JACKSON — When he won the Mississippi governorship in 1999, Ronnie Musgrove was regarded nationally as a breakthrough Democrat in Southern politics, which for a decade had been trending Republican and electing GOP governors. In fact, Musgrove had ended an eight-year Republican grip on the Mississippi governor’s office.
Now, nine years later, Musgrove is out to stage another breakthrough, this time to reclaim for Democrats one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats which for almost a century had been a Democratic fiefdom. Since 1978, however, one or both Senate seats have been in Republican hands.
In the Nov. 4 special election, Musgrove could ride the crest of a Democratic resurgence across the South brought about by an immensely unpopular Republican president who has presided over a sagging economy and launched a seemingly endless and pointless war in the sands of Iraq.
And fortunately for Musgrove, Roger Wicker, his Senate opponent, is more or less only a Republican seat-warmer, accidentally finding himself in the job as the result of a bumbling game of musical chairs orchestrated by GOP Gov. Haley Barbour, the supposed political mastermind.
The surprise resignation of Sen. Trent Lott in December, only one year into his fourth term, had triggered Barbour’s switch in the state’s congressional lineup, which found Wicker yanked from his 1st District House seat and put into Lott’s vacant chair. Subsequently, Democrat Travis Childers has won a special election to succeed Wicker.
Republicans generally were unhappy about Barbour’s choice of Wicker to occupy the Lott seat, believing Wicker a weak candidate, especially on the GOP’s anti-tax anthem. As a state senator in 1992, Wicker voted to raise the state sales tax from 6 to 7 cents (groceries included) and later joined in overriding Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice’s veto.
A Wicker-Musgrove face-off for the U.S. Senate seat has an odd back story. They served together in the state Senate in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and were good friends and roommates while in Jackson during legislative sessions. On different career tracks, Wicker was elected to Congress in 1994, and Musgrove was elected lieutenant governor in 1995, and then governor in 1999. Barbour unseated him in 2003.
Despite pro-Wicker opinion pieces that paint Musgrove as a fiscally irresponsible governor, Wicker can hardly make a case against Musgrove as a typical “tax and spend” Democrat. In fact, the rap against Musgrove in my book is that he refused to raise some taxes during the steep 2003 state revenue downturn that hit Mississippi along with other states amid the nationwide recession. In neighboring Arkansas, Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee (remember his presidential run?) tackled his state’s revenue shortfall that year by raising several taxes, including a surtax on the state income tax.
Though faced with funding the third installment of the six-year $380 million teacher pay raise passed in 2000, as well as $300 million to fund federally authorized expansions of Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance) coverage, Musgrove remained adamant against increasing taxes. Instead, he pushed the 2003 Legislature to patch together a balanced budget by deep cuts in all programs except education and by scrounging money from “rainy day” and other one-time funds.
Many forget that Musgrove, in an unprecedented move, had vetoed 45 over-budget appropriation bills sent to him as the 2001 Legislature ended. What happened? Both legislative branches (including most Republicans) promptly voted to override the vetoes and went home, leaving Musgrove to make mid-year budget cuts.
The National Journal’s 1996 “Almanac of American Politics” in its sketch on Rep. Roger F. Wicker said that Wicker’s selection as unofficial chairman of the 73-member 1994 Republican freshman class gave the Mississippian “an opportunity to step out from the crowd both within the House and in the national spotlight.” However, subsequent editions of the Almanac make no mention of Wicker having “stepped out from the crowd” or rising in the leadership ranks of the Republican Party during the GOP’s 12-year House reign.
Remember when Wicker was first elected to the House in 1994 as part of the GOP’s “Contract With America”? One provision in the “Contract” was a term-limit pledge not to serve more than four terms in the House. In his second year in Congress, Wicker broke that pledge, voting against a term limit constitutional amendment.
In his current TV attack ads, Wicker lambastes Musgrove’s governorship and says that Musgrove’s “ethical conduct was an embarrassment to the state.” Asked by a reporter for Jackson TV station WAPT what “ethical conduct” he was talking about, Wicker sputtered that he “wasn’t sure,” and that “I’m not familiar with that part of the commercial.” Yet, at the opening of the TV spot he says, “I’m Roger Wicker and I approve this message.”
Certainly he couldn’t have meant Musgrove’s no-fault divorce in 2001 from his wife of 24 years. Not in the same league with Kirk’s “Fordice follies!”
