Before the recent Alabama senatorial campaign, I allowed that, if Roy Moore lost, his shortcomings would be to blame but that perception would eclipse reality. The press pursued the storyline predicted.
What does the development mean for Mississippi?
As an Alabama halfbreed, the contest particularly interested me. My maternal family were pioneer settlers in Montgomery. I have spent time in the capital city since infancy.
We have relatives in Gadsden, Roy Moore's hometown, who offered commentary about his qualifications.
Having followed the election closely, I suggest little translates to Magnolia State politics. The choice was between two men based upon character rather than personality. While chances of what was learned about Roy Moore repeating are slim, one can envision the implosion of a Republican candidate in Mississippi with similar indiscretions.
Crucially, Doug Jones' prosecution of the murderers of the four little girls at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, on September 15, 1963, while the United States Attorney in Birmingham, was a powerful incentive for African-American support.
If it is true, as suggested, that Mississippi has a 37 percent African-American electorate versus Alabama's 25 percent African-American electorate and African-Americans turnout, the mathematics could create a Democratic resurgence in Mississippi, presuming that a "Get Out The Vote" operation motivates people who do not traditionally participate to go to the polls.
Barack Obama's margins of victory were built upon African-American participation which went wanting without a person of color as candidate. All bets are off should there be such motivation in statewide elections.
The 2015 gubernatorial election in Louisiana shared similarities with Alabama's senatorial election: The Democratic candidate won an upset victory because the Republican candidate was involved in a sexual scandal.
Tyler Bridges said in a Politico article "James Carville, a Louisiana native who has been a top adviser to President Bill Clinton and other Democrats, put it... bluntly. 'The lesson [Edwards] offers is that these purists or ideological ayatollahs in the Democratic Party need to shut up and stand down.’
“Democrats would be wiser,” Bridges added, “to shift the conversation away from cultural issues to the core tasks of governing, where Republicans are much more vulnerable.
"There’s also the possibility, though, that Edwards is a one-off, a blue anomaly in a region that’s likely to stay red for years to come. His military background and socially conservative cred might have had real appeal to voters in the state, but he also happened to run for governor in 2015 against a Republican opponent, Sen. David Vitter, who had admitted to patronizing a prostitution ring. The outgoing Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, became a millstone for Vitter. Jindal left office with a 25 percent approval rating.”
Recent polling by Southern Media & Opinion Research, released the week of last December’s Winter Solstice, found a 65 percent job approval rating for Gov. Edwards, higher than that of United States Senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.
Campbell Robertson wrote, in The New York Times, on November 22, 2015, "Louisiana’s John Bel Edwards Overcame Big Obstacles to Win Governor’s Race", "[Edwards] is a social conservative, but an old-school Democrat on bread-and-butter issues who champions public schools and is less enamored of charter schools and vouchers.... His résumé seems almost laboratory-made for a red-state Democrat, starting with a family that has been in law enforcement for generations, an education at West Point and eight years as an Army Ranger."
The parameters of replicating Alabama and Louisiana Democratic victories here are tripartite: finding a candidate independent of national Democratic credos, socially conservative enough to satisfy caucasian concerns and, simultaneously, progressive enough to satisfy African-American concerns. It is a tall order but not an impossible one. Time will tell whether Mississippi might become a Southern version of Ohio, a competitive swing state in which neither political party is dominant. That would defy recent history but, as Alabama and Louisiana proved, the dynamics exist for competitive elections in the Deep South.
