JACKSON - In the wake of the Republican mini-earthquake that hit the state Nov. 4, not just a few Democrats were wondering if their party can survive in Mississippi.
That question arose after Kirk Fordice sent shock waves through Democrats in 1991, and some said it heralded a mass conversion to the state GOP in the '90s. It didn't happen.
Republicans got a momentary uptick, but by the end of the decade, Mississippi Democrats, unlike those in several other Southern states, still had a decided majority in the Legislature and held virtually all state offices.
In the just-ended 2003 campaign, flashing the old race card through symbols and code words, state Republicans captured the two top state offices and won a tarnished race for state treasurer.
However, the GOP juggernaut came to a grinding halt at the Legislature's doorstep, where Democrats demonstrated they were still alive and well.
State Republican Party chief Jim Herring had made the Legislature his prized goal. He wanted what he called Republican "parity" with Democrats in the state House, and openly predicted a GOP majority in the 52-member Senate.
Rather than strengthening the hand of newly anointed Republican Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, as Herring expected, the GOP actually lost ground to the Democrats in the Senate.
Senate Dems were assured last week of having a 29-23 edge and it could grow to 30-22, when a winner is decided in a razor-thin Hinds County race where an entire precinct was uncounted due to an election official's gaffe.
Republicans did gain six seats in the House for a total of 46, making them a significant player in that chamber.
Moving quickly two days after the Nov. 4 election, House Democrats, however, pulled off a coup by strategically rallying more than enough members at the Capitol, including more than a dozen Republicans, to guarantee Democratic Rep. Billy McCoy of Rienzi will be the next speaker.
Their unprecedented assembling of new and old members behind McCoy headed off a clandestine attempt by Republican Governor-elect Haley Barbour's forces, aided and abetted by several major lobby groups, to pressure GOP lawmakers to try and stop McCoy's speakership bid.
Word got out that many of the 46 Republicans who won seats in the 2004 House were being summoned to a Barbour suite at the Clarion Hotel in downtown Jackson to oppose McCoy for the speaker's job.
Evidently a number of the House GOPers did not yield to the pressure and either showed up in person or gave written assurance they would back McCoy.
Noted for his independence from the seductive influences of the powerful Capitol lobby corps, McCoy had been targeted by two major lobbies, the Mississippi Medical Association and BIPEC, the business-industry lobby, in his re-election to his House District 3 seat.
GOP Chairman Herring had admitted to this column last spring that he personally recruited Dr. George A. Waddell to run against McCoy. Later the medical association, joined by the business-industry lobby and other groups, poured money into Waddell's losing campaign.
When McCoy made his "victory" statement in the Capitol rotunda last week, he produced a list of 114 of the House's 122 members he said were committed to him for speaker when the 2004 House convenes in January.
Some McCoy allies say the 24-year veteran lawmaker from the rugged hill country of Northeast Mississippi is "too much of a Christian" to retaliate against the organizations who sought to defeat him.
Others, however, recalling a no-nonsense McCoy could sometimes become a pit bull in rough and tumble legislative battles, contend he has a "long memory."
The juxtaposition of McCoy, the blue-collar farming guy out of the Northeast hills against Barbour, the lawyer-aristocrat with the honeyed drawl from the Delta, will prove a fascinating match-up.
Certainly Barbour, who in the 1980s was a congressional liaison for the Reagan White House, won't find dealing with McCoy anything like dealing with bulbous Democrat Tip O'Neill of Massachusetts, then the U.S. House speaker.
For sure, Barbour will soon learn that the highly independent Mississippi House and its powerful speakership don't abide gubernatorial tinkering.
Nevertheless, in his remarks last week at the Capitol gathering of House members for his "crowning" as the next speaker, McCoy sounded a conciliatory tone, saying simply that he "looked forward to" working with the new governor-elect, as well as Republican Lt. Gov.-elect Amy Tuck.
Although they have a solid edge, Senate Democrats last week didn't seem inclined to force a showdown vote over allowing Tuck to keep her closest ally, Republican Sen. Travis Little of Corinth, as Senate president pro-tem.
Biloxi Sen. Tommy Gollott, who had been booted from the pro-tem job by Tuck four years ago, has a number of senators still committed to him to win back the spot, but sources near him say thus far he has made no move to challenge Little.
