Insurance hopefuls bicker over records
During a luncheon Monday in Jackson, Democrat Gary Anderson of Jackson and Republican Mike Chaney of Vicksburg criticized each other’s records of service in state government.
The winner of the Nov. 6 general election will succeed George Dale as Mississippi’s top insurance regulator. Dale is the longest-serving insurance commissioner in the nation, but Anderson defeated him in the Aug. 7 Democratic primary.
Anderson said Chaney, a state senator, has flip-flopped on issues such as taxes.
Chaney told a retirees’ group at the Capitol on March 8 that he would vote for a bill to reduce the 7 percent grocery tax and increase the tax on cigarettes. On March 20, when the bill was dead, Chaney voted against a resolution that would’ve revived the legislation. That resolution failed, and the “tax swap” proposal died at the end of the legislative session.
Chaney said in March that a bill and a resolution are two different things, and that he was more in favor of a stand-alone cigarette tax increase than of a proposal to combine an increase in the cigarette tax with a decrease in the grocery tax.
Emily Wagster Pettus
9/18/7
Magnolia Tribune
