Now that there are three serious candidates in the Mississippi governor’s race, I wonder what the main campaign issues will be.
Who’s going to come up with a gimmick that catches the imagination of the voting public?
Never mind that it doesn’t have to be of much substance insofar as addressing real needs of the state, such as health care in rural areas where hospitals are failing, low teacher salaries and not enough highway maintenance money.
The latest significant entry in the governor’s is retired Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., son of a former governor, who has been rumored as a candidate since he left the court.
When his father won the governor’s race in 1971, he defeated then Lt. Gov. Charles L. Sullivan in the Democratic primary, promising to take the office away from “the Capitol Street gang” and return it to the people.
Running against “the Capitol Street gang” probably wasn’t what got him elected, but it didn’t hurt. He also had the support of the then powerful Jim Eastland political network.
Ironically, Waller Jr., who is running as a Republican, faces the current lieutenant governor, Tate Reeves, in the primary just like his father did in 1971.
I don’t expect Waller Jr. to come up with anything like running against the establishment, but maybe he will.
One of his themes is expected to be that he’d have a better chance of defeating the presumptive Democratic nominee, Attorney General Jim Hood, in the general election.
Hood is the Democrat that many Mississippi Republicans fear most. They have repeatedly tried to beat him in the attorney general’s race without success.
I’d say Reeves, with his huge amount of campaign cash, is still the favorite to win the Republican primary and maybe the general election. But he’s certainly vulnerable.
There is another Republican in the race, State Rep. Robert Foster of Hernando, but his chances are slim. Some have speculated that State Sen. Chris McDaniel, the Tea Party conservative, could even jump into the field.
But it looks now like the primary race winner will be Reeves or Waller.
If Waller is correct in the assumption that he would be a stronger opponent for Hood than Reeves and if he wins the Republican primary, then his entry into the race is bad news for Hood.
My guess though is that Hood welcomes a tough Republican primary opponent for Reeves.
It means, for one thing, that Reeves is going to have to spend some of that $6 million or so in campaign funds (with more to come) on trying to defeat Waller and whoever else is in the primary instead of using it all to hammer Hood.
He’s not going to be able to run against Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the Republican race, as his primary opponents can’t be linked to the national Democratic leadership.
Of course Hood isn’t the Democratic nominee yet. Two other declared candidates, neither of them household names, are Velesha Williams of Madison, former director of the Metro Jackson Community Prevention Coalition, and Albert Wilson, the executive director and founder of Genesis and Light Center in Jackson.
Hinds County DA Robert Shuler Smith announced that he has qualified.
A few others are said to be pondering it, including Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Magnolia Mayor Anthony Witherspoon.
Qualifying deadline for the party primaries is March 1, so the field will soon be known.
But at this point, it looks like Hood has an easier path to nomination than Reeves.
I am not a party zealot, so I haven’t even decided yet in which primary I will vote. It may depend on who is on some of the down-ticket races, including those for local offices.
Frankly, I wish we did it like Louisiana. Let everyone run in the same primary with a runoff unless someone gets a majority vote in the first.
But that isn’t going to happen.
