How is a Democrat on track to potentially unseat an incumbent Republican governor in a deeply conservative state?
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has never been a popular governor. His first win in 2019 hinged on an eleventh-hour endorsement from then-President Donald Trump that barely bumped him across the 50 percent line needed to win against the state’s former attorney general Jim Hood (a conservative Democrat). Even after Trump’s Hail Mary validation, Reeves squeaked out a victory with just 51.9 percent of the vote.
This time, with the 2023 election less than two weeks away, Trump noticeably hasn’t endorsed Reeves for re-election.
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The incumbent’s biggest problem is that Reeves can’t fully appease the far-right voting base who have a long memory of safety measures he recommended during the pandemic—such as mask mandates, short-term business and school closures, and limits on the size of indoor gatherings. To the state’s ultraconservative white voting base (90 percent of white voters in the state vote Republican), these health measures—which were advised by the state’s chief health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, and which were basic standards nationwide—equated to tyranny and betrayal.
MAGA Republican candidate Robert Foster (who ran against Reeves in 2019) suggested Reeves needs to make a public apology for accepting the recommendations of Dobbs and Dr. Anthony Fauci, if he wants to prevent Republican voters from punishing him by skipping the ballot altogether.
Reeves has other sins the right wants him to atone for, as well, like his failure to support MAGA candidate Chris McDaniel for lieutenant governor and signing the bill that finally retired the Hospitality State’s confederate flag. It’s no matter that Reeves has still sanctioned the month of April as Confederate Heritage Month or that the state still officially celebrates Robert E. Lee’s birthday on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Extreme-right voters are fixated on his concessions to anyone to their left.
And while stalwart conservatives can never be fully placated, reasonable voters are also dissatisfied with Reeves for his seemingly endless ties to scandals during his time as lieutenant governor and governor.
Just over $98 million worth of scandals, to be precise.
The numerous disgraces involve misappropriated money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, in which nearly $100 million in TANF funds were redirected from working poor families into the pockets and pet projects of friends of the governor.
Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre cashed in $1.1 million for speaking engagements at which he never appeared. Favre’s ask for a volleyball arena at his alma mater (and mine), the University of Southern Mississippi, drained another $6.1 million in TANF funds.
Reeves’ friends, former professional wrestler Ted DiBiase and his son, Ted Jr., received over $2 million for their Christian nonprofit. Reeves’ personal trainer, Paul Lacoste, got $1.3 million for his fitness bootcamp program. Millions of dollars went on football tickets, Christian music concerts, and conservative lobbyists.
Then there was Reeves’ repeated use of the state jet for personal business, campaign trips, and even a Mardi Gras ball.
Reeves is also disliked for his proud refusal to expand Medicaid, which would allow 230,000 Mississippians health-care coverage (90 percent of which would be covered by the federal government). It would also bring in $1.3 billion in federal relief to the state’s bankrupt hospitals that have been in crisis since 2005, or as long as we’ve had a Republican governor in office. The expansion would save countless lives and improve the standard of living for hundreds of thousands of people in the poorest state in the union.
So Reeves’ corruption, his negligence, and his unpopularity with the right and center are the primary reasons an incumbent Republican is polling neck-and-neck with a Democrat in one of the deepest red states in the country.
So Who Is This Democrat Who Could Be Mississippi’s Chief Executive?
You may not have heard of Brandon Presley, but he’s the challenger on Reeves’ heels. Like anyone with a shot at winning here, he’s a social conservative: a pro-life, pro-gun, evangelical Christian who’s opposed to trans health care. The second cousin of Elvis (yes, that Elvis), he’s even repurposed an anti-Biden slogan as his own, “Let’s Go Brandon!”
Did I mention he’s a Democrat?
One might wonder if he’s the type of Southern Democrat of an earlier era. He’s not running an ideological left-vs-right campaign, after all, but a populist one.
Presley is a self-styled Man of The People in a state in which 20 percent of The People are poor. The poorest state in the nation, remember? The second-least educated state behind West Virginia. Presley relates to voters with his stories of growing up poor, of being raised by a single working mother, of a childhood that sometimes didn’t include electricity or running water.
He’s also keen to remind voters that his opponent, Gov. Tate Reeves, is an insider with a silver-spoon upbringing.
It’s worth watching Presley’s campaign ads to get a sense of his populism, and to hear that authentic Magnolia State drawl: “If you can’t write a campaign check, you’re shut out of state government. So for all of those in Mississippi that are left out that Tate Reeves doesn’t know exists: When my name goes on the ballot in November, your name goes on the ballot in November.”
That Nov. 7 election now appears to be too close to call. According to the most recent data by Public Policy Polling, Reeves is only 1 percentage point away from Presley (46 percent and 45 percent, respectively), with the remaining 10 percent of undecided voters favorable to Presley. If neither candidate reaches 50 percent plus one vote, they’ll have a runoff on Nov. 28.
So how is Presley polling so well?
The $3.75 million the Democratic Governors Association poured into the Let’s Go Brandon campaign this year definitely doesn’t hurt.
But there’s also the support Presley has earned from Black voters who are 40 percent of our state’s population. Presley has been endorsed by students, pastors, and community leaders. He’s spending over $100,000 advertising on Black radio stations. Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Jim Clyburn (D-SC) are by his side on the campaign trail. He’s traveled to Jackson State University for homecoming (one of Mississippi’s biggest football events of the year), Alcorn State University, and other HBCUs, promising not to neglect them the way Reeves has—the way conservative governors always have.
On top of that, Presley has campaigned in each of the state’s 82 counties. Reeves, by comparison, has been relatively disengaged from the campaign trail. He’s dodged five invitations to debate. Presley, for his part, still attended each event. In a segment of the campaign he’s called Empty Chair October, Presley hauls an empty chair up to stage and satirically “debates” the absent governor to underscore that, for Reeves, showing up to answer his constituents isn’t a priority.
So, the election is close. But Mississippi is a reliable Republican stronghold. The state has gone for Republican presidents in every single election since 1972—with the exception of Southerner Jimmy Carter in 1976. Presley would be the first Democratic governor of Mississippi since the turn of this century.
But, what if?
Reeves and Presley are so ideologically similar as to rule out the potential for a significant shift in the deeply traditionalist Southern state, no matter who takes home the most votes. The only real policy difference between the two is that Presley wants to take the Medicaid expansion, if he can.
And so, presented with a choice between a moderate populist Democrat and a generic Republican who can’t quite satisfy the far right, does a potential gubernatorial flip even matter?
Perhaps a win for Democrats would be symbolic in a deep red state. But even if Presley wins, his Medicaid plan and other efforts will be checked at every turn by the Republican supermajority in the House and Senate.
And the Democratic candidate is still a social conservative, which is what you must be to win in a place like Mississippi.
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, PhD, is a historian of U.S. higher education. Her recent book is Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). She is a Mississippi native and lifelong resident, who lives with her husband and their dogs along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
