In Mississippi, ‘last Democrat in Dixie’ fights to survive
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s campaign messaging highlights his passion for hunting and his ties to the state’s popular Republican governor.
But the prosecutor sometimes called the “last Democrat in Dixie” glosses over his own party affiliation.
He has good reason: Republicans now control nearly all the offices elected statewide across the conservative U.S. South, from South Carolina to Louisiana. Democrats’ ability to hold on to Hood’s seat for a fourth term will test efforts to blunt the party’s free fall in the region. Experts predict it will be his toughest election fight yet.
“If he wasn’t an incumbent, I don’t think he’d stand a chance,” said John Bruce, political science chairman at the University of Mississippi. “He is running in a place where statistically he shouldn’t win.”
Reuters
10/2/15
Magnolia Tribune
