STARKVILLE — Mississippi voters have seen their share of the eccentricities of the 2016 presidential campaign, and they have been plugged into the long national nightmare of watching voters struggle to make a choice between two candidates whom the majority of Americans just don’t like — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Trump has been far more visible in Mississippi during the campaign and is almost certain to carry this state’s popular vote and the six electoral votes that go with winning the popular vote.
But for Mississippi voters, the most significant impact of what happens in the country on Tuesday isn’t the decision the voters render in the presidential race — or at least not directly.
It is how the election impacts control of the U.S. Senate that will be perhaps most impactful for the people of our state. Succinctly, if Republicans continue to control the U.S. Senate, then Mississippi’s Thad Cochran will continue to serve as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
If Democrats control the U.S. Senate, that key leadership post will go to a Democratic senator from another state — many prognosticate that the chairmanship would go to Dick Durbin of Illinois.
After one of the nastiest campaigns in Mississippi history in 2014, Cochran won a seventh term in the Senate, and Mississippi’s most powerful congressional delegation weapon was still deployed. Cochran’s position leading the Senate Appropriations Committee likewise strengthened the political clout of the rest of the state’s delegation — Republican and Democrat alike.
The end of the era of unrestrained and unfettered earmarks has rendered the appropriations chair as less of a political plum than it was 20 years ago. But in the hands of veteran appropriators such as Cochran, the new rules — which soon gave way to what Capitol Hill observers now call “zombie” earmarks, “phonemarks” or “lettermarks” — still allows lawmakers to use their influence to help their constituents back home with federal funding for various projects.
The test — whether in the depths of traditional earmarks or the new phantom era of pseudo-earmarks — has always been the character and integrity of the elected lawmaker. Is the money being sent back to a lawmaker’s state for a purpose that legitimately serves the greater good (such as rural water systems) or to fund wasteful, needless things that make the taxpayers shake their heads in amazement or disgust.
Cochran isn’t up for re-election, so the fate of his chairmanship rests on the outcome of the national elections in terms of how many gains Democrats make in the Senate. Many of the national pollsters and prognosticators have predicted a 50-50 split in the Senate — which would then empower the newly elected vice president to tip the scales in favor of his party in that chamber.
Earmarking by other names continues basically unabated, and few states have historically been greater beneficiaries of that process of congressionally directed spending than has Mississippi. According to estimates, 123 “earmarks” made it into legislation in fiscal year 2016, an increase of 17 percent from the 105 inserted in FY 2015. Earmarks in FY 2016 cost $5.1 billion, an increase of 21 percent from the $4.2 billion in FY 2015.
Congressional leaders such as Pat Harrison, Jim Eastland, John Stennis, Jamie Whitten, Trent Lott, Roger Wicker and Cochran have used congressionally directed spending to help their home state.
So it’s no keen act of prognostication to observe that control of the U.S. Senate will for Mississippi be the most important thing decided on Tuesday by the American electorate — regardless what’s contained in Hillary’s mysterious emails or whom Trump did or didn’t grope.
• Sid Salter is director of the Office of University Relations at Mississippi State University. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
