support from the party, several black candidates and political operatives told Mississippi Today.

Take 2019, for instance: The state party, led by a white moderate, put its messaging behind the top two candidates on the ticket: Jim Hood, a white moderate running for governor, and Jay Hughes, a white moderate running for lieutenant governor.

Meanwhile, the messaging of black statewide candidates like attorney general candidate Jennifer Riley Collins, secretary of state candidate Johnny DuPree, insurance commissioner candidate Robert Amos and treasurer candidate Addie Lee Green were largely ignored by the state party.

“Hood was who he was and what worked for him, and we needed him and the party to be more,” said Pam Shaw, who managed the 2019 campaign of Jennifer Riley Collins. “There were thousands of people who voted for Mike Espy in 2018 who didn’t vote at all in 2019, and I’d argue it’s because they only heard Jim Hood. The numbers are there for Democrats to have success in statewide elections. But the Hood campaign or the party didn’t do the kind of outreach to black voters that would’ve helped him and helped us, helped the ticket.”

Shaw continued: “It all goes back to the tension around how you build your base and what’s your party. Is it building your base around brown or black people, being open and welcome, or is it going to the others? I don’t know that people have made that decision yet.”

One reason white moderates continue to hold the power of the party: Mississippi’s black Democratic voters have never been adequately represented on the state party’s governing body.

Every four years, Mississippi Democrats elect 20 people from each of the state’s four congressional districts to serve on the 80-member executive committee, which is responsible for “any and all affairs of the Democratic Party,” according to the state party’s constitution. Those duties include approving all party financial decisions and electing the party chairman.

The deck is statistically stacked against black Democrats on the executive committee.

A plurality of the state’s Democratic voters live in the 2nd Congressional District, which has been heavily gerrymandered by white, conservative leadership. During the 2016 presidential election, the 2nd Congressional District was home to 43 percent of the state’s total Democratic voters. The next closest district by Democratic makeup was the 3rd Congressional District at 21 percent.

• Congressional District 1: One executive committee seat per 4,197 voters.

• Congressional District 2: One executive committee seat per 9,617 voters.

• Congressional District 3: One executive committee seat per 4,805 voters.

• Congressional District 4: One executive committee seat per 3,875 voters.

In the 2nd Congressional District, which Congressman Bennie Thompson represents, black voters make up about 61 percent of the electorate. The next closest district by black representation is the 3rd Congressional District at 32 percent.

Though the 2nd Congressional District is home to considerably more black voters than any other district, it receives the same number of executive committee seats as the other three congressional districts, each of which represent far fewer total black voters.

Of the 80 executive state committee members elected in 2016, just 42 of them, or 52 percent, were black — about 20 percentage points lower than the overall black voter representation of the party.

“I love this party, and I work hard to help Democrats in Mississippi win,” Turner said. “I’m a political consultant. I don’t work anywhere else. This is how I make my money, it’s how I feed my family. I even take on extra work for little pay just to do some basic stuff that the party itself isn’t doing that it probably should be.”

“I just feel like I’ve been loyal to something that has not been loyal to me,” he said.

Shameca Collins decided to run for district attorney in southwest Mississippi in 2019 because she believed that alternatives to prison could do more long-term good than locking people up and potentially disenfranchising them for life.

Collins, a black Democrat who had been serving as a city prosecutor in Natchez, had considerably more progressive thoughts on criminal justice issues than the 24-year incumbent district attorney, a white moderate named Ronnie Harper who was running for reelection.

“I believe in being tough on crime, but being tough on crime doesn’t mean that you have to destroy lives,” Collins told the Natchez Democrat. “You can’t let people get away with committing crimes, but you can put programs in place that will reform our young men and women before they become another statistic.”

Collins benefited from Mississippi NAACP organization efforts that were already occurring in southwest Mississippi. The NAACP, which does not endorse political candidates, advocates for its members around specific political issues. It is one of several organizations in Mississippi that boosts progressive issues but operates independently of the Mississippi Democratic Party.

The organization’s proven grassroots strategy replicates the successful campaign methods of civil rights groups of the 1950s and 1960s. Last year, NAACP leaders identified key allies at the neighborhood level who could rally around issues that later happened to align Collins’ platform. Over time, those community allies broadened their reach to voters across the district.

“That campaign tradition has continued in Mississippi whether African Americans had a political party engage with them or not,” said Corey Wiggins, the executive director of the Mississippi NAACP.

Many voters in Collins’ district were upset about lengthy pretrial incarceration rates and racial inequity in the criminal justice system, Wiggins said. The NAACP efforts helped show voters that local elected officials were responsible for those frustrations.

That strategy ultimately paid off for Collins as she unseated the longtime incumbent Harper in the Democratic primary.

“By centering people and communities directly impacted by the issues and the policies that are creating havoc in everyday lives of folks, it’s powerful,” Wiggins said. “When you’re talking about issues of racial equity in justice, how do you really get to the core of the ills that we are experiencing? You’ve got to center people to understand that.”

Wiggins continued: “Whether that’s through a grassroots organization, a political party or even a corporate entity, you’ve got to center people. If not, you leave out the most important component of why we’re doing this in the first place.”

Though that grassroots campaign blueprint was literally drawn up in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, leaders of the Mississippi Democratic Party have made no effort in at least two decades to follow it, several prominent party players told Mississippi Today.

Just twice in the modern history of the Mississippi Democratic Party has an African American served as chairman. From 1987-1994, Ed Cole, a black man, served as chairman. And from 1994-1998, state senator Johnnie Walls of Greenville held the seat. Walls was outspoken during his political career about black Mississippians being underrepresented within the state party. As he considered an independent bid for U.S. Senate in 1984, Walls said black candidates of the Democratic Party “do not receive the same support we give whites.”

Race is a key consideration of the current structure of the party. In 1976, just 44 years ago, the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party merged with the majority-black Mississippi Loyal Democrats to form the modern state party.

Most of the Loyal Democrats had become politically engaged with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was founded in 1964 by Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and Bob Moses as a way to obtain political influence in the state. Their founding of that party was spurred by the “regular” Mississippi Democratic Party’s racist policies and exclusion of black voters.

“One thing that people involved in today’s Mississippi Democratic Party tend to forget is that we’re an actual coalition between races,” said David Rushing, who is white and serves as chairman of the Sunflower County Democratic Executive Committee. “It’s delicate. You have to talk and understand where people are coming from to really maintain this coalition. I’m afraid it’s being frayed right now because the state party leadership doesn’t seem to know how to work with the base (of black voters).”

Key strategists who have led the party’s focus on growing support among white moderates agree with Rushing. After the 2019 election in which Democrats earned little white moderate votes, the strategists told Mississippi Today that the party cannot win with that focus. And worse, they say, is the risk of further isolating the party’s base of black voters.

“The party’s gotta tear itself down completely and start back again,” said Michael Rejebian, who managed Jim Hood’s campaign in 2019. “You’ve got some dynamic African American leaders in different parts of the state who are poised to take the reins, get out there, build the party back up and run for office. I think they can win, but that hinges on getting rid of those obstacles that have kept African American leaders from moving into higher positions (in the state party) or state office.”

Moak, who is campaigning to be reelected party chairman later this summer, does not agree with Rejebian or other strategists who have conceded the focus on white moderate appeal can’t win elections. This week, Moak told Mississippi Today that he believes the party should continue focusing on growing its white moderate support.

Every Democrat interviewed for this series said that the Mississippi Democratic Party should be as diverse and as broadly inclusive as possible, particularly regarding race. But most people interviewed said that for the party to build a winning strategy for the future, the majority of its focus should be on supporting its base of black voters.

“The party doesn’t have to be all black. It doesn’t even have to be black dominant,” Hendrix said. “But it should be led by people who have the general belief that the party should reflect both the demographics and the positions on the issues that a majority of Democrats in the state of Mississippi have. Right now, that’s just not happening.”

“The Mississippi Democratic Party is at the point that if it doesn’t change, it will die,” he said.

Editor’s note: Read part one and part two of our three-part series about the Mississippi Democratic Party.

The post Black voters are the overwhelmingly majority of Mississippi Democratic Party’s base. Why is party leadership white? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Southern Miss athletics

Southern Miss plays home football games at The Rock, but league foes from a time zone away rarely bring many visiting fans.

The first thing I’d do as commissioner of Conference USA? I’d blow it up.

It doesn’t work.

It didn’t work long before the pandemic. It certainly won’t work now.

Most of all, the economics don’t work. There’s too much travel, not nearly enough revenue.

In many ways, the league was designed – and has been altered over the years – with TV markets in mind. That’s why FIU and FAU were accepted as members in 2013, to regain the Florida TV market lost when first South Florida and UCF exited. That’s why UTSA was accepted in 2013. San Antonio is a big city with lots of TVs.

Rick Cleveland

But the various networks have not been impressed. Big city teams do not necessarily translate into big TV contracts. People in Florida prefer to watch the SEC Gators and the ACC Seminoles and Hurricanes. Folks in Texas tune in to Texas, Texas A&M and TCU. For Conference USA, FIU, FAU and UTSA added little other than acronyms and airfare expense.

Conference USA stretches three time zones from El Paso to Miami, 1,932 miles by highway, more than 1,600 miles by air. That’s too far. The league goes as far north as Marshall in Huntington, West Virginia, with intermediate stops in Charlotte, Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Norfolk, Virginia. It’s too spread out, it makes no sense.

This is Mississippi Today and we are much more interested in Southern Miss. The geographic nightmare that is CUSA really makes no sense for the Golden Eagles, who along with UAB, are the only original members remaining in the league.

In its wildest dreams, Southern Miss would prefer to be in the SEC and share in its riches. That’s not going to happen. Secondly and more realistically, USM would prefer to be in the American Athletic Conference with former CUSA mates such as Memphis, Houston, UCF, East Carolina and Tulane. That probably isn’t going to happen, either. The AAC still longs for the lucrative TV deal that hasn’t materialized and the Hattiesburg market adds little to that. Besides, Memphis (22-40-1 against USM in football), Tulane (8-23 against the Eagles), UCF (2-6), East Carolina (12-27) and Houston (5-9) got tired of getting their brains beat in back in the day. They are 49-105-1 all-time against Southern Miss. Most of those schools have only nightmares about Hattiesburg.

The best remaining alternative for Southern Miss is a more regionalized league with more natural rivalries and less travel – a bus league, for lack of a better term, that includes teams that make sense from CUSA and the Sun Belt Conference.

We can quibble about the exact makeup, but I’d take Southern Miss, UAB, Louisiana Tech, Rice, North Texas and Middle Tennessee State from CUSA. I’d take Arkansas State, South Alabama, Louisiana, Troy, Georgia Southern and Georgia State from the Sun Belt. Crank up the buses. Save the airfare. It makes sense and would save dollars, thousands and thousands of dollars.

Look at Southern Miss’s 2020 football schedule, assuming there is a 2020 season. On Oct. 17, the Golden Eagles fly more than 1,000 miles to play UTEP in a CUSA league game. That same day, Coastal Carolina flies more than 900 miles to play Louisiana in a Sun Belt game. The expense of both trips is enormous. And how many USM fans do you think will make that trip? How many Coastal Carolina fans will go all the way to Lafayette? Not many is the answer to both questions.

Clearly, it would make more sense for Southern Miss and Louisiana to be in the same league playing one another. They have a long, shared athletic history. They’ve played 51 times over the years. They are three hours apart by bus. It’s an easy trip for fans.

Surely, Coastal Carolina could have better rivalries with, say, Charlotte, Old Dominion and Marshall of Conference USA.

Basketball travel is an even worse. Last season, Southern Miss made a two-game CUSA road trip to Marshall and Western Kentucky. It was more like an odyssey. The Golden Eagles took a bus to New Orleans on a Wednesday to fly to West Virginia, by way of Chicago. From Chicago, they flew to Charleston, West Virginia, and then bused from there to Huntington for a Thursday night game. Then, they bused from Huntington, to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to play WKU on Saturday. They bused back to Hattiesburg after the game. The players missed three days of classes. That’s just nuts.

Why didn’t they charter, you ask? Can’t afford it.

Baseball teams face the same dilemma, the same travel nightmares. So do women’s basketball and softball teams.

This pandemic is going to change so much about so many facets of life, including athletics. Already, universities around the country are discontinuing sports because of economic realities. Finding ways to cut costs has become more essential than ever, especially for schools not in the power conferences.

There will never be a better time to make this happen. Unless it was 10 years ago.

The post It’s past time for radical change in Conference USA appeared first on Mississippi Today.