Bryant speaks 'positive Mississippi'; challengers blast him
NESHOBA COUNTY -- Gov. Phil Bryant followed the late Gov. Kirk Fordice's rubric to "speak only positive Mississippi" as he closed this year's political stumping at the Neshoba County Fair on Thursday.
The Republican incumbent, seeking a second term, followed two Democratic challengers who criticized his record and the state's GOP leadership. But Bryant, as he has done in numerous other speeches recently, rattled off Mississippi top rankings, national accolades and positive statistics.
"When I came in, unemployment was at 9.5 percent," Bryant said. "… Today it's 6.6 percent, the lowest since 2008. We put 38,000 people back to work … We have a $100 billion state GDP for the first time ever in history … We're the fourth-most tax friendly state in the nation.
"I don't know what those other four guys are doing, but if you put me back in, we'll get to first place," said Bryant, who vowed to push again for an income tax cut as he did, unsuccessfully, with the Legislature this year.
Bryant said he and the legislative GOP leadership this year also funded K-12 education at "its highest level in Mississippi history," $2.52 billion.
He said his economic development efforts have been going well.
"I have a wonderful product," Bryant said on Thursday. "I'm a salesman. I work on commission. I travel all over the world … We created 150 new jobs this week, and it's just Friday (sic)."
But his Democratic challengers were not so charitable or positive in their speeches Thursday.
Democratic candidate Vicki Slater blamed Bryant and Republican leaders for problems with education, health care, poverty, foreign goods being sold in Wal-Mart and even a lack of Mississippi-grown tomatoes in grocery stores.
"Our teachers have to reach into their own purses for school supplies," said Slater, who recounted a classroom she visited that had "32 students and only 15 textbooks."
Slater also fired back at House Speaker Philip Gunn, who in his speech decried the national Democratic Party "removing God from their platform."
"It doesn't matter if God is in your platform," Slater said. "It doesn't matter if God is in a platform or on the state seal. What matters is if God is in your heart. We know where our governor's heart is. It's not in schools, not in health care and not in jobs.
"Why are Mississippians going to the grocery and picking up tomatoes that say 'grown in Mexico?'" Slater said. "…The federal government gave us NAFTA, but our governor has given us the shaft-a."
Democratic candidate Dr. Valerie Adrean Smartt Short, an Air Force veteran and OBGYN, said Mississippi's GOP leadership is restricting access to health care by refusing to expand Medicaid in line with the federal Affordable Care Act.
Short blamed lack of health insurance and care in Mississippi for the death of her brother, whom she said died after receiving substandard care and a "poor man's colonoscopy."
Short said Mississippi is suffering from "stagnation" and "the consequences of containment" and "we are becoming an invisible economy."
"I am the only candidate with the experience and determination to bring hope and change," Short said.
Republican Mitch Young and the Reform Party's Shawn O'Hara – both considered long-shot candidates in the gubernatorial race, spoke to the crowd at the Founder's Square Pavilion on Thursday.
"If elected I will reduce my salary to two-times the median income in the state of Mississippi," Young said. "Ask your legislator to do the same," he said, although state lawmakers' salary is currently set at only $10,000 a year and the median income is $36,900.
O'Hara, who noted he's run for various statewide offices 14 times before, said if elected he would provide free tuition for nurses and use Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg to train them.
He also vowed: "I will execute all violent murders on death row and you will not have to spend millions to keep them there while you wait for them to be executed."
Contact Geoff Pender at (601) 961-7266 or gpender@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @GeoffPender on Twitter.