Sid Salter
- The biggest winner in the Capitol Hill influence realm will be Second District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who will return as House Homeland Security Committee chair if he wants it.
At this writing, the Mississippi U.S. Senate race between incumbent GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom remains deadlocked and legal sabers have been rattled in both camps. But one thing is certain: the mid-term elections will reshape Mississippi’s influence on Capitol Hill in the next Congress.
Powerful committee chairs are lost, but some will be gained. Agenda-setting powers shift from Republicans to Democrats. Budget priorities will be those of the ruling Democrats – and as did the GOP before them, that process will be made difficult by factions under the broad Democratic Party umbrella.
Most impactful will be the loss of U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker’s chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. But he will retain ranking member status on that committee, which considers the fortunes of huge employers like Huntington Ingalls in Pascagoula, Mississippi’s military bases, the National Guard complex, and Mississippi defense contractors.
The biggest winner in the Capitol Hill influence realm will be Second District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who will return as House Homeland Security Committee chair if he wants it. No matter what, Thompson will hold a position of influence and authority.
The state’s three Republican congressmen will shift from the majority to the minority party, but Kelly’s position on the House Armed Services and Agriculture committees and Guest’s seats on the Appropriations and Homeland Security committees will serve the state well. Ezell, who held subcommittee chairs on the House Transportation and Natural Resources committees, may face the toughest challenges because of seniority.
Sen. Hyde-Smith’s significant committee seats on the Appropriations and Agriculture committees are at risk, but if Colom prevails, his more likely assignments would be Agriculture, Judiciary, or Homeland Security. However, campaign encouragement from incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer indicates that Colom might receive consideration for Appropriations.
So, from the classic definition by political scientists, we won’t know whether the 2026 mid-terms were a “realigning election” until after the 2028 presidential election. But nationally, at least, it had most of the trappings of a realigning election like those in 1860, 1932, 1968 and 1980. Time will tell.
With partisan politics in Mississippi now at a fever pitch, the debut of the third edition of an important book on Mississippi politics could not come at a better time.
In 2006, University Press of Mississippi released “Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976 – 2006” by Jere Nash and Andy Taggart with a foreword by Mississippi author and former state legislator John Grisham. The book is an exhaustive, inclusive and scholarly treatment of the most recent 40 years of Mississippi’s political history.
The book offers a fair, even-handed, factual account of Mississippi’s transition from a state dominated by the county courthouses and the statehouse by a monolithic Democratic Party to a vibrant two-party system in which the GOP supplanted them in power.
The co-authors are an unlikely pair. Nash, a consultant, is a former chief of staff to former Democratic Gov. Ray Mabus. Taggart, a lawyer who is a former Madison County supervisor, is a former chief of staff to the late Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice. Nash remains a “yellow dog” Democrat while Taggart is still a devoted Republican.
But the pair has produced a warts-and-all look at how Mississippi moved from a 1976 political reality of Democratic dominance to one in 2006 that sees Republicans dominate. Now, has the political pendulum gone the other way?
As I wrote when the first edition debuted: “This book is a must-read for any serious student of Mississippi politics and a valuable reference for those who will study the subject in years to come. It’s also a heckuva lot of fun.” That is still true today.
How Mississippians journeyed from supporting Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976 to becoming one of George W. Bush’s most reliable states in both 2000 and 2004, and where last week’s election took us, is a story worthy of time and study.
With three new chapters, Nash and Taggart thoroughly fill in the gaps from the second edition, including the environment that produced the razor-thin margins last Tuesday across the state.
“Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976 – 2026” is the best, fairest, and most comprehensive political history of Mississippi over the last half-century. It’s a great, timely read.
