Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, speaking to the Greenwood Voters League Wednesday night, not once uttered the name of the man he will face in November's general election.
Instead, the crowd of about 35 people listened as Democratic incumbent Hood lumped his challenger, Republican nominee Al Hopkins, in with every other Republican vying for statewide office on Nov. 6.
“If we do it smart we will win every race in the state of Mississippi on the Democratic ticket,” said Hood, who is in his first term as attorney general. “We need your help in electing Democrats across the board.”
Hood said he was “preaching to the choir” when urging the Voters League to get out and vote but added that Democrats need to garner more votes from younger generations.
“It scares me the people my age who aren't really concentrated on what's happening,” he said, bemoaning what he said was a lack of political interest in the state's 45-and-under population. “But they're beginning to get their heads around it.”
Hood said the war in Iraq has piqued political interest in younger generations.
“There are more working-class people in Mississippi than millionaires,” he said. “If you ain't making $250,000 a year, you're crazy to be voting Republican.”
Hood also criticized Republican officeholders Gov. Haley Barbour and State Auditor Phil Bryant, a candidate for lieutenant governor.
“We've got a governor right now who is the only elected official in the state who won't tell us where he gets his funding,” Hood said, alluding to a blind trust in Barbour has placed personal holdings. Hood said this was part of the “culture of corruption” that Barbour brought back with him from Washington, D.C., where the governor once was a lobbyist.
“If you're a supervisor in Leflore County you've got to tell the public where your money comes from,” Hood said.
Hood also said Bryant's practice of using his office telephone in Jackson to coordinate campaign donations was out of line.
“If he ain't got enough sense to not do that, we don't need him in office,” Hood remarked.
State Rep. Willie Perkins, who was in the audience, complimented Hood for campaigning for Gary Anderson in his bid for state insurance commissioner.
“We haven't had an African American elected to a statewide position since Reconstruction,” Perkins said of Anderson, who ousted longtime Democratic incumbent George Dale in the August primary.
Perkins said that if Hood won his race in November by a landslide and Anderson lost, then “the Democratic Party is not pulling (Anderson) along with it.”
Hood said that he felt Anderson would indeed be the first African American elected to statewide office in a long time. He told Perkins that he would remind party members in Jackson to back Anderson.
Perkins also asked Hood about the push in Mississippi to require voters to show identification.
“There is no way in H-E-double-L that I will vote for voter ID,” said Perkins.
Hood said the tide for voter identification was “an undercurrent from the Jim Crow era.” The biggest problem, Hood said, was not people being turned away at the polls, but absentee ballots being “thrown away.”
“We need to make it fair, but we don't need to exclude everyone,” said Hood.
Later, in response to a question about illegal immigrants, Hood said he doesn't fault those immigrants but rather the companies who hire them. “We're going to start prosecuting the companies who are hiring them, if that's what we've got to do,” Hood said.
