- Reed worked to establish the Republican Party as a viable option in Mississippi politics. He went on to play a major role in helping key political figures campaign and win.
A Mississippi Republican pioneer has died.
Word spread late Sunday that Clarke Reed, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party from 1966 to 1976, had passed away.
The Greenville businessman born in 1928 played a pivotal role in helping the GOP rise to political prominence as one of the key figures in the early days of the party’s existence in the Magnolia State.
Born in Missouri, Reed moved to the Delta in the 1950s and soon started his own business after attending college. Reed, who came from a family of Democrats, switched to the Republican Party soon after arriving in Mississippi.
Frustrated with the state of the nation and the lack of attention given to southern states like Mississippi in presidential politics, Reed took on building out the Republican Party in a heavily-Democrat controlled state. He along with other early Republican fathers in Mississippi believed in the need for a healthy two-party system in the state.
Reed rose from organizing local counties to the head of the state GOP by 1966. He would go on to be a delegate and delegation chairman to Republican National Conventions and was the chairman of the Southern Association of Republican State Chairmen. Reed also served as Mississippi’s Republican Party National Committeeman from 1976 to 1984.
With his passing, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker said Monday morning that the state had lost a giant.
“Clarke Reed has been a mentor, supporter and advisor to me for over 56 years. He put me on the Republican Platform Committee in 1972 as a 21-year-old,” Wicker said. “There is no more significant figure in the development of the modern-day Mississippi Republican Party than Clarke Reed.”
Attorney General Lynn Fitch expressed her condolences to Reed’s family, saying he will be greatly missed in so many ways that we do not yet even realize.
“Without Clarke Reed, the Republican Party would not have become such a strong and persistent force for positive change in Mississippi. He was a remarkable leader for our State and a true public servant,” Fitch said.
Former state GOP chairman Brad White, now the executive director for the Mississippi Department of Transportation, said Reed was one of the most influential leaders the Republican Party had seen.
“He was the master. He made it look easy,” White said.
Reed played a major role in helping key political figures campaign and win across Mississippi, including former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, former U.S. Senators Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, and former Governors Kirk Fordice and Haley Barbour.
In a 1974 interview, Reed talked about the prospects for he himself seeking public office, choosing instead to focus on promoting the party and its principles:
“I’m like the Cincinnatus thing. I like citizen-soldier. That’s my concept of this whole thing. Unfortunately, that’s the way it’s set up. You can’t be a part-time congressman anymore. Or even hardly a part-time state legislator. Two things. If you take the partisan role I have, if you become Mr. Republican in a sense, then you appear to the voter as captive of the party. It’s not so, but you appear that way. I would not advise anybody in the deep South to be an active, outspoken chairman as I’ve been and as a practical matter to be an office seeker. That’s oversimplified and probably overstated. But still . . . and I feel as a patriot I probably should have.”
