VICKSBURG - Want to walk out on the Capitol steps on a brisk January morning year after next and take the oath as Mississippi's new governor? Want to try for a seat on your local board of supervisors?
If so, get busy.
Although oath-taking day is 400 days or so from today, the door to file qualifying papers for all offices slams shut in a mere 86.
That's right. Over the next 12 weeks, any person who desires to serve as a Mississippi elected official for a four-year term from 2008 to 2012 must obtain, complete and submit petitions to local or state political party officials or local or state elections officials.
Why so far in advance of actual elections?
The very easy and very clear answer is incumbency protection.
Most of the 122 members of the state House of Representatives and 52 members of the state Senate will be running for re-election in 2007. It's within their purview to set the qualifying deadlines. In the late 1980s, term limits was the hot topic. Legislatures across the nation were responding by moving their deadlines up to their earliest points in history. It was a way to inhibit ballot initiatives, such as those calling for votes to put caps on lawmakers' tenure.
Term limits didn't catch on in Mississippi, but state lawmakers still changed all filing deadlines to months earlier, mostly to shield their interests. If they could have rationalized a way to have a March 1 qualifying deadline just for themselves, they might have done so. But they couldn't, so the new deadline applies to all offices - from governor and lieutenant governor down to local sheriffs and constables.
No one talks about term limits much anymore. But the early deadline stuck, and there's little doubt it has dissuaded lots of people from seeking elective office.
It's just not practical for a person willing to serve as an elections commissioner or a circuit clerk or some other local office to actively campaign for more than eight months.
Indeed, the filing deadline will come and go long before many potential candidates - folks who have been thinking about making a try - even realize it's an election year.
Be real. Take a person who has a job. If he or she is any good at it, the boss isn't likely to look fondly on having a candidate on the payroll month after month after month. Knowing he or she plans to leave, depending on how the voting goes, the boss is likely to show the candidate the door. And there are just not that many Mississippians who can go for 10 months (November winners won't take office until January) without a paycheck.
There was a time not too long ago when people considering public service had to make a decision about three months before voters went to the polls. A commitment three times longer is simply harder to make.
Another plus for lawmakers is that the Legislature is still in session when the qualifying deadline passes.
What that means is that every member will know a month before the 2007 regular term ends whether he or she has primary or general election opponents and who those opponents are.
Since the hardest votes are taken in the closing weeks of the session, partnerships can be formed. Just watch. The lead on controversial legislation will be handed to lawmakers who either have no opponents or no serious opponents.
Likewise, if there's a piece of legislation a particular lawmaker is known to favor, but it is unpopular with his or her constituents, the lawmaker will do some counting. If it appears there are enough votes to pass the bill anyway, the lawmaker facing a strong ballot opponent will vote "nay."
The opposite is also true. If, say, a constituent is lobbying hard for a bill the lawmaker opposes, a similar tally can be done. The lawmaker will vote "aye," knowing the legislation will fail - and maintain all-important political cover.
One view would be that this is merely the normal gamesmanship that is part of the lawmaking process. A harsher view would be that this amounts to fraud on voters who are denied the chance to know a legislator's "real" position.
The greater harm, though, has to be at the local level. In addition to dissuading people from undertaking unreasonably long campaigns, once qualifying closes, it closes. Even if a candidate dies March 2, qualifying doesn't reopen. That has created all kinds of strange outcomes - and will create more.
Awareness is the only way to defeat early deadlines. Any who aspire to public office in Mississippi had better head on down to their courthouse. Qualifying starts Jan. 2. Incumbents know that. And they hope you don't.
