Mississippi: Republicans Surge Forward in a Two-Party State
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2005.26.0.85-107Abstract
Mississippi entered the 21st century as a competitive two-party state far removed from its post-Reconstruction history of one-party Democratic domination. Yet Republican gains which had led to this emerging parity between the parties were not uniform across elective offices, as they had come first in federal elections and only later trickled down to state offices (Aistrup 1996). Mississippi voted Republican for president for the first time since Reconstruction in 1964 and 1972 (by landslide margins), narrowly backed Democrat and born-again southern Baptist Jimmy Carter in 1976, and henceforth has cast every one of its electoral votes for Republican presidential candidates. Enduring U.S. House gains began occurring in the Nixon landslide reelection year of 1972 with victories by Republicans Thad Cochran and Trent Lott. Cochran and Lott then replaced retiring conservative Democratic U.S. senators James Eastland in 1978 and John Stennis in 1988. Democrats remained competitive in U.S. house races at the century’s end, however, retaining two moderate conservative whites (Ronnie Shows and Gene Taylor) and one liberal African American (Bennie Thompson, representing the black majority “Delta” district) as congressmen. With the retirements of boll weevil Democrats Jamie Whitten in 1994 and Sonny Montgomery in 1996, conservative Republicans Roger Wicker and Chip Pickering took their places to maintain two House seats for the GOP.References
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