Latest news with #HaleyBarbour
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Who will really be in charge of MS special session? Gov. Reeves or the lawmakers
The Mississippi Constitution gives the governor the sole authority to call a special session and to set the agenda. It is one of the few powers granted to the governor by the Mississippi Constitution. But in reality, the special session power the governor possesses can be limited by legislators if they so choose. Granted, the Legislature cannot convene a special session. Once legislators end a regular session, they cannot return unless called by the governor or until the next regularly scheduled session. Lawmakers are dependent on the governor to call a special session to allow them to take up a state budget, which they remarkably were unable to pass during the regular session that ended in early April. Many believe that the governor will have more authority over the budget in special session than in regular session. For instance, can the Legislature consider a bill to fund special projects throughout the state if Gov. Tate Reeves does not include what is known by many as the 'Christmas tree bill' in the agenda? Debate over that special projects bill appears to be the major sticking point preventing a budget agreement between the House and Senate. The House wants a Christmas tree bill. The Senate does not. In 2008, then-Republican Gov. Haley Barbour called the Legislature into special session to levy a tax on hospitals to fund a $90 million Medicaid deficit. House leaders instead tried to pass a 'compromise' bill that levied a tax on cigarettes, combined with a smaller hospital tax. Republicans screamed that the cigarette tax could not be considered because it was not part of Barbour's call. Then-Speaker Billy McCoy ruled that the governor could set the agenda for the special session — to provide more funding for Medicaid — but could not dictate how that funding was derived. The whole issue became moot because Democrats could not garner the votes to pass their proposal. Yet, they also were able to block the hospital tax increase. The end result was that the special session ended without the Medicaid funding issue being resolved. The issue lingered for more than a year. In the 82-day 2002 special session, then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove placed on the agenda the issue of providing protection from lawsuits for medical providers. He said he would expand the agenda to allow lawsuit protection for all businesses after the medical provider bill reached his desk. But the Senate leaders said the governor could not limit how they addressed lawsuit protection. They wanted to do it all in one bill. But the House, not as set on what some called 'tort reform,' said it could only address the issue of lawsuit protection for medical providers because of the agenda set by the governor. For several days, the two chambers literally sat and stared at each other. Finally, then-House Speaker Tim Ford asked for an official opinion from Attorney General Mike Moore on whether lawsuit protection could be considered for all businesses. Moore's opinion said that only lawsuit protection for medical providers could be considered since that was the limit of the governor's call. The AG's opinion did not carry the force of law. But the Senate leaders, who said they did not agree with the opinion, finally acquiesced and worked with the House to pass lawsuit protection for medical providers. And then, Musgrove, true to his word, expanded the call to give legislators the ability to consider additional protections for businesses. The bottom line is that lawmakers have substantial leeway in a special session to interpret the governor's call. By the same token, the governor can veto legislation if he thinks the Legislature exceeded his call or not sign the bill and ask the courts to block the legislative action. But the Mississippi Supreme Court has been reluctant to get involved in the inner workings of the Legislature. For instance, the state constitution gives any legislator the option to have a bill read before final passage. That provision has been used as a method to slow down the legislative process or as a form of protest. In recent years, the legislative leadership countered by using a computer application to have the bills read at a super high speed. The program, spitting out words at an incomprehensible speed, was dubbed the 'demon chipmunk.' The leadership was sued, claiming the demon chipmunk speed violated the state constitution. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the legislative leadership and the demon chipmunk. The majority opinion read, 'We hold the court lacks constitutional authority to interfere in the procedural workings of the Legislature, even when those procedures are constitutionally mandated.' If Supreme Court justices are not going to strike down the demon chipmunk, would they get involved in a fight over the interpretation of the governor's special session agenda? This column was produced by Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news organization that covers state government, public policy, politics and culture. Bobby Harrison is the editor of Mississippi Today Ideas.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bobby Harrison: Mississippi political leaders' mission is to make sure poor people pay
Former Gov. Haley Barbour finally said the quiet part out loud. During a recent speech to the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government and Capitol Press Corps, the former two-term governor and master communicator said taxing groceries was a good thing because everybody has to eat. Barbour reasoned that it is important for all people to have skin in the game — to pay taxes — because 'otherwise, they will vote to pave the streets with gold if they don't have to pay anything.' Various conservative politicians and other policymakers espouse the Barbour philosophy that a tax on food is fair and necessary. To ensure that poor people pay taxes, too, they advocate for a grocery tax that absorbs a much greater percentage of the income of low income families. The quiet part out loud is a reference to the fact that as governor from 2004 until 2012, Barbour blocked legislative efforts to eliminate the grocery tax and offset that lost revenue, at least in part by increasing the tax on cigarettes. Barbour vetoed two bills in 2006: one to eliminate the highest in the nation 7% tax on food and the other to cut in half the levy on groceries. Veto messages are where governors articulate their reasoning for opposing legislation. In neither veto of the grocery tax cut bills did the governor talk about 'fairness.' Instead, he talked about the fact that the combination of cutting or eliminating the grocery tax and increasing the cigarette tax was not revenue neutral. The legislation, Barbour argued at the time, would produce less revenue for the state. He maintained that it sent the wrong message to cut taxes at a time when he was going to Congress to try to secure federal funds to help with the recovery from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. And in fairness to the governor, Hurricane Katrina was the seminal event of Barbour's tenure as governor and one of the seminal events in the state's history, and his ability to obtain those funds was paramount for the success of the Gulf Coast and south Mississippi. So it is fair to say Katrina was heavy on Barbour's mind in 2006 when the Legislature sent him the bills to cut the grocery tax. It is clear, though, that Mississippi's political leadership still has similar views as Barbour on the grocery tax. Since Barbour has left office, there have been two major reductions in the income tax: one in 2016 when Phil Bryant was governor and another in 2022 when Tate Reeves was governor. There has been no cut in the grocery tax during that time. This year the Senate proposes another major cut in the income tax and a reduction in the grocery tax from 7 cents to 5 cents on every dollar purchase of groceries. There are efforts by the House leadership and Reeves to completely eliminate the income tax. In addition, the House tax cut plan essentially would trim the grocery tax to 5.5%. The House plan in most instances also would raise the sales tax on most other retail items from 7% to 8.5%. And there are retail items other than groceries that most all people need. After all, most everyone, including poor people who might not pay an income tax, must buy clothes, household utensils and numerous other retail items that under the House plan would cost more because of the increase in the sales tax. In short, there are many opportunities other than the grocery tax to collect taxes from poor people. But just to recap: Only 12 states tax food like Mississippi does. Mississippi not only has the highest state-imposed tax on food, but also has one of the country's highest sales taxes on other retail items. Mississippi has one of the lowest income taxes in the country and it is getting even lower thanks to the 2022 tax cut that is still being phased in. The aforementioned tax structure results in Mississippi's low-wage earners paying a greater percentage of their income in state and local taxes than do the state's more affluent residents, a 2024 study found. The report by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy found that Mississippi has the nation's 19th-most regressive tax system where low-income residents are forced to pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than the state's wealthier citizens. The study shows the income tax is the only component of the Mississippi tax system that requires the wealthy to pay more than the poor. And even though Mississippi has the nation's highest percentage of poor people, the quiet part that needs to be told louder is that our leaders are working to make the tax structure even more regressive. This column was produced by Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news organization that covers state government, public policy, politics and culture. Bobby Harrison is the editor of Mississippi Today Ideas.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NAACP intends to challenge Legislature redistricting plan. See details
The Mississippi Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will challenge parts of a Legislature-approved plan to redraw some House and Senate districts, as ordered by a federal court. On Monday, the NAACP filed a motion in a federal lawsuit it has been engaged in with the state that claims that when the Legislature in 2022 redrew legislative districts, it diluted Black voting power in certain areas. The motion filed by the plaintiffs asks for briefings to be held to present amendments to the Legislature's plan. "Plaintiffs intend to file partial objections to certain aspects of the adopted plans," the plaintiffs' attorneys wrote. "Consistent with the Court's July 18 Remedial Order, Plaintiffs in lodging their objections will be 'prepared at that same time to present an alternative redistricting plan.'" The Monday court filing did not include those proposed changes. The Legislature was ordered by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Mississippi in 2024 to redraw the state lines, and both the Senate and House passed proposals and submitted them to the court last week. Barbour on tax cuts: Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour advocates for tax cuts as Legislature mulls proposals The Monday filing also made note that the defendants, the Mississippi State Board of Election Commissioners, oppose the plaintiffs' motion. The State Board of Election Commissioners is comprised of Republicans Gov. Tate Reeves, Secretary of State Michael Watson and Attorney General Lynn Fitch. Of the plan lawmakers submitted to the court last week, the House would have five amended districts in Northeast Mississippi, and the Senate would have 10 impacted districts with the creation of two new Black-Majority districts in DeSoto County and in the Hattiesburg area. Redistricting plan: House, Senate pass redistricting plan for 15 districts. See whose seat is up for election The NAACP isn't the only group upset with the plan. The DeSoto County Board of Supervisors has also put out a statement that it is seeking outside counsel to challenge the Legislature's redistricting plan. "In light of the potential adverse impact upon our county and its citizens created by the Mississippi Senate's proposed redistricting plan, the DeSoto County Board of Supervisors has retained outside legal counsel to explore all legal remedies available to it in order to contest the Senate plan on behalf of the voters of DeSoto County," the statement reads. As for challenges inside the legislature, both Desoto County lawmakers and House and Senate Democrats have opposed the Legislature's redistricting plan. Senate Pro Tempore and Rules Commitee chairman Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, who handled the Senate's redistricting plan, said he was disappointed the NAACP filed a motion challenging the plan, but he strongly reiterated that the Legislature complied with the federal court order. "Our map complies with the court order," Kirby said. "We did everything they asked. I was disappointed they filed the lawsuit to begin with when every legislator, every (Senate) Democrat, was happy with the (2022) map." Grant McLaughlin covers the Legislature and state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@ or 972-571-2335. This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: NAACP opposing legislature's redistricting plan
Boston Globe
23-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The death of competition in American elections
Instead, they were effectively elected through low-turnout or otherwise meaningless primary contests. Vanishingly few voters cast a ballot in those races, according to a New York Times analysis of more than 9,000 congressional and state legislative primary elections held last year. On average, just 57,000 people voted for politicians in US House primaries who went on to win the general election — a small fraction of the more than 700,000 Americans each of those winners now represents. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Increasingly, members of Congress are not even facing primary challenges. About one-third of current House members ran unopposed in their primaries. All but 12 of those districts were 'safe' seats, meaning 124 House members essentially faced no challenge to their election. Advertisement The absence of primaries is even more striking in state legislatures. More than three-quarters of those primary races in 2024 were uncontested, according to voting data from the Associated Press. Lawmakers who do face primaries are often left beholden to a small number of ideologically aligned, fiercely partisan voters — a group all too willing to drag elected representatives to the fringes and to punish them for compromise with the other side. 'Most members of both parties, liberal and conservative, they're more worried about losing their primary than losing the general election,' said Haley Barbour, a onetime aide to President Ronald Reagan and a former chair of the Republican National Committee. Competition has been on the decline in elections for both Congress and state legislatures over the past century, according to academic studies. But the meager number of competitive elections in 2024 points to a problem that may be growing worse. This reality has helped Trump expand his ranks of loyal lawmakers in Congress and crush nearly all dissent in his party. In recent months, he and his allies have repeatedly wielded the threat of primary challenges to keep Republican lawmakers toeing the Trump line on such issues as federal funding and the president's Cabinet nominations. Advertisement But the fear of a primary challenge can also twist local politics, where state power brokers and well-funded interest groups can push lawmakers to take broadly unpopular positions. For example, in Idaho, where just four of 105 state legislative races were competitive in November, lawmakers declined for six years to consider expanding access to Medicaid. When the issue finally got on the ballot in 2018, 6 in 10 voters endorsed it. The lack of competition in elections has contributed to Americans' cratering trust in government. A recent Times/Ipsos poll found that 88 percent of adults believed the political system was broken and that 72 percent saw the government as mostly for elites. Just 25 percent viewed government as mostly working for the good of the country. 'They've lost track of their voters,' Rory Duncan, 65, a Republican and a retired military veteran from Washington County, Md., said of his local government. 'They've gerrymandered everything. We used to have a Republican, but they've gerrymandered it so much that there's no way a Republican can get elected.' Far fewer Americans vote in primaries than in general elections. Last year, roughly 30 million voters cast a primary ballot in a congressional election (that figure does not include Louisiana, which has a unique primary method). The total turnout in the general election was more than 156 million. Uncontested and low-turnout primaries plague both red and blue states. In Georgia, a battleground controlled largely by Republicans, 10 of the state's 14 members of the US House did not face a primary challenge. In deep-blue New York, 21 of the state's 26 House members ran unopposed in their primary. Advertisement Incumbency still gives politicians a huge advantage come election season. But incumbents are increasingly tempting targets for primary challenges because those races are largely ignored — making it easier to mount an outsider campaign that targets a few faithful voters. Of the 59 House members who have lost reelection contests since 2020, nearly half — 28 — were defeated in primaries. In state legislatures, more incumbent lawmakers lost reelection in the primaries than in the general election last year, according to the political database Ballotpedia. 'One thing incumbents worry about is that it's pretty easy for someone who doesn't like you to pull together a super PAC and get money,' said Robert G. Boatright, an elections scholar at Clark University, in Worcester, who in 2013 literally wrote the book on congressional primaries. Two decades ago, Boatright said, incumbents lost primaries because of scandal, age, or national issues that overrode local loyalties. Today, they are felled by ideological opponents or issue-oriented interest groups often backed by wealthy patrons or legions of small donors with few ties to the races they are financing. For much of the 2010s, one of the most powerful forces in Texas politics was a group called Empower Texans, the political project of a handful of oil-and-gas billionaires. The group's political action committee poured millions into replacing more moderate Texas Republican politicians with social conservatives, generally by backing insurgents in primary races. Though the group's track record was spotty, Texas politics today is dominated by right-wing leaders, including Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who were early beneficiaries of its millions. Advertisement On the left, groups such as Justice Democrats have had an outsize impact by almost exclusively backing more progressive working-class candidates against more traditional Democrats in a relative handful of carefully chosen primary contests. The group's first slate of candidates in 2018, funded largely with small contributions from donors nationwide, included Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist who ousted a 10-term incumbent in that year's primary and who has since become one of the most prominent House Democrats. This article originally appeared in
New York Times
23-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Death of Competition in American Elections
President Trump's return to Washington has tested the bounds of presidential power and set off alarms among Democrats, historians and legal scholars who are warning that the country's democratic order is under threat. But a close review of the 2024 election shows just how undemocratic the country's legislative bodies already are. After decades of gerrymandering and political polarization, a vast majority of members of Congress and state legislatures did not face competitive general elections last year. Instead, they were effectively elected through low-turnout or otherwise meaningless primary contests. Vanishingly few voters cast a ballot in those races, according to a New York Times analysis of more than 9,000 congressional and state legislative primary elections held last year. On average, just 57,000 people voted for politicians in U.S. House primaries who went on to win the general election — a small fraction of the more than 700,000 Americans each of those winners now represents. Increasingly, members of Congress are not even facing primary challenges. About a third of the current members of the House ran unopposed in their primary. All but 12 of those districts were 'safe' seats, meaning 124 House members essentially faced no challenge to their election. The absence of primaries is even more striking in state legislatures. More than three-quarters of those primary races in 2024 were uncontested, according to voting data from The Associated Press. Lawmakers who do face primaries are often left beholden to a small number of ideologically aligned, fiercely partisan voters — a group all too willing to drag elected representatives to the fringes and to punish them for compromise with the other side. 'Most members of both parties, liberal and conservative, they're more worried about losing their primary than losing the general election,' said Haley Barbour, a onetime aide to President Ronald Reagan and a former chair of the Republican National Committee. Competition has been on the decline in elections for both Congress and state legislatures over the past century, according to academic studies. But the meager number of competitive elections in 2024 points to a problem that is far from being fixed, and may be growing worse. This reality has helped Mr. Trump expand his ranks of loyal lawmakers in Congress and crush nearly all dissent in his party. In recent months, he and his allies have repeatedly wielded the threat of primary challenges to keep Republican lawmakers toeing the Trump line on issues like federal funding and the president's cabinet nominations. But the fear of a primary challenge can also twist local politics, where state power brokers and well-funded interest groups can push lawmakers to take broadly unpopular positions. For example, in Idaho, where just four out of 105 state legislative races were competitive in November, lawmakers declined for six years to consider expanding access to Medicaid. When the issue finally got on the ballot in 2018, six in 10 voters endorsed it. The lack of competition in elections has contributed to Americans' cratering trust in government. A recent Times/Ipsos poll found that 88 percent of adults believed the political system was broken and that 72 percent saw the government as mostly for elites. Just 25 percent viewed government as mostly working for the good of the country. 'They've lost track of their voters,' Rory Duncan, 65, a Republican and a retired military veteran from Washington County, Md., said of his local government. 'They've gerrymandered everything. We used to have a Republican, but they've gerrymandered it so much that there's no way a Republican can get elected.' 'More extreme candidates are winning' Far fewer Americans vote in primaries than in general elections. Last year, roughly 30 million voters cast a primary ballot in a congressional election (that figure does not include Louisiana, which has a unique primary method). The total turnout in the general election was more than 156 million. Uncontested and low-turnout primaries plague both red and blue states. In Georgia, a battleground controlled largely by Republicans, 10 of the state's 14 members of the U.S. House did not face a primary challenge. In deep-blue New York, 21 of the state's 26 House members ran unopposed in their primary. Incumbency still gives politicians a huge advantage come election season. But incumbents are increasingly tempting targets for primary challenges because those races are largely ignored — making it easier to mount an outsider campaign that targets a few faithful voters. Of the 59 House members who have lost re-election contests since 2020, nearly half — 28 — were defeated in primaries. In state legislatures, more incumbent lawmakers lost re-election in the primaries than in the general election last year, according to the political database Ballotpedia. 'One thing incumbents worry about is that it's pretty easy for someone who doesn't like you to pull together a super PAC and get money,' said Robert G. Boatright, an elections scholar at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., who in 2013 literally wrote the book on congressional primaries. Two decades ago, Mr. Boatright said, incumbents lost primaries because of scandal, age or national issues that overrode local loyalties. Today, they are felled by ideological opponents or issue-oriented interest groups often backed by wealthy patrons or legions of small donors with few ties to the races they are financing. For much of the 2010s, one of the most powerful forces in Texas politics was a group called Empower Texans, the political project of a handful of oil-and-gas billionaires. The group's political action committee poured millions into replacing more moderate Texas Republican politicians with social conservatives, generally by backing insurgents in primary races. Though the group's track record was spotty, Texas politics today is dominated by right-wing leaders, like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who were early beneficiaries of its millions. On the left, groups like Justice Democrats have had an outsize impact by almost exclusively backing more progressive working-class candidates against more traditional Democrats in a relative handful of carefully chosen primary contests. The group's first slate of candidates in 2018, funded largely with small contributions from donors nationwide, included Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist who ousted a 10-term incumbent in that year's primary and who has since become one of the most prominent House Democrats. While the Justice Democrats believe they are pushing the party's centrist policies to the left, extremism is not simply a matter of liberals versus conservatives, according to the group's communications director, Usamah Andrabi. 'Our primaries are not left versus right. They're bottom versus top,' he said. 'If we have to scare corporate politicians into fighting for working people, then they should be scared.' Nevertheless, Steven Rogers, an expert on state politics at Saint Louis University, in Missouri, said politicians who edged closer to the political fringes were less likely to face primary challenges. 'It's becoming increasingly clear that over time, more extreme candidates are winning at both state legislative and congressional levels,' he said. A mirage of meaningfulness Even contested primary elections can sometimes be a mirage, offering little threat to an incumbent or to the candidate in a state's dominant party. Michael Podhorzer, a strategist and the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., recently analyzed election data to determine how many state legislative primaries last year were competitive and 'meaningful' — decided by 10 percentage points or fewer, and with the winner prevailing in the general election. He found that in the 35 states that held elections for both state legislative chambers last year, just 287 of more than 4,600 primaries met that definition. That leaves many voters without real representation: The districts that did not have meaningful primaries or general elections last year have roughly 158 million citizens, Mr. Podhorzer said, while those with meaningful primaries have only about 10 million. Experts are quick to point out that beyond gerrymandering, the political 'sorting' of like-minded voters moving into the same communities has exacerbated the lack of competition. Linda Sacripanti, 58, a Democrat who lives in the deep-red northern panhandle of West Virginia, has experienced both of these political realities. Participating in primary elections, she says, simply means that 'I have some choice in which Democrat is going to lose.' But for roughly 20 years, Ms. Sacripanti, who works in sales, lived in North Carolina, near Charlotte. She recalled voting for Jeff Jackson in Democratic state legislative primaries, when Mr. Jackson represented a deeply blue district in the State Senate. He parlayed that into a run for Congress in 2022, winning a similarly blue seat by 18 points. 'Charlotte itself is pretty, pretty blue, so my vote had even more weight during the primaries,' Ms. Sacripanti said. 'So I do think that it mattered.' In early 2024, Republicans in North Carolina won a legal challenge that allowed them to redraw the congressional and state legislative maps, wiping away Mr. Jackson's district and effectively forcing him to resign (he is now the state's attorney general). Last year, only 10 of the state's 170 legislative seats had a meaningful primary, including just a single State Senate seat out of 50, according to data from Mr. Podhorzer. 'It was just, 'Change up the districts and get him the heck out of there,'' Ms. Sacripanti said. 'When you look up 'gerrymander' in the dictionary, it goes right to North Carolina.'
