Attorney Vicki Slater says she has spent her career serving as an advocate for others, and she wants to do the same as Mississippi’s governor.
“The state’s never going to rise above 50th until the people of the state do, because that’s what we measure to determine if the state’s 50th or not,” she said Wednesday during a visit to the Commonwealth. She later spoke at a meeting of the Greenwood Voters League.
Slater, 58, a resident of Madison, is running as a Democrat for governor. It is her first campaign for public office.
She is opposed in the primary by Valerie Short, a Ridgeland physician, and Robert Gray, a retired firefighter from Jackson.
Slater was born and raised in Jackson. She went on to Hinds Community College and then attended the University of Southern Mississippi before marrying and leaving to work as a paralegal. After about 10 years in that field, she went to Tulane University to complete her bachelor’s degree and then a law degree. She has practiced law since 1993 and started her own firm in 1999, representing mostly plaintiffs over the years.
Slater said Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, whom she is hoping to unseat, has failed the people by not supporting the full funding of education or Medicaid expansion.
More than 200,000 people signed a petition in favor of forcing the Legislature to fund education fully, but Bryant has fought it, Slater said. She said she favors the initiative, which will also be on the November ballot, but didn’t sign the petition only because she was never presented it.
Legislators have been required by statute for years to fund education adequately but have ignored it, and “when the people in government are refusing to follow the law, that’s failed leadership,” she said.
“We’re not asking for a fully funded superb education; we’re saying a fully funded adequate education,” she said.
Regarding Medicaid, she said Mississippi leaders’ decision to refuse federal funding for expansion has hurt the state’s residents and sent needed money to other states.
“Other Republican states have accepted the Medicaid expansion money, and I think it’s wrong to play political games with that,” she said. “The expansion is meant for working Mississippians.”
She said that in 2017, states that accept the Medicaid expansion will be able to tailor the funding to their needs. However, she said, Mississippi’s leaders haven’t been able to discuss how the money would be used because they turned it down.
“It’s not a slush fund that should be played with like it’s Monopoly money,” she said. “It’s money that can save lives. Why not save lives here?”
Republicans have argued that the federal government would get the state hooked on federal money and then cut back the generous funding provided by the Affordable Care Act and leave the state with a huge tab. Slater called that argument “insincere.”
“All you ever hear out of D.C. is ‘Repeal it, repeal it, repeal it.’ ... Go ask them right now if they’re in favor of repealing it or not,” she said. “They want to pull that rug out from under everybody. They have devoted their lives to it.”
Slater said that contrary to what Bryant has claimed, the state’s economy hasn’t improved on his watch. She said that according to studies she has seen, the state has either sustained a net loss of jobs or just broken even since the economic collapse of 2008.
Requiring adequate education funding and expanding Medicaid would help bring jobs to the state, she said. Also, she would like to see a program to make it easier for small start-up businesses.
Slater said that if elected, she would oppose any efforts to expand the lawsuit limits enacted during the administrations of former Govs. Ronnie Musgrove and Haley Barbour. She said she would not push to roll back those tort reforms — which capped noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, and imposed restrictions on where lawsuits can be filed to combat alleged “venue shopping” — but would go along if legislators wanted to do so.
She said tort reform infringes on people’s right to sue and to have a jury trial — something she said is good to have even if a person never needs it. Comparing it to the Second Amendment right to bear arms, she said, “You can have that gun in your nightstand, and you might live your whole life and never use it. But if you hear somebody breaking in your house in the middle of the night, you’re going to be glad you held on to that right.”
Despite the Republicans’ dominance in the state in recent years, Slater said she believes voters are more independent.
“I don’t believe that Mississippi is as red as everybody thinks it is,” she said.
As for the prospect of being Mississippi’s first female governor, she said, “I think that Mississippi needs a good human being as a governor, and I think that I’m the right person for the job. But I think that it would be an honor to be the first woman governor, and I think that women need a voice in government.”
• Contact David Monroe at 581-7236 or dmonroe@gwcommonwealth.com.
