JACKSON - Gary Anderson, the 47-year-old highly respected former state fiscal officer, may well make state political history this year by becoming the first Mississippi black to win a statewide elective office since Reconstruction.
Anderson, who impressed even hardened legislators in handling the grueling job of managing the state's $10 billion budget in the face of the state's worst economic crunch in decades, has emerged as front-runner in a six-candidate race to elect a new state treasurer.
If the Byhalia native, who possesses an impressive dossier in the financial world, wins, he would become the first African-American elected to a statewide constitutional office in modern times.
Gary Anderson stepped down earlier this year as head of the Department of Finance and Administration under Gov. Ronnie Musgrove to make his bid for treasurer in the Aug. 5 Democratic primary.
None of the other two Democrats nor the three Republicans in the treasurer's race can come close to matching Anderson's experience and proven record in large-scale fiscal management, a prime qualification for the job.
Beyond that, what strengthens Anderson's chances is that his appeal has a rare combination of factors in Mississippi politics: a political novice with an unblemished record with support reaching broadly across racial lines, all the way from the white business sector to the black community.
His immediate hurdle is winning the Democratic nomination over a potent challenge from another black contender, onetime Assistant State Treasurer Cindy Ayers Elliott. One other Democrat is a lesser threat.
Elliott, 46, has a following in the black community for having launched the state's only minority-owned bank and, additionally, is backed by some white women political activists.
State Rep. Rob Smith of Richland, though noted for being the last remaining Democratic elective official in Rankin County, has waged a disappointing, underfunded campaign in the treasurer's race.
On the Republican side, young Jackson banker Tate Reeves seems to be the anointed favorite of the state Republican establishment over Wayne Burkes, 73, a well-worn political traveler who most recently held a GOP patronage post in the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington.
State Rep. Andrew Ketchings, a third GOP aspirant for treasurer, has barely shown up on the campaign trail.
Anderson had been a senior vice president of Union Planters Bank, president of his own financial consulting firm, and deputy director of the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
Three years ago he was tapped by Musgrove, his longtime friend and former Northwest Community College colleague, for the state budget officer post.
Musgrove in 2001 vetoed 45 appropriations bills for funding state agencies which he said exceeded his state revenue forecast. Lawmakers promptly overrode the vetoes and went home. Anderson, as fiscal officer, was left with the thankless task of parceling out available funds to agencies.
On his own initiative - a move that brought protests and threatened legal action by some in state government - Anderson directed agencies to spend only 45 percent of their appropriation in the first half of FY2002, with a promise they would be permitted to spend 55 per cent the second half, if revenues improved.
But tax collections continued to dive the rest of the fiscal year. As a consequence, the 5 percent holdback of spending ordered by Anderson proved pivotal, making it possible for Musgrove to avoid making draconian budget cuts.
Anderson's plan, that he called his "allotment strategy," also helped preserve the state's AA bond rating in FY2002, the first of three successive years of national economic downturn in which Musgrove and Anderson battled with the Legislature over lawmakers' too-rosy revenue forecasts.
"Each year when the revenue estimating committee adopted its forecast for the coming fiscal year," Anderson declared, "I was the only one who voted for a more conservative figure."
Anderson's revenue forecasts each time turned out to be more realistic than was the Legislature's. Over three years, as the record shows, Mississippi's general fund revenues sustained a 17 percent drop.
As he seeks to move from state fiscal officer to state treasurer, Anderson is especially proud that while bond ratings of a number of other states have taken a major hit amid the state budget crises nationwide, Mississippi is in no danger of losing its AA rating.
"Eleven states have already had their bond ratings downgraded, and 17 more are on the 'watch list,'" he said. "Neither has happened to us."
The recent article in USA Today which placed Mississippi 47th among the states in fiscal management "was way off the mark," Anderson declared.
"Bond ratings of a number of states that the article ranked above us have either been lowered already or are in danger of being lowered. Bond ratings are an important test of fiscal management."
He added: "Certainly no one else in this treasurer's race has managed a $10 billion budget, and managed it effectively, during a national recession."
Evidently a number of Mississippi bankers have confidence in Anderson's ability and knowledge to be a reliable shepherd of the state treasury, because they have lined up both support and fund-raisers for his campaign.
One problem, he said, is to get his supporters in the banking and business community to vote in the Democratic primary since some want to vote for Haley Barbour in the Republican gubernatorial primary.
"They assure me they'll be with me in the November general election, but to get there, I have to win the Democratic primary," Anderson declared.
