Epicenter of the Chris McDaniel earthquake
LAUREL, Miss. — Here in the Mississippi Pine Belt, Jones County has been known as “The Free State of Jones” since the Civil War, when a hardheaded fellow named Newton Knight led a movement to oppose the Confederacy. His beef would resonate with tea partiers of today; Knight and his comrades felt they shouldn’t be conscripted as Rebel soldiers when plantations with more than 20 slaves could exempt one white male. They believed dirt farmers shouldn’t fight a rich man’s war.
Some 150 years later, the Free State of Jones is the epicenter of Chris McDaniel’s insurgent bid to upend an institution of Mississippi’s political royalty, six-term incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran. A hometown boy from nearby Ellisville who has represented the area in the state Senate, McDaniel got an almost unbelievable 85 percent of the vote in Jones in the June 3 primary that set up a June 24 runoff rematch.
And as the conventional wisdom of the 2014 midterm cycle has been turned upside down by McDaniel’s rise and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat last Tuesday, Jones offers a deeply Southern cautionary tale for Republicans who told themselves that the tea party threat was receding and that the party could inch toward the center in 2016.
The county — where government spending is Public Enemy No. 1 despite receiving millions in federal aid after being smacked by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — also exemplifies the inherent contradictions of the tea party movement. In many ways, at least down here, these grass-roots true believers seem aimed at re-creating an America that no longer exists.
Politico
6/17/14
Magnolia Tribune
