THE SAD THING ABOUT THE ELECTION, on November 7 is that Mississippi voters won t get to hear any more titillating campaign rhetoric. Kirk Fordice, the first Republican governor of Mississippi since Reconstruction, and his Democratic rival, Secretary of State Dick Molpus, have recently eschewed the drab dialogue of the campaign’s early days and started playing politics the old-fashioned way — they’ve gotten nasty.
Fordice, in an interview, called Molpus a “pissant politician,” and Molpus recently threatened to take Fordice “to the woodshed.” A mid-summer debate at Mississippi’s legendary Neshoba County Fair saw the men glowering at each other in the July heat, just an insult away from eye-gouging. Then, seconds after a statewide televised debate had concluded last week, Fordice got in Molpus’s face and confronted him about the woodshed comment. “This 61-year- old man will take you to the woodshed and I’ll whip your ass.”
Though the race has grown tighter — Fordice began with a 20 point lead, but an Oct. 15 poll by the Molpus organization shows the candidates just eight points apart — Fordice remains the favorite. Voters seem to appreciate his uncommon frankness even though it can be grating (a supporter once likened it to sandpaper). He can be an inveterate braggart, speaking often of the “Mississippi Miracle” ushered in by his administration, but he can also be disarmingly modest. His achievements, he has said, don’t amount to much ” on paper.” What he has accomplished, he says, “I’ve accomplished in the realm of ideas.” That’s important, though, because in a weak-governor state dominated by Democrats, a Republican governor’s legislative reach is limited. Fordice’s greatest contribution to Mississippi politics may be not his education initiative, or his plan to give churches and charities a larger role in welfare, but his part in persuading the electorate that it is permissible to vote Republican on the state and local levels.
Every office from coroner to lieutenant governor is up for grabs on November 7, including the all-powerful Legislature, and this means that Fordice’s success can be judged to a great extent by Republicans’ performance statewide. While a GOP takeover of the Legislature remains unlikely, gains of some sort are certain. According to Republican state chairman Billy Powell, ” The philosophy in Mississippi mirrors the Republican party more than the Democratic party today. Candidates are switching parties and so are voters.” Powell notes that in 1991, about 5,000 people voted Republican in the primaries in Hancock County, one of the state’s most populous. This year, that number tripled.
The Republicans need 29 wins with no setbacks to gain control of the House, but a net gain of just nine seats would give them the Senate. Powell calls this coup a “great possibility.” U.S. Senate majority whip Trent Lott puts the odds at 50-50.
Powell’s Democratic counterpart, Alice Skelton, remains skeptical of a Republican takeover, but she cites mainly logistical concerns — a dearth of candidates-not any unwillingness of Mississippians to vote Republican. Skelton also mentions what has long been a truism in Mississippi politics: Voters don’t look to national trends to decide who their local representatives will be. What Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich say and do does not affect local and state races.
Fordice may be changing that, by effectively exploiting the national Republican message. “People are starting to associate what’s said in Washington with what’s happening on the state level,” Powell insists. There’s no question that old patterns are breaking down. Candidates for sheriff and for county supervisor are running as Republicans, which would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Mississippi was conservative even in its yellow-dog Democrat days, but voting Republican was simply taboo.
Not all Republicans are thrilled with Fordice, however. Some conservatives see him as being too abrasive to champion the cause effectively over the long run. Jack Reed, Jr., for example, whose father ran for governor as a Republican against New Democrat Ray Mabus in 1987, co-hosted a fundraiser for Molpus earlier this year. To Fordice’s detractors, the Republican message is right but the messenger is wrong.
Perhaps the only Republican who isn’t benefiting from the new momentum is Lieutenant Governor Eddie Briggs. Briggs and Fordice can’t stand each other, which causes a Republican opportunity to go to waste. Given the structure of Mississippi’s government-the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate and has a tie-breaking vote — if Fordice and Briggs worked together, they could certainly affect legislative results.
And Briggs’s troubles don’t stop with the fact that the state’s most popular politician won’t support him. He also has the distinct misfortune of running against Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, whose most conspicuous promoter is the novelist John Grisham, Mississippi’s favorite son. If Mississippians are just now learning to warm to Republicans, they’ve never been unsure about Grisham. Several years ago Democrats even dreamed of getting him to run against Trent Lott.
Whatever the outcome of the lieutenant governor’s race, Fordice believes he is leading a growing Republican charge. He claims to be a Reagan Republican, and his Mississippi partisans are betting that his coattails will be almost as long as the Gipper’s in 1980.
Sid Scott is a freelance writer in Jackson, Miss.
