Kentucky and Mississippi tomorrow, folks! Really good article on the Mississippi campaign.
_________________________________________
Star Power Confronts an Energetic Incumbent in Miss.
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2003; Page A06
GULFPORT, Miss. -- The voice is undiluted, unabashed Mississippi Delta.
From the mouth of Haley Barbour, consummate Washington power lobbyist and former Republican National Committee chairman, Tuesday comes out sounding like "Tews-dee." There is talk of dogs that don't hunt and scalded dogs and all other manner of metaphorical dogs.
"We need y'all to vote on Tuesday, you hear?" he says, leaning onto a diner table piled with the shrimp they pull from the murky, hot Gulf waters down the road. "Large turnouts vote Republican, conservative; low turnouts vote Democrat, liberal."
Barbour punctuates his pocketbook political analysis with three pats on the shoulder of a gray-haired man -- three good, solid pats with the palm of his thick right hand.
He knows how to pour on the down South charm, and this is the problem for Ronnie Musgrove, the incumbent Democratic governor who has staked his political future, in great part, on painting Barbour as an outsider who should be kept out of the governor's mansion because he has lost touch with the people of his home state.
It is a risky political strategy. Pointing out Barbour's years in Washington allows Musgrove to play on the ancient mistrust some Mississippians harbor for everything Northern. But it also gives Barbour an opening to boast of his dizzying array of contacts -- corporate titans, senators, financiers, presidents past and present -- and what they could do to help one of the poorest states in the nation.
And then, there's that voice.
"He sounds like Mississippi, which will help him," said Stephen Rozman, a political science professor at Tougaloo College near Jackson. "He's got an 'ol boy quality."
Barbour's shift from the private, hush-hush world of big-time lobbying to the public glare of a political campaign comes at a time of great unease for Southern Democrats. Republicans unseated three incumbent Democratic governors last November, leaving Musgrove as the lone Democrat running a state in the Deep South.
The prospect of dominating the region's statehouses going into next year's presidential campaign has made Musgrove an irresistible target in the governor's race that will be decided Tuesday. The Republican Governors Association has taken such an interest in ousting Musgrove that it donated more money -- $4 million -- to Barbour's campaign than any Mississippi gubernatorial candidate had ever raised. The Democratic Governors' Association came up with $2 million for Musgrove. All told, the candidates will spend close to $18 million, triple the previous record.
Barbour, whose family has lived for generations in the Delta town of Yazoo City, entered the race as a prohibitive favorite, but the contest has tightened in the stretch run. Two media polls show Barbour leading by small margins, though the race is considered a statistical dead heat because of the polls' margins of error. Although Barbour is still generally considered the front-runner, Musgrove has begun to impress with a frenetic burst of campaigning in the past month after cranking up what had been a puzzlingly sleepy reelection effort throughout the summer.
The governor -- a famously relentless striver who seldom sleeps more than four hours a night -- likes to remind anyone who will listen that he trailed Republican Mike Parker, a former congressman, before winning an election that was so close it had to be decided by the Mississippi Legislature.
"Musgrove is a street fighter. You can never count him out," said Leslie McLemore, a political science professor at Jackson State University. "He will outwork every other human being alive." McLemore is also a Democratic member of the Jackson City Council.
Barbour counters Musgrove's boundless energy with an aura of star power. He has brought one Republican luminary after another to the state to campaign with him. President Bush, who campaigned with Barbour in north Mississippi on Saturday, has been here twice, as has Vice President Cheney. The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), campaigned with Barbour, dubbing him the "Barbourator" not long after California elected "the Terminator."
Musgrove scoffs at the parade of appearances, saying: "This election is not about who has the most friends in Washington." The governor has not invited any national Democratic leaders to join him, and with good reason.
"In the South, you have to be careful that the Republican opponent cannot connect you with the Washington, liberal establishment," Rozman said. "That's the kiss of death."
Instead, Musgrove calls himself a "conservative and independent."
He emphasizes education spending, touting unprecedented teacher pay raises passed under his watch, then he reminds voters that he opposed abortion and gun control. He boasts of his recent endorsement by the National Rifle Association, which automatically endorses incumbents who score favorably in their rating system, regardless of party.
"Ronnie Musgrove is running from the Democratic Party like a scalded dog," Barbour responds.
Musgrove has repeatedly attacked Barbour by linking him to the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact that many here blame for the loss of 41,000 jobs, and to other international trade deals. Foreign competition is an especially prickly subject in the northeastern corner of the state, home to a furniture industry rivaled only by North Carolina's. Both campaigns think the region could decide the election after votes are counted in the solidly Democratic Delta and the predominantly Republican Gulf Coast.
"If you're on the side of China, which my opponent was, you're not helping us," Musgrove said during an interview aboard the small plane he uses to crisscross the state for strings of campaign appearances that often start before dawn and end near midnight.
Barbour has defended his free-trade lobbying, saying he worked on behalf of Mexican interests only after NAFTA was in place.
Barbour makes his case wearing an omnipresent lapel pin that features the U.S. and Mississippi flags. The pin is perceived by many blacks as a subtle signal to conservative, rural white voters, who turned out in great numbers two years ago to vote against the removal of the large Confederate battle flag from the upper left corner of Mississippi's state flag.
Musgrove supported allowing voters to decide whether to alter the flag after a state Supreme Court ruled that the flag was technically not official because the law creating it had been repealed in the early 1900s.
Musgrove says the issue has been settled, but Barbour accuses the governor of misjudging the sentiments of a state that voted 2 to 1 to keep its flag.
"If the governor of Mississippi is not willing to display the state flag, he ought to get another state to represent," Barbour said in an interview.
Barbour also has refused calls from black leaders to remove his photograph from the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which advocates for the rights of "European Americans." Democratic leaders hope the flag controversy will spur voter turnout among blacks, which make up 36 percent of the electorate here, to counter any possible conservative, rural boost that the issue could generate.
With all the emotions generated by the flag dust-up, the contest has grown increasingly negative as Election Day nears. Musgrove's campaign ran television advertisements accusing Barbour, who lobbied for tobacco companies, of benefiting from firms that "poison" children. The ad led to a fierce exchange at a gubernatorial debate, with Barbour challenging Musgrove to "look him in the eye" and accusing the governor of "the lowest, dirtiest, most despicable thing I've ever seen in a campaign."
Musgrove responded that Barbour's angry retort showed he did not have the temperament to lead the state.
The back and forth has been enough to make many voters weary. Karen Barber, a wireless phone company worker, stopped Barbour during a campaign appearance in Biloxi and told him that her daughter is named Haley Barber, too, enough to draw snickers from all her friends, even if the spelling is different.
Barber also wanted Barbour to know one other thing: "The election," she said, "needs to go ahead and get over."
washingtonpost.com |
