Mitchell: ‘Last (White) Democrat in Dixie’ Still Chugging Along

Former Gov. Haley Barbour, whose pristine pedigree in Republican America is unmatched, inspired a headline a few of weeks ago with a speech on Mike Espy Scholars Day at Jackson’s historically black Tougaloo College. Mississippi, Barbour said, would benefit from two “salt and pepper” political parties.

Former U.S. Rep. Mike Espy, a Democrat who is African-American, was in the audience. Espy endorsed Barbour for a second term in 2007 and endorsed the speech at Tougaloo.

It’s just not healthy to have, as Mississippi does, a Democratic Party with which 95 percent of blacks and a smattering of whites identify and a Republican Party with which 95 percent of whites and a smattering of blacks identify.

Politics should be idea-driven, not identity-driven, both said. Ideas, at least in the abstract, are race-neutral.

There’s no better illustration of being idea-driven than Jim Hood. Two years go, Governing magazine dubbed him the “last Democrat in Dixie,” a reference to all other statewide offices, majorities of the state House and Senate seats, three of the state’s four seats in the U.S. House and both U.S. Senate seats being held by Republicans.

Hood, who is seeking a fourth term in November, is a Bible-believing, pistol-toting, deer-hunting, drawl-speaking 52-year-old from New Houlka, population now steady at 611. Governing noted that Hood wears his hair “Conway Twitty” style, which is in more line with Republican Gov. Phil Bryant than the rakish styles of modern, “with it” barristers.

It’s no surprise that a former district attorney who became the state’s top attorney is a sincere prosecutor. Hood has been relentless against cybercrime, child pornographers and their customers. He has worked diligently and effectively to combat domestic violence.

But while he packs a 9 mm and shares much with conservatives, Hood parts ways, too:

• He interceded when a gay couple was denied permission to rent a state facility for their commitment ceremony. (The planned use was not against state law, he said. Mississippi doesn’t license same-sex marriage, he reasoned, but the couple wasn’t seeking the state’s building, not its blessing.)

• He, along with Republican state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, tried to prevail upon Bryant that fighting against the Medicaid eligibility expansion in the Affordable Care Act was not in the state’s best interest.

• Earlier in his tenure, he was aggressive in pursuing “cold case” files from the Civil Rights Era, winning in 2005 a conviction of Edgar Ray Killen in the 1964 Neshoba County triple homicide. (Much of white Mississippi would be happier if the past remained in the past.)

• And while a lot of Mississippians profess disdain for “ambulance-chasing” lawyers,

Jim Hood has become known nationally and internationally for empowering private lawyers to sue the pants off corporations.

It was former Attorney General Mike Moore who started this ball rolling by suing Big Tobacco in 1994. The result was a 25-year payout to total at least $4.1 billion that was to create a “trust” to invest in health care. The Legislature soon decided to spend as opposed to invest, but the revenue stream continues and adds tens of millions to the state treasury every year.

Hood has OK’d similar suits. Often, he attracts sniffs of disdain when deals are made with private lawyers to sue drug companies or to haul investment firms suspected of fraud into court. Hood has sued Entergy, Google and just about every insurance company known to mankind.

Hood’s newest case is another against State Farm, which professed “surprise” and believed that all its liability stemming from Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago had been resolved.

Not so, the new lawsuit says. Mississippi taxpayers gave a lot of money to property owners. That money should have come from their insurance policies, the suit says. So justice demands State Farm reimburse the public treasury.

Private lawyers pitch their ideas about who should be sued to Hood, who chooses whether to allow them to use the state’s name. The lawyers stand to walk away wealthy, or with nothing. The state has banked more than $500 million from Hood’s cases, so outrage among conservatives in the Legislature has been, well, muted.

Hood will have a Republican opponent on the November ballot. Veteran former Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst, who lives in Madison, will challenge the incumbent. Hurst is certainly a competent and compelling adversary.

But the fact that Hood’s tenure has been about ideas as opposed to following a scripted party line has kept this lonely Democrat in good stead with voters in one of the reddest of red states.

Too bad that’s not contagious.

Charlie Mitchell is a Mississippi journalist and assistant dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media. Write to him at cmitchell43@yahoo.com.