JACKSON - A preview of Ronnie Musgrove's strategy to battle the money-loaded GOP juggernaut and its heavyweight driver, Haley Barbour, in this year's gubernatorial battle:
The home boy who's been frugally minding the store during lean times and still giving the folks better education versus the ex-Yazoo City lawyer who made it big in Washington by looking after special interests.
Down in the polls and at this point considered to have less than a 50-50 chance to win in November, Musgrove is seeking to do what only one other Mississippi governor has done: become elected to a second term.
Mississippi has a way of going negative on re-hiring politicians, or football coaches, of whom they have tired, or who are perceived to have lost their effectiveness.
Musgrove has had a healthy serving of down-side publicity, not the least of which was his seeming indecisiveness about seeking re-election and his bungled last-minute attempt to be named president of Delta State University.
Many in his political camp also believe he has not gotten enough credit in the public's mind for landing, after previous failures, Mississippi's first automobile manufacturer, the 4000-worker Nissan plant.
But those who discount the political skills of the perpetual-motion Musgrove, the Legislature a prime example, do so at their own risk.
Anxious to get home, lawmakers were about to walk away last week from the three-month 2003 session with a $3.6 billion general fund budget funded by smoke and mirrors that raided agency special funds and the rainy-day fund. Worst of all, they had wiped out the 2 percent appropriation set-aside doctrine so proudly installed in the 1990s.
Suddenly, with his veto pen, Musgrove winged in a curve ball that cut down House Bill 1036, the lawmakers' operative bill of their smoke-and-mirrors funding plan, and forced session-end partying to be put on hold.
Cussing and blaming Musgrove for having put them in this fix by his omnibus - kindergarten through college - education package early in the session, angry legislators thought they had enough votes to override his veto.
But they were stunned when the first override floor attempt not only failed to get the needed two-thirds, but fell 25 votes short of a simple majority.
So back to the drawing board lawmakers went, crafting a compromise funding idea Musgrove would sign off on. Musgrove may have not come out a clear winner in the end, but he got his message across that he couldn't be left out of the loop, and the Legislature blinked.
For anyone keeping score the last two years as the state was beset, along with the nation, with an economic downturn, Musgrove has been right and legislative budgeters wrong in estimating the amount of revenue the state would collect for the state general fund.
Both years lawmakers appropriated more money than revenue collected, putting the burden on Musgrove to cut agency appropriations by some $200 million.
This column said back in 2001 it was wholly unrealistic for the Legislature not to make an upward adjustment in some tax rates to put more money into the general fund revenue stream to ward off cuts into the muscle of key state services and the kind of patchwork financing we've seen.
Now, with this year an election year, lawmakers are scared of even a whiff of a tax increase. They even lacked the courage to increase the tax on cigarettes, which dozens of other states, also beset with budget deficits, have already done, some as high as 50 cents a pack.
As they march back to the campaign hustings, however, legislators have already sounded the alarm that next year a tax increase is inevitable.
Musgrove must also be faulted for not tackling head-on the need for some tax increases and joining the anti-tobacco tax chorus this session.
In a sit-down interview with this writer last week, Musgrove insisted he will not alter his anti-tax stance in the upcoming campaign, apparently aware that his probable Republican foe, Haley Barbour, has already indicated he will stake out typically sacred GOP turf against taxes.
"My position is that you can be fiscally responsible and finance agencies based on priorities, and do that before you look at any alternatives (such as new taxes)," Musgrove declared.
From his perspective, how does Musgrove view a probable race with Barbour?
"He's (Barbour) been in Washington solving problems for special interests," Musgrove said, "while we've been solving problems in Mississippi.
"There will be time to draw a dramatic comparison between me and my opponent."
Musgrove's divorce from his wife Melanie just a year after he went into office as governor in 1992 hasn't hampered his ability to govern, Musgrove says, and he hopes it will not be made an issue "by the other side" in the upcoming campaign.
Just a few years out of Ole Miss Law School, Barbour in the early 1970s became a state GOP activist and was made chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party. He was first yanked up to Washington in the mid-1980s as a White House staffer for President Reagan.
Then, as Republican National Committee chairman in the mid-1990s, he helped oversee the GOP "Contract with America" congressional sweep, later parlaying his know-how around Capitol Hill into becoming the highest-paid lobbyist in D.C.
One political fact of life both friends and foes of Musgrove have discovered about the former country lawyer for Batesville: He is a constantly moving target who gets by with only five hours sleep (or less). Even when seemingly overmatched, you can't count him out.
