In 1988, when our new Democratic governor Ray Mabus declared that “Mississippi will never be last again,” Republican Bill Crawford was one of those who applauded. But in Crawford’s new book, A Republican’s Lament / Mississippi Needs Good Government Conservatives, he sadly reports that Mississippi is still last in far too many categories that count. As a historian who has participated in and written about Mississippi politics for more than 50 years, he laments the opportunities that the ascendant Republic party had to move us off the bottom, but failed to grasp.
No one has seen the ins and outs of that politics during that time more than Crawford. He has been a daily newspaper reporter, a crusading small town weekly editor, a Republican party leader, a reform-minded Republican state representative, an influential Institutions of Higher Learning Trustee, a successful banker, a community college administrator, a state economic development official, a community development leader, and a non-profit founder.
His book traces that period. He splices into his current commentary on that history a series of newspaper columns he has written through the years. They are remarkably prescient, although he may have left on the cutting room floor at least a few columns that did not stand the test of time. We all make mistakes.
Two remarkable tables list Mississippi’s rank among states in 53 categories as of 2003. Our state ranks worst in the nation in, among other things, average wages, workforce participation rate, per capita income, children in poverty, academic investment, health care outcomes, life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, teen pregnancy, births to unwed mothers, child health, elderly health, child obesity, incarcerations per capita, road safety, and food insecurity. Other rankings are better, but only two make it as high as 44: economic growth and pre-k through 12 education..
Republicans have held the governor’s office for 26 of the 34 years since 1988, so much of Crawford’s “lament” is addressed to his own party.
More than anything, Crawford is an acolyte of Gil Carmichael, the Meridian car dealer who took on the Democratic establishment in the 1970s with a program of good government reforms but never got elected. Crawford worked in his campaigns. Carmichael wanted to rewrite the constitution to reorganize state government so it would operate more like a business. He wanted to eliminate wasteful state agencies, consolidate counties, empower the governor to appoint the secretary of state, attorney general and state treasurer, and establish a competitive two-party system in the state, in part by bringing African Americans into the Republican tent. Carmichael lost state-wide races in the 1870s but was later appointed by President George H.W. Bush to be head of the Federal Railroad Administration.
Crawford’s book is unusual because of the three roles he has played: A journalist writing about events, an elected politician, and now a historian commenting on all that came before. The book shifts back and forth for each topic he addresses. For example, in his lament that the Republican party failed to attract African Americans, he reprints an article about a 1981 letter he wrote urging the Republican Party to recruit African Americans to serve on its then-all-white state executive committee, and a 1983 column he wrote bemoaning the party’s white, country-club image. Efforts to change that image died when Kirk Fordice became governor in 1992.
Crawford addresses most of the problems that have confronted and continue to confront the state. He complains that no state official seemed interested in remedying Jefferson County’s status as the poorest county in the United States. He offers opinions on the PERS deficit, the TANF scandal, and even Pearl River flooding. He also revisits his proposal, as a member of the college board, to consolidate universities, an effort that got sidetracked by the Ayers lawsuit. That suit sought more money for the historically African-American universities. It led to a settlement that increased funding but also set goals for both white enrollment and private fundraising which still have not been met.
Crawford sees the potential for progress in what he calls collaborative leadership. He cites the success of “Tupelo-style leadership” in promoting development there. He champions Haley Barbour as Mississippi’s “only good government conservative” to serve as governor. He recalls that when Barbour took office in 2004 he sought to implement a “Blueprint Mississippi” prepared by the Mississippi Economic Council. Barbour enacted some of it, including tort reform and workforce training in community colleges, but Hurricane Katrina cut the effort short, and after his term “the party turned to a strange melding of old Democratic Party methods and modern Tea Party populism.”
Put Crawford down as someone with a moral conscience who believes first, that Mississippi ought to do better, and second, that it can do better through good government that spends its resources more wisely. May his tribe increase.
Luther Munford is a Northsider.
