History of governors prove some change in Mississippi's politics

Joe Atkins

syndicated columnist

Ever been to the state Capitol in Jackson and looked at the portrait of former Mississippi Governor James K. Vardaman?

It has got to be the strangest portrait of a political leader I've ever seen. On a recent visit there I once again simply could not walk past the hall of governors without stopping to stare at "The White Chief," the ghostly pallor of his face, the alabaster-like skin, the black eyes, the shoulder-length black hair.

He looks like a Mississippi version of Vlad the Impaler, a haunted and haunting Dracula who perhaps still stalks the land nearly 70 years after his death, hovering in the shadows along the hustings every political campaign season, waiting to claim new souls.

Of course, Mississippi has come a long way since 1903, when candidate Vardaman would travel the campaign trail in the back of an ox-drawn wagon, wearing a white suit and black Stetson, preaching hellfire against blacks, corporations and Yankees.

Certainly no viable political candidate today would stand before a crowd and announce as Vardaman once did, "I want to tell you just how far I am in favor of mob law. If ... a negro fiend fell into my hands ... I would head the mob to string the brute up, and I haven't much respect for the white man who wouldn't."

Race is still a factor in Mississippi politics, of course. Any visit to Jackson City Hall provides an education on that fact of life. Look at the ongoing controversy over U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and his association with the allegedly white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens.

And, at a recent forum of candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in Biloxi, Troy Brown, the only black candidate there, could tell his chuckling audience, "You can look up here and tell I'm different. Can you imagine Dan Rather coming here and saying how Mississippi is burning, burning with integrity (at the election of its first black statewide candidate)!"

You're also not going to see candidates today taking a stand anywhere close to Vardaman's on greed and the evils of big corporations. "When competition is no more, then the strong arm of the government will be invoked, and government ownership will follow," Vardaman once vowed. Wealth is "conscienceless and insatiate. It never gets enough ... and knows not the correcting pangs of remorse."

Vardaman meant what he said. He fought the railroads, banks, utilities, insurance companies, manufacturers, fought to lower their charges on citizens, fought for greater governmental oversight of their activities, and he vetoed one of the early mega-mergers, that of the Southern and the Mobile and Ohio railroads.

As with his racism, Vardaman sounded a theme here that was often then dominant in Mississippi politics. An anti-corporate fervor was key to the writing of the state's 1890 constitution and it also was essential to later Governor Theodore Bilbo's philosophy.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Parker is more typical of today's attitude toward corporations. "State government is a detriment to business," Parker said in Biloxi.

Today, both Democrats and Republicans scramble for pro-business bragging rights. Even the term "populist" -- once the birthright of anti-big business politicians like Vardaman, Bilbo and Louisiana's Huey Long -- is today applied to hardline conservatives like Mississippi's current governor, Kirk Fordice, who sees himself more as the state's CEO rather than its top elected official.

Today you even have longtime "family values" champions like Trent Lott cozying up to the increasingly powerful casino gambling industry in Mississippi. Today you have multi-state pork producers and other big outfits threatening politicians with lawsuits if they dare try to pass regulations the companies don't like.

Crime and prisons were a big issue at the turn of the century as they are now. No modern politician worth his or her salt would want to be seen as coddling criminals. A typical approach is taken by Republican gubernatorial candidate Eddie Briggs: "When someone commits a crime, they are going to jail -- there are no exceptions. Criminals must work while in prison -- prison will not be a sunshine-filled vacation."

What did "The White Chief" have to say about the prison workers of his day? Decrying the "money coined out of the blood and tears of the unfortunate convicts," Vardaman pushed through prison reform to ensure that prisoners received "kindly treatment, a decent bed to sleep on, and sanitary surrounding."

Vardaman became one of the most powerful politicians in Mississippi, serving as legislator, state House speaker, governor and U.S. senator. He died, however, a broken, defeated man whose career never survived his opposition to the U.S. involvement in World War 1. He spent his last years chairbound and senile with his Spanish-American War pension his only income.

Lucky for him he's not running for office today. He'd never make it beyond dog-catcher.

Joe Atkins is an associate professor of journalism at Ole Miss.