Mississippi gubernatorial GOP primary race heads into runoff
The race for the GOP nomination for Mississippi governor is going into a runoff, after Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves fell short of the 50 percent majority needed in Tuesday's primary to advance to the general election. In the Aug. 27 runoff election, he'll face former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., who received 33 percent of the vote.
Democratic candidate Jim Hood, the state's attorney general since 2003, cruised by seven other challengers to a primary win early Tuesday night. He'll take on the GOP runoff winner in November.
Considered the Republican front-runner for most of the race, Reeves had raised more than any candidate and won an early endorsement from the current two-term governor, Phil Bryant, who could not run again because of the state's term limits. Several crucial counties swung Waller's way, though, including Rankin county, home to Reeves and the largest amount of Republican voters in the state.
"Our goal from the very start was to be in a runoff, and it appears right now that 52 percent of people that voted in this primary weren't happy with the leadership they were given. And in every sportscast I've ever seen, that sounds like a victory to me," Waller said at an election night event.
On the campaign trail, Reeves is embracing President Trump, who won the southern state by 17 points in 2016. He often name-drops similar political enemies and said if elected, he would "act in the same fashion" as the president. He's been ignoring his two primary competitors, Waller and state representative Robert Foster, instead focusing on Hood and establishment Democrats.
"Our political enemy is not one another but is the liberal policy ideas of the party of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Jim Hood," Reeves said during a Republican debate in July.
But the most notable difference between the two GOP candidates is their approach to governing as a conservative.
Reeves supports less government and opposes Medicaid expansion or a gas tax to fix the state's infrastructure. Waller favors hiking the gas tax, as well as a plan put forth by Mississippi hospitals that would use federal money to expand Medicaid for lower-income residents.
He points to Vice President Mike Pence's approval of a similar expansion when he was governor of Indiana.
"Who here thinks Mike Pence is a liberal? Anybody? Mike Pence pioneered this in Indiana," Waller said at a state fair before the race. "It would be a billion dollars to the state and it wouldn't cost any Mississippi tax money."
Since his election in 2012, Bryant has opposed to the Affordable Care Act and has sued the federal government twice over it. As lieutenant governor, Reeves has shared this stance and dismissed it as an "Obamacare expansion."
"I do not believe it would be no cost to the state. That's a fairytale belief," he said in a July televised debate.
Hood has won four statewide elections as attorney general and is running as a moderate Southern Democrat, but he still faces an uphill battle for the general election. A Democrat has not been elected governor in Mississippi since 2000, and the state has not selected a Democrat for president since 1976.
Louisiana and Kentucky also have gubernatorial elections this November.