Republicans May Be Days Away From Their Nightmare Coming True

Republicans may be less than a week from a nightmare in Mississippi, where Democrat Brandon Presley's chances of flipping the governorship remain high ahead of Election Day.

Governor Tate Reeves continues to be in an unexpectedly tight rice against Presley, who is gunning to be the first Democratic governor in the conservative stronghold in two decades.

The most recent poll, released by the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) last month, shows the two men neck-and-neck, with Reeves holding a one-point advantage, 46 percent to 45 percent. Two polls from August and September show the governor with a slightly bigger lead of 11 points and 8 points, respectively.

Presley, the second cousin of music legend Elvis Presley, has pulled off an incredible fundraising effort, outraising Reeves by more than $5 million in the 2023 election cycle. Much of that has been with the help of the DGA, which has pumped a historic $3.75 million into Presley's campaign, the largest investment from a single group affiliated with the national Democratic Party, according to Mississippi Today.

At the same time, Reeves, who faced troubling approval numbers earlier this year, has been caught up in a fraud scandal over the state's misspending of welfare funds during his time as lieutenant governor.

Reeves, who has denied any wrongdoing, is overseeing the state's lawsuit against more than two dozen businesses or people to recover more than $20 million of the roughly $77 million that was misspent between 2016 and 2019. Last month, one of the defendants sued Reeves, accusing him of illegally controlling the lawsuit to protect his political allies.

The scandal was one of Presley's big talking points at Wednesday's heated debate, the only one in the campaign.

"The truth is, you're a bought-and-paid-for politician, and you know it, and the people of Mississippi know it....He is the poster child of this broken, corrupt system," Presley said on stage.

As Presley slammed Reeves for being "ensnarled in the largest public corruption scandal in Mississippi history," Reeves attacked Presley's campaign as being funded by "far-left radicals" from California, New York, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.

While only a third of Mississippi voters said they'd want Reeves to run for reelection in January, he earned a last-minute, coveted endorsement from former President Donald Trump, who carried the state with more than 57 percent of the vote in 2016 and 2020.

Trump endorsed Reeves on Tuesday, a week before Election Day, calling him "my friend" and praising his "fantastic job" as governor.

"Joe Biden's people are funding Brandon Presley's campaign. They own him. He'll do whatever they want him to do," Trump said in a video shared by the Mississippi Republican Party on Wednesday.

"You got to vote for Governor Tate Reeves. He fights for the people of Mississippi and he has my total and complete endorsement."

Independent Gwendolyn Gray left the race last month, throwing her support behind Presley, but ballots had already been set at the time of her announcement. So, if neither Reeves nor Presley receives a majority vote in Tuesday's election, the race would got to a November 28 runoff.

Newsweek reached out to Reeves and Presley's campaign via email for comment.