Posted on 05/10/2010 1:04:53 PM PDT by LdSentinal
JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi House member has switched from Democrat to Republican.
The Clarion-Ledger reports that Rep. Scott Bounds announced his decision during a news conference Monday at Republican Party Headquarters in Jackson.
Bounds noted his "conservative philosophical and policy beliefs" as the reason for his change.
With Bounds, there will be 50 Republicans in the House, and the chamber will have 72 Democrats.
Bounds is from Philadelphia and has been in the Legislature since 2004.
(Excerpt) Read more at therepublic.com ...
Hmmm...looking at his options is he?
Thank you for the analysis!
Well you have to understand, to get elected across vast swaths of states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and pretty much all of Arkansas you either run as a Democrat or don’t run at all because the one party system still lives there.
Neshoba is one of those counties. For all we know this guy didn’t even vote for Clinton but had to run as a Democrat because not doing so meant he couldn’t get elected.
Good news in Mississippi.
Boy, you're easy to convince.
Thanks for the ping.
Ever?
“the one party system”
Old habits die hard, eh?
But for whatever reason this person switched to the GOP. I know nothing of Mississippi politics, so I take it for face value which is a rat switching and giving the GOP in that state's legislature one more vote.
10-4 Impy!
“What is his voting record? Last thing we need is another John McCain or Arlen Spector.”
From the article: “Bounds is from Philadelphia and has been in the Legislature since 2004.”
Wait a minute, Arlen Specter is from Philadelphia, too. This doesn’t look good . . .
(I know, different Philadelphia, but I couldn’t resist.)
“This is the house though, and that probably won’t be able to go ever just because Mississippi’s demographics are what they are.”
I think this year’s census probably shows Mississippi at somewhere between 42-45% black based on the November 2008 vote for Obama and progression over time.
It’s also important to note that blacks constitute the majority of Mississippians under 30 and Mississippi public schools are majority black by a pretty strong clip.
There are two reasons the Republican Party in Mississippi has risen to the heights it has: Ronnie Musgrove and casino money. I don’t even have to explain the second one but with Musgrove it was like this.
In 1991, Fordice won. Fordice ended up doing everything he could to destroy the brand name of the Republican Party in Mississippi and the county courthouses in the rural areas had plenty of guys like Ronnie Shows and Gene Taylor (not rural but point stands) that they could trot out on the good ol’ boy line. Musgrove governed as a rural machine like Democrat and basically ended the Republican insurgency on the non-federal level. Then he went and messed with the flag.
Even suggesting the referendum as he did so enraged the rural white Mississippians (as well as almost all white Mississippians outside of the neighborhood by Millsaps in Jackson) that were the base of continued Democratic strength in statewide elections that it soon translated to statewide offices and Mississippi ended up having the quickest statewide conversion of any Southern state. But, it is a phyrric victory.
The county court rings were able to put in Childers, Taylor has that seat till he dies or moves up and Jim Hood could have been competitive with Barbour in ‘07 but didn’t want that fight. If Childers holds his seat this year (and its more possible than you’d think, politics up there is very “who has whose support” oriented as opposed to individual voters) then they will have a solid core of people they could run on a ticket in 2011 if they could convince them to (Hood will, the others would have to be convinced and Childers would have to step up his Obama criticism to be viable)
In the end, Mississippi will swing back Democratic. Republican dominance of statewide offices has at best another 10 years because Mississippi is just becoming too black. The white population is older and dying off, young whites leave the state and the states blacks largely stay there and have higher birthrates and the like.
The reason why the House can never go is because the population distribution is such that for districts that have to be house population, its very easy to gerrymander that 70-50 Democratic House. There are Democratic incumbents in Republican favorable areas (think Compretta) who the local establishment will never let lose to a Republican because they are conservative enough and they’re not willing to lose the power these people have in Jackson.
The truth is, blacks bring Mississippi back into the Democratic column by 2028 presidentially (and locally beforehand) and without a significant influx of whites of some kind the state will become majority black probably before I die (and I was born in 1962).
And that’s just the way it is for MS. Even if the GOP took the House in 2011 (and that’s impossible, the Senate yes but not the House) at most there will be a decade they hold it. You can’t gerrymander your way out of the changing demographics and if the population below 30 right now is majority black then in 2020 that means that the majority below 40 will be. The clock is ticking on this one.
AC, Mississippi’s black percentage of the population in the 1990 Census was 35.6%; in the 2000 Census it was 36.3%; and in the 2008 Census Estimate it was 37.2%. So, no, the 2010 Census won’t show MS with anywhere near a 42%-45% black population. And as for MS voting Democrat for president by 2028, it would take a major realignment of the white Southern vote for that to happen, because the state is nowhere close to voting Democrat for president despite blacks voting 95% Democrat.
I’m not a demographer but I don’t foresee a huge black demographic boom in MS. Baring something like that I think it’s a matter of time before the GOP wins at the local level. It’s already taken much longer than we’d like and may take quite a while more but I foresee white southerners becoming increasingly hostile to the rat party.
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