DJ – Democratic Party challenged by indictments

Democratic Party challenged by indictments

The Democrats’ only statewide officeholder, Attorney General Jim Hood, is closely identified with Langston personally and politically. Langston has been a significant contributor to Hood’s campaigns.

Hood also hired Langston to seek recovery of money owed Mississippi by MCI, the derelict telecommunications giant that had been headquartered in Mississippi.

Langston negotiated a payment of $114 million to the state treasury, and he was paid $14 million for the work, a sum approved by the courts.

Wiseman said that, had Langston’s problems been known six or eight weeks before the 2007 general elections, it might have spelled political trouble for Hood, a Houston native.

Hood and Langston were sharply and repeatedly criticized by Hood’s Republican opponent, Walnut native and Gulfport attorney Al Hopkins, for Hood’s ties to Langston and the outsourcing of the lawsuit to the Langston firm.

Langston gave Hood more than $100,000 for the 2007 campaign.

“What Hood did was continue what Mike Moore started,” Wiseman said, referring to the former attorney general’s use of outside firms.

It was Moore who hired Scruggs to sue tobacco companies for recovery of tax funds spent treating indigent patients suffering from tobacco-induced diseases. Scruggs was paid about $800 million in that settlement deal.

How Hood fares, Wiseman said, will depend on his standing in relation to the Scruggs-Langston investigation and “how long the public’s memory is.”

NE MS Daily Journal
1/16/8