|
On the Trail of Katrina Bucks
Where Will Clark Land in ’07?
Clark was also recently the beneficiary of a Sid Salter column praising his work in making Mississippi compliant with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). According to Salter, Mississippi is more HAVA-compliant than New York, and Clark’s spokesman says we “are 100 percent compliant with the law.” The state has done a good, albeit controversial, job of updating its voting machines. However, Mississippi is lagging behind on one major HAVA requirement – creating a centralized statewide voter registration system. HAVA required states to complete their systems by January 1, 2005, but the federal government allowed states to file for a waiver to move the date to January 1, 2006. Mississippi got the waiver and was supposed to have it in operation as of January 1st this year. The system is still not in place after a two-year extension.
House in Flux? McCoy has battled well-publicized health problems for much of his current term. While it has certainly posed challenges for him as Speaker, his problems run much deeper. McCoy is a populist whose speeches exhibit a strong “us versus the world” mentality.
Senator Biden to Speak to Democrats
Retzer Teams With Goodall on Tanzanian Project
TACARE, which is short for Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation Education, is a project sponsored by USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and JGI, the Jane Goodall Institution. Goodall and Retzer met in Dar es Salaam, the capitol of Tanzania to tout this endeavor. Ambassador Retzer was as excited about meeting Jane Goodall as he was about the program itself. He described Goodall as “truly inspirational” and said that “[s]he [promotes environmental stewardship] in a very non-confrontational way, a much more persuasive and effective approach than the antagonistic approach that too many environmentalist groups have adopted.”
Espy - Thompson Race Heats Up
Since the legislative session died down, the biggest political news around the state has been about the upcoming election between thirteen-year incumbent Bennie Thompson and challenger Chuck Espy. While the election itself is coming up in less than two months, most of the chatter has been about the lawsuit that many claim is directly related to this political contest. The lawsuit, which was filed on February 9 by Cleveland attorney Ellis Turnage in U.S. Federal Court, would prevent Republicans from crossing over and voting in the Democratic primaries to remove Rep. Thompson. Many claim that the purpose of a primary election is for a political party to select the strongest candidate to represent them in the general election. By that token, they say that this lawsuit has nothing to do with the upcoming election, but rather its purpose is to protect the “right” of a political party to choose their own candidate. Critics of the lawsuit on the other hand, claim that this suit’s sole purpose is to protect Rep. Thompson’s seat in the House. They cite the fact that a large number of the Democratic Party’s leadership, including Democratic Chairman Wayne Dowdy did not even realize the lawsuit had been filed when Turnage did so. These critics have a compelling case, since Thompson had been decidedly anti-voter ID until quite recently. Regardless of this lawsuit’s intentions, its outcome is sure to affect, if not decide, the outcome of this particular race since it seems that Chuck Espy is receiving a great deal of GOP support. Almost 60 donors that have given money to the Espy campaign have never supported a Democratic candidate to date. In fact, over the last three months, Espy and Thompson are almost neck and neck with regards to fundraising. According to the Federal Election Commission, Espy has raised $92,000 and Thompson has raised $114,000, but Thompson has a 13 to 1 cash-on-hand advantage of $567,685 to $41,117. Republican support may stem from a combination of the fact that many Republicans consider Rep. Thompson divisive since he caters almost entirely to the black community and that white Republican farmers remember all that Chuck Espy’s uncle Mike did for them as Secretary of Agriculture under President Bill Clinton. Since Tchula Mayor Yvonne Brown is the only Republican running, Republicans may be able to rally, cross over, and remove Thompson from office. If the lawsuit fails to pass, that is. If the Democratic Party succeeds in closing the primary system, however, the Magnolia State will have to get used to Rep. Bennie Thompson, as he would be a virtual shoo- in to retain his seat in D.C.
Katrina Plays Little Role in Legislative Session Friday, March 31, marked the end of what proved to be a very eventful legislative session. All in all, though, the time spent in Jackson may have been mismanaged.Make no mistake; this legislative session was a productive one. With thirty-two bills becoming law, the state was not left wanting when it came to new code. In education, the Senate passed the Mississippi Education Reform Act of 2006. This fairly comprehensive new bill gives the legislature the authority to appropriate funds for additional base compensation for teachers in critical subject areas or areas with a shortage of teachers. It also forces the Mississippi Department of Education to grant five-year licenses to any teacher from any state that meets the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Other bills worth noting include: HB562, which appropriates $6 million to counties to purchase voting machines; HB123 which prohibits smoking in all government office buildings and state universities; and HB 409, which makes not wearing a seatbelt a primary offense. Several key issues, however, remain unresolved. Toward the end of the session, the House Public Health and Human Services Committee altered SB 2922 to call for an outright ban on abortion. If this bill had passed, only danger to the mother could be considered a valid reason for an abortion. No provision for rape or incest was made. The issue which received the most publicity, bar none, was that concerning the proposed cigarette tax. Two senate bills, SB 2310 and SB 3084 were variations of the same proposal to raise the tax on cigarettes while simultaneously lowering the sales tax on groceries. Both bills got out of the Senate, were vetoed by Gov. Haley Barbour, and then failed to receive the two-thirds majority needed for an override. Both of these issues, abortion and the proposed cigarette tax, have not gone away, and when the legislature meets again in January, the upcoming statewide elections in 2007 will surely put these two politically charged issues in the forefront. This legislative session focused very little on Hurricane Katrina. Katrina affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Mississippians, yet it received scant attention from the legislature.
The list also included: Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Carl Levin of Michigan, John McCain of Arizona, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
National attention is getting directed toward the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Ike Brown, the Democratic Chairman of Noxubee County. Nightline and USA Today have both recently covered the suit in which the DOJ alleges discrimination against white citizens and candidates - a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Brown’s lawyer, Wilbur Colom of Columbus, describes Brown as a “tough politician.” It might be an understatement. According to an interview with USA Today, Brown has dedicated his career to electing true Democrats, and not white Democrats who, when elected, will follow Republican policy. Those people, Brown says, are not Democrats at all; they are “Dixiecrats.” What Brown is being accused of is more than “tough” politics. According to the DOJ, Brown recruited black candidates to run in Noxubee county, though they did not meet state residency requirements, secretly moved Party meetings to exclude whites from participating, and discounted absentee ballots filled out by white voters because of defects while allowing ballots with similar defects that were filled out by black voters to stand. Brown calls this lawsuit a “nickel-and-dime” effort by the Bush administration to curtail his efforts to increase black voter turnout as well as the number of elected black officials in the county. Justice Department spokesman Eric Holland disagrees citing “blatant and outrageous violations of the Voting Rights Act…with the racially discriminatory purpose of defeating candidates that white voters support ... and with the intent of discriminating against black voters and black community leaders who support and work in coalition with whites.” Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi NAACP, says that they reject all racial discrimination, regardless of who is being discriminated against, but simply does not see discrimination in Noxubee County. He notes that “Macon is almost 80% black and the current mayor is white ... and the black community supported him. That does not reek of racial discrimination — that reeks of a community choosing candidates they think will best serve their interests.” One thing is certain: Brown is good at what he does. Since he arrived on the scene in 1980, Noxubee County, which is 70% black, has gone from one black elected official to 44.
Congressman Chip Pickering’s chief of staff Susan Butler and her husband Mike welcomed Garrett Connell Butler to the world on April 19. Baby Butler weighed in at 7 lbs. 10 ozs. and is the couple's third child. Nick Lott of Taylorsville, the Chairman of the Mississippi Young Republicans recently attended the United States Senate Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. The two-day conference provided a forum for nearly 500 African American participants from across the nation to discuss a range of policy issues with senior members of the United States Congress and the Bush Administration. The conference participants were nominated to attend by their member of Congress. Keep an eye out for Will Longwitz, the former Press Director for the Governor's Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal Commission. He became the fourth lawyer for Vaughn, Bowden, and Wooten, a law firm in Gulfport, MS.
Quotable Quotes Frank Melton says he has changed his mind about tearing down the old King Edward Hotel because, "after Hurricane Katrina, I felt God was sending me a message, as high as those winds were in Katrina and Rita, for that sign to prevail on top, as ugly as it is, it was still there; it's sending me a message." Melton said if the present proposed developers don't do something by June he will bring in some new developers from Texas. "I don't think he'll go down in history as one of the greats" -- Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), on Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist "As speaker, you have to govern from the middle, and I just don't think McCoy has. I think he has slipped further to the left and alienated some of the middle. I think certain individuals got to him and convinced him his power base was the left." -- Longtime South Mississippi lawmaker on Speaker of the House Billy McCoy's potential fall from power. "I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina," he said. "We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We've been very reasonable." -- Sen. Trent Lott Rick Clifton, chairman of the executive committee of the DeSoto County Democratic Party for the past two years, has resigned. "I have come to the point where my values of trust and respect and the dignity of each individual are just not true for the Democratic Party in Mississippi," he said.
|
|
Since the United States Congress passed a supplemental appropriations package for the states affected by last year’s hurricanes, Governor Barbour has been meeting with members of the legislature “to both to keep the Legislature up-to-date on federal funding issues and to solicit counsel and advice” while his Administration works together with the federal government to begin implementation of the programs funded by Congress. 
Mississippi Political Trivia 
Eric Clark, the normally quiet, scholarly Secretary of State, has made news a couple of times lately on topics that aren’t really under the purview of his office. It’s interesting considering people close to Clark say he’ll either run for Governor, Lieutenant Governor or Secretary of State in 2007. During the session, he spoke out for fully funding MAEP. He also very publicly advocated raising cigarette taxes on several occasions. Not topics you’d necessarily expect a Secretary of State to speak out on unless he was laying the groundwork or at least testing the waters to run for Governor or Lieutenant Governor. 
Senator Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, will be the keynote speaker at the second annual Elected Officials Appreciation Dinner held April 22 at 6:00 pm at the Trade Mart Center in downtown Jackson. 
Mike Retzer, a Greenville native who became Ambassador to Tanzania in 2005 is making news in Africa with his support of a new environmental initiative called TACARE.
In the April 16 issue of Time magazine, Thad Cochran was named one of the ten best Senators of the 109th Congress. 
