-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 18, 2007 4:52:45 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Color Coded Politics: Federal Court Ruling Makes "Shady"
State Voters See Red
In Mississippi, Ruling Is Seen as Racial Split
By ADAM NOSSITER
New York Times, July 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/us/18south.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
JACKSON, Miss., July 13 — A federal court ruling in June that
forces voters to register by party could return Mississippi to the
days of racially polarized politics, as many white Democrats warn
that thousands of white voters will now opt definitively for the
Republican Party.
Republican-leaning voters in Mississippi have long been able to
cross party lines in primaries, voting for centrist Democrats in
state and local races while staying loyal to Republican candidates
in national races. But political experts here say that by limiting
these voters — almost all of whom are white — to Republican
primaries, the ruling will push centrist Democratic candidates to
the other party, simply in order to survive.
Most black voters in Mississippi are Democrats, and black political
leaders have been pushing for years to prevent crossover voting in
Democratic primaries. Black leaders say they want to end precisely
what white Democrats here seek to preserve, a strong moderate-to-
conservative voice in the Democratic Party, and in the process to
pick up more state and local posts.
The ruling last month by Judge W. Allen Pepper Jr. of Federal
District Court allowed the legal remedy sought by black leaders.
Judge Pepper said the Democratic Party in Mississippi had a right
to “disassociate itself” from voters who were not genuine
Democrats. Most other Southern states also have open primaries.
As a result of the ruling, which was handed down June 8 and barring
an appeal will go into effect next year, few whites are likely to
remain in the Democratic Party, experts here say, a prospect that
Republicans regard with glee, white Democrats with horror and black
leaders with indifference. Not for the first time in the South,
Republicans and blacks have achieved a de facto unspoken alliance
of common interests that has been particularly evident in the
drawing of Congressional districts, where blacks are packed into
majority-black districts, leaving little space for moderate white
Democrats to be elected.
If white voters go Republican in these districts, so too, will
white candidates and office-holders, ending a persistent anomaly in
a state that easily went twice for President Bush but where
hundreds of local officeholders remain Democrats. As elsewhere in
the South, grass-roots leaders tend to be moderate Democrats with
roots in the New Deal.
The governor is a Republican, and Republicans narrowly control the
Senate. But the House is heavily Democratic, and in races this year
for local offices like sheriff, supervisor and circuit clerk, about
2,500 of 3,000 candidates were Democrats, said W. Martin Wiseman,
director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at
Mississippi State University.
The Democrats’ dominance at the local level may now be threatened
by Judge Pepper’s ruling.
“If they are required to re-register, the Democratic Party will be
a shell of its former self because I just don’t think you’ll see
those conservative whites re-register as Democratic,” said Jere
Nash, who is white and a veteran consultant and onetime chief of
staff to former Gov. Ray Mabus, a Democrat.
R. Andrew Taggart, a white lawyer who succeeded Mr. Nash when Kirk
Fordice, a Republican, was elected governor, agreed. The ruling was
“very far-reaching,” Mr. Taggart said. “He has essentially ruled
our entire primary structure must be changed.”
“If forced to make a decision,” Mr. Taggart added, “a plurality of
Mississippi voters will identify themselves as Republican.”
Black Democrats who pushed the lawsuit that led to the ruling
seemed to view the potential hemorrhaging of white voters with
equanimity. One of their leaders is Ike Brown, a state Democratic
executive committee member who was recently found by another
federal judge to have systematically violated voting rights of
whites, through intimidation and other means, as party boss in his
home county, Noxubee, in the eastern part of the state.
Welcoming Judge Pepper’s ruling, Mr. Brown said in an interview:
“We are tired of being abused by the white Democrats in
Mississippi. We have just had enough. We want the Republicans out
of our party.”
Democrats here have recently made other efforts to rid their party
of Republican leanings, trying, for instance, to force the state’s
conservative insurance commissioner, George Dale, off their primary
ballot because he voted for Mr. Bush. A judge put Mr. Dale back on.
But none of these efforts have much chance at being as successful
as the lawsuit. Ellis Turnage, the lawyer who filed it, said he was
not worried about whites’ quitting the party. “If they want to
leave, let them leave,” Mr. Turnage said. “When they integrated the
schools, look what happened. That’s not for me to deal with.”
Yet if that happens, the racial polarization of politics here could
be complete. Until now, an important bridge across the race divide
in Mississippi has occurred, for instance, in the Legislature,
where for three decades blacks and centrist white Democrats have
formed coalitions to finance public education, or to push back
against conservative Republican governors who sought cuts in social
programs.
“The beauty of what I’ve witnessed over the last 28 years is we’ve
worked together,” said Thomas U. Reynolds, who is white and the
state representative from the quiet courthouse town of Charleston
in the north Mississippi hills.
Mr. Brown, by contrast, said Mr. Reynolds’s district — and others
like it — would be more properly represented by a black, another
motive cited for pursuing closed primaries.
A stooped country lawyer with a populist bent, Mr. Reynolds has
traversed much of Mississippi’s four-decade emergence from
segregation in the state Legislature, preoccupied with what he sees
as Democratic causes like better education and health care. To get
past the ruling, Mr. Reynolds said he was counting on the voters he
greets by first name in the courthouse square to support him,
regardless of party or race.
“These folks, black and white, are my friends,” he said.
Such support, however, cannot be taken for granted in a state where
85 percent of whites voted for Mr. Bush in 2004.
Calling Judge Pepper’s ruling a “tragedy,” Mr. Reynolds said voters
should be allowed to vote for the candidate of their choice,
regardless of party. “Of all the things that could have happened,
this doesn’t help us,” he said. “It would further racially polarize
Mississippi, and that’s one thing we don’t want.”
Judge Pepper ordered the Legislature to put a new system in place
by Aug. 31, 2008. He also said photo identification for voters
should be instituted, a requirement that is meeting resistance from
some who welcome his other findings. Among those opponents is Mr.
Turnage, the plaintiffs’ lawyer.
Others — old-line white Democrats — are hoping against hope that
the ruling will simply prove a fleeting nightmare if it is muddied
by the Legislature or overturned on appeal — though none have been
announced.
“If this thing comes to pass, it’s the end of the Democratic Party
in the state of Mississippi,” said Hob Bryan, a longtime centrist
state senator from the northeastern part of the state.
“I don’t want to exclude anyone from the Democratic Party,” Mr.
Bryan said. “I want to include more people.”
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