Columnist Blasts Tuck's Switch to GOP [Barf!]

JACKSON—In neighboring Louisiana, political pundits are calling the unique run-off U.S. Senate race the "Second Louisiana Purchase" because of the tons of Republican money shipped in to unseat Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Every GOP bigwig from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on down has come down to fill the coffers for Republican contender Suzanne Haik Terrell who had come in second, far behind Landrieu in Louisiana’s "Open Primary" election Nov. 5, and forced the runoff.

Is Louisiana’s experience but a preview of what we will see next year when the GOP could literally try to "buy" Mississippi’s governorship, and lieutenant governorship as well?

It looks as though Republicans this week made a fast start on their 2003 agenda by getting Democratic Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck to switch parties, obviously with assurances she won’t have to face any real challenger next year to win the Republican nomination for her No. 2 spot.

The GOP has already saddled up its 2003 gubernatorial horse, namely multi-millionaire Washington, D.C. lobbyist Haley Barbour, the ex-Yazoo City lawyer who became National Republican chairman in the mid-1990s and afterwards snagged most of D.C.'s biggest corporate interests as his lobbying clients.

Doubtless, Barbour will bring a campaign war chest down to Mississippi next year that will dwarf the $4.5 million spent in the GOP's failed attempt to elect Mike Parker governor in 1999.

Tuck, significantly, used the 99-year-old state Capitol as the backdrop to announce her party switch, with a large flock of Republicans packing the second floor rotunda. Among the GOP brass on hand was Haley Barbour. Tuck, seizing the opportunity to roll out the 2003 GOP ticket, said Barbour "would be a great governor."

What monetary considerations were involved in Tuck’s party conversion this week were not immediately known. However, dating back to last December when a House-passed pro-Democratic congressional redistricting was derailed in the state Senate, there have been reports Tuck’s campaign debt from 1999 was paid off by grateful Republicans.

In her report filed with the Secretary of State in January, 2000 after her election, Tuck showed she had made borrowed almost $500,000 to help finance her 1999 campaign. Of the total borrowed money, $100,000 was from a bank loan and $360,000 an Amy Tuck "personal loan."

Her annual reports for 2000 and 2001 do not indicate that the loans were paid off, but they are no longer shown as outstanding, and she had a $373,267 in cash on hand at the end of 2001. Since Tuck is far from being independently wealthy, the assumption is the loans in some fashion were paid off.

Interestingly, while in her party switch announcement she claimed she had been “alienated” for some time from the Democrats, her 2001 financial report shows she gave $1,500 to the Mississippi Democratic Party on June 3, 200l.

GOP political hack Nick Walters, the party’s 1999 candidate for Secretary of State, in public print underscored the widespread belief that Tuck in the December, 2001 special legislative session was the chief culprit in thwarting a redistricting plan that would have been more favorable to Democratic U.S. Rep Ronnie Shows.

Walters, now state director of the USDA’s Rural Development Authority, was quoted a week ago as saying that "without Amy Tuck (3rd District U.S. Rep.) Chip Pickering would have been in jeopardy."

When the Democratic-majority Legislature failed to draw new U.S. House district lines, it played directly into the hands of the Mississippi Republican Party which all along wanted a federal court to redistrict the state.

That’s exactly what happened. A three-judge federal panel made up of GOP appointees took over the case and in February, 2002 created a new district that virtually assured Pickering's re-election. He was given his strongest white Republican-voting bases, while Shows' former black Democratic voter base was cut from 40 to 30 percent.

Tuck’s defection to the Republican Party raises the question: Will other Democratic office-holders follow her into the GOP, particularly now that Republicans nationwide are riding a heady political crest of success in the Nov. 5 elections?

Ever since this state lopsidedly voted for Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, the possibility has been that Mississippi could flip-flop from a one-party Democratic state to a one-party GOP state.

As has become increasingly apparent since heavy doses of campaign cash have been introduced into our political process from out-of-state sources in recent years, Republicans have increasingly been able to control dialogue in the general public and even in the press.

The most dangerous development is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s richest and most powerful business lobby, has "adopted" Mississippi as a veritable step-child whose political care and feeding it seems to have appropriated.

The Chamber, using friendly federal judges, has trampled on this state’s efforts to require it to report the source and amounts of cash it spends in Mississippi, but we already know already it spent at least $1.7 million trying to dictate our choices for judgeships in the last two Mississippi judicial elections.

So there is every reason to believe it will be shoveling cash in here next year with alleged "issue" ads to elect its chosen candidates all the way from the Legislature to the governorship.

No group of Mississippians, be they plaintiff attorneys or otherwise, can even begin to match the resources the Chamber can spend in our elections.

While any Mississippi contributor’s name and amount is reported in the public record, the Chamber’s are not. Meantime, the Tuck party switch is no surprise since she long ago dropped out as a team-player in the Ronnie Musgrove Administration. However, it can be seen as a betrayal of two Democratic constituencies—blacks and public school forces—who had made it possible for her to narrowly win over GOP foe Bill Hawks in 1999.

Without teachers, blacks and labor to back her, Tuck may find her new constituency not as understanding of her record that three times she failed the state bar exam and then tried to get the state Supreme Court to overrule the Bar examiners.

Tuck should also beware of the short shelf-life of previous party-switchers. Mike Parker and Eddie Briggs come to mind.

I wouldn't disagree that Tuck is probably an airhead, but this guy is suggesting that teachers, blacks, and labor tolerate mediocrity and care nothing for excellence. If a Republican suggested that, the media would make him run through a gauntlet.

Minor is the most left-wing columnist in the entire state. Why he still has a job is a puzzle to me. I don't think a single person, whose job title is not college professor, likes Minor.

nice catch on his statement about Tuck's "new constituency." I doubt that he intended it to read like it does, but it's certainly possible that he's making a very paternalistic assumption that her old constituency would be more forgiving of these errors.

Now, don't get me wrong. I concur w/ afuturegovernor that Bill Minor is a complete and total a$$. However, I should say in his defense that he is, at least, correct about this: Republicans have been making fun of Tuck for years for failing the bar exam three times, and there's no reason to think that they'll soon forget this fact.

I see now....All of a sudden, the Democrats are presenting a fact about a former Democrat who failed the bar exam three times. It was perfectly ok with them when she was a Democrat but now that she is a Republican, failing an exam three times is unacceptible and to hint that she is not very bright only proves that none of them are very bright!

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