Mississippi Today
New governor’s race poll shows Reeves leading Presley by just one point
Welcome to The Homestretch, a daily blog featuring the most comprehensive coverage of the 2023 Mississippi governor's race. This page, curated by the Mississippi Today politics team, will feature the biggest storylines of the 2023 governor's race at 7 a.m. every day between now and the Nov. 7 election.
If you've wondered why the Democratic Governors Association has pumped a historic amount of money into Brandon Presley's 2023 campaign, you might get your answer later today.
The Washington-based organization that works to get Democratic governors elected will publicly release a poll today that shows Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves leading Presley by just one point, according to a memo shared with Mississippi Today.
The poll shows Reeves leading Presley 46% to 45%, with nearly 10% still undecided 15 days from the election. The poll also shows that among those undecided voters, 68% have an unfavorable opinion of Reeves, while just 2% view him favorably.
If accurate, the poll also shows both candidates well below the 50%-plus-one threshold needed to avoid a runoff. A third candidate, independent Gwendolyn Gray, dropped out of the race in early October and endorsed Presley, but her announced exit came too late to be removed from the ballot. She could earn enough votes to keep Reeves or Presley from reaching 50%, which would push those two candidates to a Nov. 28 runoff election.
The Democratic Governors Association has pumped at least $3.75 million into Presley's campaign this year, which is an unprecedented Mississippi investment from a single group affiliated with the national Democratic Party. That sum helped Presley out-raise Reeves over the past three months — a feat that very few political observers expected.
To add some context to this year's DGA investment, the same group gave Democratic nominee Jim Hood just $2.4 million in his race against Reeves four years ago. And this year in neighboring Louisiana, one of two other states with a 2023 governor's election, the DGA invested about $300,000 total.
A word of warning about this poll and any others you'll see between now and November: ‘tis the season for skewed polling leaks. Given their investment in one candidate in the race, the uber-politically affiliated DGA could very well have reason to release numbers that don't tell a complete picture.
But here's what we do know: The poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling, a reputable North Carolina-based firm that has an A-minus rating from the industry standard FiveThirtyEight pollster rating service. This pollster, according to the memo shared with Mississippi Today, surveyed 601 Mississippi voters via a mix of text message and phone calls from October 19-20, and the margin of error is 4%.
There are reasons to buy this latest poll's numbers. This new poll, like others before it, shows Reeves underwater on favorability. Of the new poll's total respondents, according to the memo, 51% have an unfavorable opinion of Reeves and just 33% view him favorably.
Presley, on the other hand, has a marginal favorable rating among all the poll's respondents (36% favorable to 31% unfavorable), but the poll memo shows the Democratic nominee still has a major name ID problem — something that also mirrors other public polling released earlier this year. In all, 32% of the poll's respondents are unsure of their opinion of Presley.
The poll that shows neither candidate particularly close to the 50% mark also tracks with buzz among Republican and Democratic politicos over the past week or two. Political operatives on both sides in Mississippi continue to openly speculate about the runoff possibility. And both campaigns, according to several sources, are said to be preparing for the possibility of a three-week November sprint to the runoff election.
Accurate or not, this new DGA poll will rattle the state's political ground and attract even more national attention to the race. Just 15 days out, there's plenty of drama.
Headlines From The Trail
House Minority Leader Robert Johnson: Black turnout could be key in upcoming election
The racist origins of runoff elections, which Mississippi may see in November governor's race
Just 16 days out, here are the biggest storylines of the Mississippi governor's race
Democrat Brandon Presley looks ahead to the November election
Reeves vs. Presley: Hear from both Mississippi governor candidates ahead of November's election
What We're Watching
1) How low, exactly, is Republican enthusiasm? The concern is there among many politicos, but can Reeves leverage his many millions on ginning up the GOP base?
2) What will enthusiasm look like on the Democratic side? Presley is clearly targeting Black voters — the base of the Democratic Party. In the last three weekends, he's gone to three different HBCU tailgates (Alcorn State two weeks ago, Jackson State last weekend, and Mississippi Valley State this weekend).
3) Can Presley win broader support in northeast Mississippi than Jim Hood did in 2019? It's a region of the state that Trump won definitively and Reeves won handily four years ago. The Democratic nominee campaigned Sunday in northeast Mississippi.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1968
MAY 11, 1968
The Poor People's Campaign arrived in Washington, D.C. A town called “Resurrection City” was erected as a tribute to the slain Martin Luther King Jr.
King had conceived the campaign, which was led by his successor at the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ralph David Abernathy. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson reached out to young Black men wanting vengeance for King's assassination.
“Jackson sat them down and said, ‘This is just not the way, brothers. It's just not the way,”' recalled Lenneal Henderson, then a student at the University of California at Berkeley. “He went further and said, ‘Look, you've got to pledge to me and to yourself that when you go back to wherever you live, before the year is out, you're going to do two things to make a difference in your neighborhood.' It was an impressive moment of leadership.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Lawmakers may have to return to Capitol May 14 to override Gov. Tate Reeves’ potential vetoes
Legislators might not have much notice on whether they will be called back to the Mississippi Capitol for one final day of the 2024 session.
Speaker Jason White, who presides over the House, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, must decide in the coming days whether to reconvene the Legislature for one final day in the 2024 session on Tuesday at 1 p.m.
Lawmakers left Jackson on May 4. But under the joint resolution passed during the final days of the session, legislators gave themselves the option to return on May 14 unless Hosemann and White “jointly determine that it is not necessary to reconvene.”
The reason for the possible return on Tuesday presumably is to give the Legislature the opportunity to take up and try to override any veto by Gov. Tate Reeves. The only problem is the final bills passed by the Legislature — more than 30 — are not due action by Reeves until Monday, May 13. And technically the governor has until midnight Monday to veto or sign the bills into law or allow them to become law without his signature.
Spokespeople for both Hosemann and White say the governor has committed to taking action on that final batch of bills by Monday at 5 p.m.
“The governor's office has assured us that we will receive final word on all bills by Monday at 5 p.m.,” a spokesperson for Hosemann said. “In the meantime, we are reminding senators of the possibility of return on Tuesday.”
A spokesperson for White said, “Both the House and Senate expect to have all bills returned from the governor before 5 p.m. on Monday. The lieutenant governor and speaker will then decide if there is a reason to come back on May 14.”
The governor has five days to act on bills after he receives them while legislators are in session, which technically they still are. The final batch of bills were ready for the governor's office one day before they were picked up by Reeves staff. If they had been picked up that day earlier, Reeves would have had to act on them by Saturday.
At times, the governor has avoided picking up the bills. For instance, reporters witnessed the legislative staff attempt to deliver a batch of bills to the governor's Capitol office one day last week, but Reeves' staff refused to accept the bills. They were picked up one day later by the governor's staff, though.
Among the bills due Monday is the massive bill that funds various projects throughout the state, such as tourism projects and infrastructure projects. In total, there are more than 325 such projects totaling more than $225 million in the bill.
In the past, the governor has vetoed some of those projects.
The governor already has taken action of multiple bills passed during the final days of the session.
He allowed a bill to strip some of the power of the Public Employees Retirement System Board to become law without his signature. The bill also committed to providing a 2-and-one-half percent increase in the amount governmental entities contribute to the public employee pension plan over a five year period.
A bill expanding the area within the Capitol Complex Improvement District, located in the city of Jackson, also became law without his signature. The CCID receives additional funding from the state for infrastructure projects. A state Capitol Police Force has primary law enforcement jurisdiction in the area.
The governor signed into law earlier this week legislation replacing the long-standing Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which has been the mechanism to send state funds to local schools for their basis operation.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 2007
MAY 10, 2007
An Alabama grand jury indicted former state trooper James Bonard Fowler for the Feb. 18, 1965, killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was trying to protect his mother from being beaten at Mack's Café.
At Jackson's funeral, Martin Luther King Jr. called him “a martyred hero of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” As a society, he said, “we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.”
Authorities reopened the case after journalist John Fleming of the Anniston Star published an interview with Fowler in which he admitted, despite his claim of self-defense, that he had shot Jackson multiple times. And Fleming uncovered Fowler's killing of another Black man, Nathan Johnson. In 2010, Fowler pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months behind bars.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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