Candidate Brings Washington to Mississippi Race

For 18 years, Haley Barbour was the consummate Washington insider -- political director in the Reagan White House, two-term chairman of the Republican National Committee, head of a powerful lobbying firm. But he wants something more.

That is why one recent Wednesday evening, Barbour was exchanging hugs and handclasps with guests at a fish fry in an arena that usually hosts livestock shows or motocross races. In a career switch, the political pro who made a national reputation helping other Republicans win office is running himself, for governor of Mississippi. On Nov. 4 he will try to unseat incumbent Democrat Ronnie Musgrove.

“We’ve got real problems, but we don’t have any problems that we can’t solve with strong, effective, honest leadership,” said Barbour, 56, speaking in the warm drawl of his native Yazoo City, in the cotton-growing delta.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a longtime friend, had flown in for the day to campaign alongside Barbour, telling the crowd of 1,200 that just as Californians chose “The Terminator,” they should elect “The Barbourator.”

“He’s got a Rolodex that’s so thick with contacts that he won’t brag about,” said the president’s brother. “But I’m telling you, it’s going to be great for Mississippi to have a leader that can call anybody in the world and make the case to bring investment and jobs to this state.”

That logic resonates deeply with many in one of the nation’s poorest states, where more than 100 manufacturing plants have shut down in the last three years. But Musgrove, 47, is campaigning hard to convince people that his challenger is a front for hostile outside interests.

“The message is real clear: a governor who will work for you -- the people -- or a Washington lobbyist who will work for them -- the big drug companies, the big tobacco companies, countries that have hurt us,” said Musgrove after debating Barbour at Mississippi State University. “He’s out of touch by having been in Washington for the past 20 years as a Washington, D.C., lobbyist.”

“I’m not going to apologize for being successful,” retorted Barbour. “I want more people in Mississippi to be successful.”

The two are strikingly different: The Democrat, angular and gawky, the child of parents who hadn’t finished high school, became lieutenant governor and four years ago the state’s governor; and the Republican, affable and rotund, the offspring of a prominent lawyer, became a habitue of Washington’s K Street and founder of Barbour Griffith & Rogers Inc., rated by Fortune as the capital’s most influential lobbying firm.

“Haley’s got the right connections, and we really need the right connections in Mississippi,” said Paul McMullan, 74, a retired banker and Barbour supporter who attended the fish fry.

“We need new blood for this state,” said his wife, Georgie, 72.

“Musgrove thrives on adversity. He gets up off the mat every time,” said state Treasurer Peyton D. Prospere, a Musgrove appointee.

The governor must cope with the fallout of a poor economy, as well as his divorce since taking office. But his chances for re-election may hinge on voters’ feelings about the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Musgrove blames NAFTA for the loss of 41,000 Mississippi jobs and says Barbour lobbied for its passage -- a charge the Republican calls “demonstrably untrue.” Barbour says he agreed to lobby for the Mexican government eight years after NAFTA became law only to help resolve a border dispute over trucking.

Nevertheless, in a state where virtually everyone knows somebody thrown out of work by factory closings, the credence that voters give Musgrove’s allegation could determine who wins on Nov. 4, said W. Martin Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University.

Carolyn Perkins, 56, blames Barbour in part for what happened to her. She and her husband lost their jobs when the Fruit of the Loom mill in Batesville closed in 1995. She said management told her the factory, where she earned $27,000 a year supervising the making of men’s briefs, was relocating to Mexico.

“It turned my life upside down,” Perkins said. She is not sure how, she said, but she believes Barbour was somehow responsible for NAFTA and the factory’s shutdown.

To live down the potentially lethal label of Beltway fat cat, Barbour has been campaigning in all of Mississippi’s 82 counties, pressing the flesh at country stores, truck stops and coffee shops. Campaign manager Henry Barbour, a nephew, said his candidate’s name recognition was only 50% at the beginning of 2003.

“So we’ve been on TV essentially since the middle of February, telling people about Haley’s ideas and how to make Mississippi better,” he said.

Inside the Forrest County Multi Purpose Center here, Barbour told supporters that his own polling had shown the election to be a virtual dead heat. The Republican also hammered home his mantra: that Mississippi, perennially among the lowest-ranking states in per capita income and education, can do much better.

“Our state is a special place,” Barbour said. “It is a wonderful place to raise a family alongside the best people in the world. But our state is not reaching its potential.”

Barbour tried his luck as a candidate in 1982, losing to one of the most durable figures in this state’s politics, former Democratic Sen. John Stennis. Three years later, Barbour joined the Reagan White House as a political advisor.

Mississippi, along with Louisiana, Kentucky and, unexpectedly, California, the only states holding gubernatorial elections this year, has seen its race turn nasty and costly, with the candidates raising a total of $12.8 million by Sept. 30.

“They are calling each other liars and cheats,” said Robert B. Albritton, professor of political science at the University of Mississippi. “It’s basically name-calling.”

As well as portraying Barbour as an agent of outside interests, Musgrove says the state is already heading in the right direction. Teacher salaries and student tests scores are up, Internet-capable computers are being installed in every classroom, and Nissan recently opened an assembly plant in Canton.

Some Mississippians, though, hold the governor responsible for the painful economic slump that has occurred on his watch, and want him out. “We call him Ronnie Must-Go,” said Gordon Cotton, director of a museum in Vicksburg’s old courthouse that chronicles the city’s epic 47-day siege during the Civil War.

In no state do African Americans make up a greater share of the population -- 37% -- and both candidates are actively courting Mississippi’s black vote. Barbour has promised a color-blind administration, but said he’ll go the extra mile to be inclusive.

On the other hand, unlike Musgrove, Barbour favors retaining the state’s 1894 flag, which incorporates the Confederate banner. Barbour’s photo also appears on the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which champions the Confederate flag and describes itself as “The True Voice of the American Right.”

State NAACP leaders have pressed Barbour to demand that the photo be removed, but he has refused.

“I don’t care who has my picture,” he told the Associated Press earlier this month. “My picture’s in the public domain.” Barbour did term some of the views expressed on the St. Louis-based group’s Web site “indefensible.”

These are disturbing developments for African Americans, many of whom have living memories of segregation and Jim Crow laws that kept them legally inferior to whites, said Robert L. Jenkins, professor of history at Mississippi State University.

In contrast, he added, Musgrove has appointed blacks to key jobs and worked with African Americans more closely than any governor in the state’s history.

President Bush is eager to see the former GOP chairman elected and plans to make stops in two Mississippi cities on Saturday, three days before the election. On Sept. 12, Bush flew to Jackson to attend a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising luncheon on Barbour’s behalf.

With his friend and fellow Republican ensconced in the white-columned governor’s mansion, the president said, “Mississippi will do better.”

On the campaign stump, Musgrove has been telling voters a very different story.

Barbour’s “focus has been in Washington, D.C., and on the big prescription drug companies, insurance companies, countries, big tobacco companies that do not have Mississippi’s best interests at heart,” the governor said in Starkville. “My focus has been on the people of Mississippi.”