JACKSON - All those years when my writing was zinging longtime Republican powerhouse and bankroller Billy Mounger, I never realized I was furnishing so much material for his memoir that he entitles "Amidst the Fray."
Before getting into how the 80-year-old Mounger portrays himself in Mississippi politics and culture - with heavy-duty collaboration by journalist Joseph Maxwell, Jr. - what struck me was that Mounger, who always professed to dismiss me as an impossible liberal, must have saved every line I wrote about him the last 45 years.
The piece de resistance of all is the letter Mounger wrote to my editor at The New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1976 (with a copy to me) saying that "if Bill Minor moved one millimeter to the left, he would topple over the inside of the Kremlin wall."
Mounger, who always considered himself something of a wordsmith, was so proud of that letter that he reproduces it in his book, along with the column I had written in the Times-Picayune in 1976 that prompted his epistle.
The column related how Mounger went ballistic when Gil Carmichael, the GOP moderate from Meridian, received a nomination at the state GOP convention for vice-chairman of the state party delegation to the 1976 Republican National Convention, a spot Mounger, as finance chairman, considered his unchallenged province.
Carmichael had narrowly lost the governorship race the year before in the strongest GOP bid for high state office in a century with lukewarm backing from Mounger, a Jackson oil man and banker, who didn't like Carmichael's progressive ideas, especially one to make the petroleum industry pay more taxes.
Mounger's split with Carmichael hardened later at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, when Mounger's forces, seeking to hand the state's presidential delegate votes to Ronald Reagan rather than President Gerald Ford, lost by 18 to 16 in a historic caucus showdown.
When Carmichael and state GOP pioneer Clarke Reed, until then a close Mounger ally, swung the Mississippi delegation for Ford, thereafter both became permanent fixtures on Billy's enemies list. Among dozens of Billy's letters which are reprinted in "Fray," one in 1983 details his enemies list, including, of course, Reed and Carmichael, and Thad Cochran as well. Wonder if he feels that way now that Thad is the state's most popular GOP figure?
Mounger turns the maxim of "the buck stops here" on its head. His maxim is the buck STARTS here. Using his fund-raising talent, he bankrolls (his money and others) the guy of his choice. And, as I have long suspected, when Billy buys a politician, he expects him to stay bought. That all comes clear in "Fray."
Incredibly, Billy is deeply involved in the only two instances in Mississippi politics where homosexuality arose as a public issue - the downfall of Mounger protégé, the late U.S. Rep. Jon Hinson, and a failed plot to hang allegations of consorting with transvestites around the neck of Democrat Bill Allain in the 1983 governor's race.
Clearly, Billy was fooled by Hinson, even pushing his re-election in 1980 several months after Hinson was rounded up at a gay hangout near the Iwo Jima monument. But when Hinson was caught by Capitol police in 1981 having sex with a man in a U.S. House office building toilet, Billy joined the chorus for Hinson's head.
The memoir is bound to revive public notice of the sordid details of how Mounger and two other Republican oil men dug up three "Farish Street" black transvestites in the 1983 governor's race to say they had carried on assignations with Allain in his automobile and apartment. Mounger admits he invested $50,000 of his own money (his two fellow oil men likewise) to pay detectives and also compensate the three transvestites for "down time" (what?) while they were stashed out of sight and could not ply their trade.
Mounger voices contempt for The Clarion-Ledger for declining to publish the transvestite story after he brought documentation to them. Later, the story broke anyway when Mounger wheeled out Attorney Bill Spell to go public with it at a news conference. Allain, though hurt by the accusations, still defeated the GOP's Leon Bramlett.
Twenty-three years later, Mounger is obviously not content to let the Allain/transvestite story die. His book reveals that he got writer Maxwell to pursue Allain earlier this year to comment on the episode. Allain declined. Like the Republican elephant, Billy Mounger just never forgets.
The 464-page book, published by Quail Ridge Press of Brandon, deserves more than a review in one article. It needs deeper analysis by political scientists of the many lengthy, highly opinionated letters Mounger, as a major force in building Republicanism in the South and nation, fired off to friend and foe.
By the way, Billy, I still haven't toppled over the Kremlin wall.
