McCOMB - A lot of people view with alarm the attack ads being aired on television by gubernatorial candidates Haley Barbour and Ronnie Musgrove, as well as their propensity to hammer at the same issues in head-to-head debates.
I get tired of seeing the same old thing myself, although some of the ads are entertaining the first dozen times they appear.
And I have long objected to the practice of twisting a person's record out of context to paint a false picture. I'm also offended by the amount of money being spent on the gubernatorial campaign.
But having so far agreed with the campaign critics, I should point out that attack ads, taking things out of context and plain old mudslinging isn't new in Mississippi.
It's more expensive these days, as the well-financed candidates depend more on out-of-state consultants and pollsters than local political operatives in the backrooms of the courthouses.
But campaigning in Mississippi, especially for governor, has always been a pretty tough business.
As a fledgling Jackson reporter in 1959, I was assigned to cover my first statewide political campaign.
Back then all the serious candidates ran as Democrats, and the main three that year were Lt. Gov. Carroll Gartin of Laurel, Ross Barnett of Jackson and District Attorney Charles L. Sullivan of Clarksdale, a late entry into the race.
Barnett, who eventually won, and Gartin were in the second primary runoff, and I covered political rallies and speeches by both of them from Iuka to Biloxi.
By 1959, most voters had television sets, but local coverage and advertising was limited. Hundreds of people in small towns and larger cities would still turn out for a political rally, especially if the candidate was preceded by a gospel quartet or a country band to warm things up at a courthouse square or city park.
Both supporters and opponents would show up to cheer or jeer. I suspect, at times, a candidate would recruit someone to fake being an opponent and make some supposedly derogatory comment to which the speaker would have a ready put-down to the delight of of the majority of the audience.
In more idyllic times, Mississippi politics was more entertaining, but just as dirty.
That year, as in most including now, the candidates tried to discredit their opponents by linking them to someone or something perceived to be unpopular.
J.P. Coleman was governor at the time and had been in some tough scraps with leaders of the Legislature over, among other things, his advocacy of a new state Constitution. Hugh White had preceded Coleman as governor.
Gartin, the lieutenant governor, had the support of both White and Coleman and their political factions.
Barnett repeatedly referred to the three as "Big Daddy (White), Tall Daddy (Coleman) and Little Boy Blue (Gartin.)"
Four years later, after Barnett had brought the state national notoriety with his handling - or mishandling - of the Ole Miss desegregation fiasco, then Lt. Gov. Paul B. Johnson Jr. and Coleman ran against each other, with Johnson winning. The governor couldn't immediately succeed himself then, so Coleman had to sit out four years before running again.
One of Johnson's themes was "Stand Tall with Paul," accompanied by a photograph of Johnson, standing in for Barnett, turning away federal marshals and James Meredith (only temporarily) at Ole Miss.
Coleman, who tried to trumpet his own record as a segregationist, was pilloried for, among other things, having let John F. Kennedy sleep in Bilbo's bed at the governor's mansion when Kennedy, by 1963 tremendously unpopular among Mississippi voters because of desegregation, was running for president. Remember, not many voters were black back then.
Speaking of Theodore G. Bilbo, the fiery populist who was a major player on the Mississippi political scene between the two world wars and shortly after the second, he was once pistol- whipped for attacking the character of an opponent.
And Paul B. Johnson Sr., who preceded his son in the governor's office by about two decades, once beat Jackson Daily News editor Fred Sullins with his walking cane for something Sullins had written about him.
In more recent times, Bill Allain, the attorney general who successfully ran for governor in 1983, had to overcome during the campaign allegations of homosexuality.
Barbour and Musgrove may be slinging mud. But it's pretty mild stuff compared to much of that in the past, even if it is costing a lot more to spread.
