With Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s victory in the special election runoff to fill the remainder of Sen. Thad Cochran’s term, Mississippi voters did what they have done for the past 30 years; vote for a Republican Senator.
To find the last time a Democrat won a U.S. Senate race in Mississippi, you would have to go back to 1982 when a young Republican political operative named Haley Barbour lost to Sen. John Stennis, a Democrat who had held the seat since 1947.
In that context, Hyde-Smith, or any other Republican winning, isn’t that unusual. It is what Mississippi voters prefer. Just as voters in California or Connecticut will continue to elect Democratic Senators.
After all, Mississippi is considered the least “elastic” state in the country. What does that mean? An elastic state is one that is relatively sensitive or responsive to political winds of the day. It doesn’t necessarily mean a “swing-state” in that sense of the phrase, but rather one where there are a lot of swing voters.
Mississippi just doesn’t have that, and that is largely due to the two largest voting blocs in the state. Both African Americans and white evangelicals are among the most loyal to a particular party and unlikely to change those loyalties. And right now, Republicans have a bigger chunk of the vote.
Still, many thought this vote might be different. Just look at what happened in Alabama last year we were told. If a Democrat could win there, surely they have a shot in a state that is a little less Republican than Alabama. But that was a lazy analysis that omitted major details. For example, Roy Moore was already less popular than the median Alabama Republican candidate even before he was accused of various improprieties from an earlier time in his life.
Without that angle to leverage, we had the “kitchen-sink” approach where Mike Espy and allies, often in the media, simply threw everything they could at Hyde-Smith. You mean she sends her daughter to private school? The travesty. Call MSNBC immediately. Admittedly, the public hanging comment was tone-deaf and extremely unwise and likely provided some energy to the left, but it was hardly the statement of racially animus the national media and progressives tried desperately to make it out to be.
The apparent strategy was to maximize turnout among supporters while hoping to depress Republican support for Hyde-Smith. In some ways that worked. Espy's voters returned and Hyde-Smith trailed typical Republican margins in GOP strongholds like Rankin, Desoto, and Lamar counties by about 5 points. With 90 percent of precincts reporting in the runoff, Espy received just under 360,000 votes. Nearly the same number received three weeks earlier. Hyde-Smith, however, was only at 430,000, far below the combined 515,000 she and state Sen. Chris McDaniel received.
Espy will end up with an overall percentage close to that achieved by former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in 2008. Musgrove’s 45 percent of the vote was certainly helped by the excitement of Barack Obama at the top of the ballot, but Musgrove did two things Espy didn’t; he ran as a conservative and he talked about issues.
Unfortunately, issues were something we heard relatively little about in this election. Every race seems more like a litmus test of President Trump’s appeal or the Left’s resistance than it does a discussion of policy solutions. We have substantive problems in Mississippi and we need public policy solutions that focus on our state and our citizens.
Future campaign strategies will be left for those who run campaigns and focus on transactional politics. But when we look at the data, one underlying principle remains; Democrats have a very high basement (meaning the vote total anyone with a D next to their name will receive), but a very low ceiling. The variables seemed to align perfectly (save for a Moore-like scandal) if Democrats were ever going to pull off an upset. And yet they still came up short.
National media will come and go. Same with out of state operatives and campaign cash. But from any objective measure, Mississippi remains a Republican state. On most matters, that means a “conservative” state.
Especially with something as consequential in the eyes of voters as a United States Senate seat on the line, it doesn’t appear than the Magnolia State has any interest in sending a liberal or a progressive to Washington.
This column appeared in Y'all Politics on November 27, 2018.
A new report places Mississippi in the middle of the pack when it comes to providing parents with additional options in the education of their children.
Center for Education Reform’s Parent Power Index placed Mississippi 23rd overall, but gave the state a score of just 58, which is an F. That wasn’t terrible compared to everyone else. Indeed, the national average is only 52 percent, with 29 states earning an F.
“The Magnolia state’s weak charter school law and modest opportunity scholarship programs do not provide needed opportunity for students in the state. Additionally, Mississippi has thus far done very little to promote innovative options that foster personalized approaches to learning. While some robust teacher quality mechanisms work well and school board elections are held during general elections, Mississippi has a long way to go before parents have true power,” the report notes.
CER gives Mississippi a D for the state’s charter school law, ranking it 38th among the 45 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have charters.
More than 2,300 children in Mississippi exercise school choice and while that number is growing, it is still just a sliver of overall student enrollment. That is largely due to the limited availability of charter school seats, scholarships in the ESA program, and schools authorized to participate in the Dyslexia Scholarship.
Each of Mississippi’s neighboring states did slightly better, earning a D. Louisiana was the highest at 16th overall. Florida was the top-rated state in the nation for parental empowerment, while Indiana was second and Arizona third.
“Parent Power is the degree of access parents have to impact education opportunities. The Parent Power Index measures the ability in each state of a parent to exercise choices, no matter what their income or child’s level of academic achievement, engage with their local schools and school board, and have a voice in the education systems that surround them,” CER writes.
Outrage culture flared up again recently as election results poured in for analysis. By Wednesday morning, the political left had decided any shortcoming of Democratic nominees could be blamed on one demographic—white women.
Across the nation, the American people made their choice. The Senate remained red, while the House flipped blue. CNN Politics published a detailed breakdown of voter turnout demographics by age, race, gender, and party. Disgruntled voters shared screenshots of Democratic elections lost where women voted for the Republican choice.
The statistical breakdown of the white female vote “prove” to ideologues that white women betrayed themselves and the “sisterhood” by electing and re-electing white, male Republicans. This is the only conclusion they drew.
For the ideologically possessed, it could not be possible that women would willingly and wholesomely elect, for instance, Sen. Ted Cruz by their own free will. If not betrayal, it must be oppression that forced their hand into a red vote.
White women “choose to uphold white supremacy and patriarchy,” according to Vox, likening the exit poll data of 2018 to the opposition of racial integration of schools. Ironically, this demonization of white women is a huge reason one might not consider a vote across the aisle.
The insult of this blame is two-fold. First, the collectivist view assumed of women only sees them as a voting bloc. In the effort to recognize women with a feminist lens, the left has only diminished each women’s individuality by writing her story for her. Insisting that women of any race are indebted to any political force sounds eerily like oppression. Oppression also sounds a lot like insisting one vote a certain way, think a certain way, and be shamed for deviating.
Secondly, the intelligence and autonomy of women is belittled. To say that the white women who voted for Cindy-Hyde Smith, a white female Republican, are subject to their own ignorance or familial oppression is laughable.
In a 41.4% to 40.7% vote, Cindy-Hyde Smith will have to win a runoff vote to retain her Senate seat. Are white women of Mississippi to blame for possibly electing the first female Mississippi Senator to office?
It is confusing to be a woman in Mississippi reflecting on these exit poll reactions. As a woman, ought I fall in line and vote for a woman or a Democrat? It is curious which would be a more loyal action to this myopic worldview.
Tracking social points following every election would prove to be exhausting.
The reality is every vote is counted once, not weighted by age, race, or gender. Ideally, our votes reflect our values and policy beliefs. Such a simple concept ought not be controversial.
It is not the burden of any single group or demographic to carry any candidate over the finish line. Instead, it is the responsibility of each active voter to consider their own decision. It’s shocking to see feminism ostracize their own people for the social crime of voting autonomy.
If Mississippi women are viewed as so void of independent thought that they can’t be trusted with their own beliefs, the left should get used to losing more female votes.
Anja Baker is a Contributing Fellow for Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
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The highest tax rates in the country may be found in California or New York, but Mississippians have among the highest tax burdens in the Southeast, even outpacing national averages.
As a percentage of personal income, Mississippians have a state and local tax revenue rate of 10.57 percent. The national average is 10.08 and the Southeast average is 8.57.
Among neighboring states, Alabama has a rate of 8.23, Arkansas is 9.91, Louisiana is 9.22, and the income-tax free state of Tennessee is 7.76. This means Tennessee runs their government for about 25 percent cheaper than Mississippi. Mississippi is the only state in the Southeast, save for West Virginia, over 10 percent. The Mountaineer state is the highest in the region at 11.23.
Mississippi’s percentage has gone up steadily over the past few years. From 2010-2012, it ranged from 9.84 to 9.88. But this trend has, unfortunately, been going in the wrong direction over the past four decades. In 1977, the national average was 10.82 and Mississippi was at 9.82. The national average has decreased .7 percent, while Mississippi’s average has increased .8 percent.
Why does this matter? Because Americans are fleeing high tax states and moving to low tax states.
Twenty-six states had a tax burden of 8.5 percent or greater. Of those 26, 25 had a net out-migration. Only Maine was able to buck the trend. And not surprisingly, of the 17 states that had net migration gains in 2016, all but one has a tax burden of less than 8.5 percent. All totaled, more than 500,000 individuals moved from the top 25 highest-tax states to the 25 lowest-tax states in 2016.
Those high tax states, Mississippi among them, lost an aggregate income of $33 billion.
So what can we do in Mississippi? We can follow the lead of high-growth, low-tax states in the Southeast that have lower taxes, lighter licensure and regulatory burdens, and a smaller government.
Even with the much publicized and much shared remark from Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith about public hangings, the path to victory for any Democrat is very difficult. And potentially impossible to complete.
Last week, Mississippians had the unique task of voting in two separate U.S. Senate races.
Sen. Roger Wicker, who has served since 2008 and was running in the regularly scheduled Senate race, defeated State Rep. David Baria, a Democrat from Hancock county, 59-39.
The other election was to fill the remainder of the term for former Sen. Thad Cochran, who retired earlier this year. Under Mississippi’s special election rules, there is simply a non-partisan, jungle primary where the top two vote getters advance to a runoff if no candidate receives 50 percent plus one.
The election featured three main candidates: Sen. Hyde-Smith, who was appointed by Gov. Phil Bryant, State Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican from Jones county who nearly toppled Cochran four years ago, and Mike Espy, a former Democratic Congressman and member of the Clinton cabinet.
The final vote was 42 percent for Hyde-Smith, 41 percent for Espy, and 17 percent for McDaniel. The presence of two Republicans diluted the overall GOP vote and takes away from the work Espy will have in the runoff.
Republican and Democrat totals in special election
Special election results, by county (combined Republican and Democrat votes)
When total Republican vote is highlighted, rather than top vote getter in each county, it tells a different story than a map showing Espy making inroads in a number of traditional Republican counties. In fact, the total GOP vote looks very similar to the Wicker/ Baria map. Republicans were somewhat split, but at the end of the day Democrats only received 40 or 41 percent in both elections.
Indeed, Copiah, Oktibbeha, and Yazoo counties were the only counties carried by Wicker where the GOP did not receive a majority between Hyde-Smith and McDaniel.
While trailing by just one point may appear comforting, the path to a majority is much harder for Espy. Rather than 15-20 percent of the electorate being up for grabs, it is more likely that Espy is near the Democrat ceiling when it comes to a Senate seat in Mississippi. Especially when it is a runoff on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
Going back to 2006, Republicans have won between 55 and 64 percent of the vote in the six Senate elections held in the state. The high point for Democrats was Ronnie Musgrove’s 45 percent in 2008. And that was with Musgrove running as a conservative (something Espy certainly is not). With Barack Obama on the top of the ballot and John McCain held to just 56 percent.
Both campaigns will work on turning out and maximizing their support in the runoff. The problem for Espy is there likely aren’t enough people to turn out. Even McDaniel himself quickly came out and endorsed Hyde-Smith, something he didn’t do in 2014. It would be wishful thinking to presume McDaniel voters are up for grabs in any significant fashion.
The Mississippi Justice Institute filed an appellate brief in the Mississippi Supreme Court in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center challenging the constitutionality of charter school funding in Mississippi.
The brief was filed on Friday, November 9.
MJI represents several parents of children who attend charter schools in Mississippi, and urged the Mississippi Supreme Court to affirm a trial court’s ruling that the funding for charter schools is constitutional.
The appeal is being handled by MJI Director, Aaron Rice, and MJI pro bono counsel, Michael B. Wallace, a shareholder in the law firm of Wise Carter Child & Caraway, P.A. MJI joined with the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office, MidTown Public Charter Schools, and the Mississippi Charter School Association in filing the joint brief.
The Mississippi Justice Institute is the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. It represents Mississippians whose state or federal Constitutional rights have been threatened by government actions.
The Mississippi Justice Institute is supported by voluntary, tax-deductible contributions. It receives no funds from government agencies for its operations. To learn more about MJI, visit www.msjustice.org.
For the past several years colleges and universities throughout the country have embarked on a mission to limit free speech, in the name of protecting the feelings of those who might not like to hear what someone else says.
Delta State University is one of those schools, but their speech codes go further than most.
For the most part, Delta State’s student regulations include commonsense rules and procedures for any university, such as a requirement that you pay your bills and punishment for destroying property. And there are some rules that likely aren’t followed (or enforced), such as the prohibition of alcoholic beverages on campus or at university sponsored events.
But far more problematic is policy number 27 which states that “words, behavior, and/or actions which inflict mental or emotional distress on others and/or disrupt the educational environment at Delta State University” could possibly “subject violators to appropriate disciplinary action, including suspension and expulsion.”
Essentially, you could be punished up to expulsion for words that inflict emotional distress on others. What is emotional distress? Obviously, different words could upset different people in different ways.
We saw students nationwide requiring days off and tests postponed after the triggering event of Donald Trump winning the presidency in 2016. So we know there are plenty of items that cause mental and emotional distress among our youth on college campuses. And in many instances, for illegitimate reasons (i.e., being unhappy about an election).
Delta State has long had trouble with free speech. They were one of just two schools in Mississippi to receive a speech code rating of red from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE.
Policy number 27 is likely unconstitutional, but more than that it is scary. Scary that a university would put such a policy in place that violates the free speech rights of one student and threatens to expel that student for doing nothing wrong at all. Just something that may have upset someone.
For more than a century, the American university system was considered the best in the world for providing a classical liberal undergraduate education. And for preparing their students to be successful in life. For the sake of our future generations, we must reclaim our universities from the insanity we see daily.
But for now, if you’re on campus at Delta State, use extreme caution with your words. One man’s free speech might be another man’s emotional trigger and the university wants to be the arbiter.
(While the link to the policies is no longer live, a cached version from November 5 can be found here.)
Jeffrey Vitter, the chancellor at Ole Miss, will resign effective in January.
Vitter has been chancellor since January 2016 and he still has two years remaining on his contract. It is likely that he stays on in some role at the university. But this is the second consecutive chancellor to have an abrupt exit from Oxford. In 2015, the Institutions for Higher Learning, which selects the leaders of the eight public universities in the state, chose not to extend the contract of then-Chancellor Dan Jones.
Jones was at Ole Miss for only four years. Prior to Jones, Robert Khayat served as chancellor for 14 years as the university experienced tremendous growth.
There have been numerous issues at Ole Miss recently ranging from football probation, and the marked decline in attendance and interest among fans and alumni, to declining enrollment to how the Ed Meek controversy, among other controversies, was handled.
IHL will be tasked with selecting the next leader for Ole Miss. All indications are that this will be a relatively long process with multiple factions supporting different people.