Republicans Narrowly Avoid Disaster in Mississippi

Republicans are celebrating a victory in Mississippi after GOP Governor Tate Reeves successfully won his tough reelection race against Democrat Brandon Presley.

Reeves won a second term Tuesday night, gaining nearly 52 percent of the vote at the time the race was called by the Associated Press. Winning with less than 5 percent of the vote was a slightly closer race than in 2019, when Reeves won with 5.1 percent of the vote.

Fending off an unusually strong challenge from Presley, a second cousin of Elvis Presley, Reeves maintained the Republicans' hold on Mississippi, where Democrats have not won a governor's race since 1999 and have not won on a presidential contest since 1976. Republicans also hold a monopoly over statewide offices and have supermajorities in the Legislature.

But Reeves' narrow margin of victory suggested that Democrats could be making inroads in the Magnolia State and that the votes for Presley signaled a preference for moderate Democrats among some Mississippians.

Reeves' chances of reelection had narrowed in the weeks leading up to the voting. Presley's campaign had managed to outraise the incumbent by more than $5 million. The governor was also facing low approval ratings in the wake of a recent fraud scandal, with only a third of Mississippi voters saying in January that they wanted him to run for reelection.

Reeves was first elected governor in 2020, previously serving as the state's treasurer and lieutenant governor. The Republican is well known for his staunch opposition to Medicaid expansion and to gas tax increases that would have funded infrastructure repairs in the state.

He became embroiled in the state's welfare fraud scandal last year after the Mississippi Department of Human Services admitted to misspending more than $77 million between 2016 and 2019, during Reeves' time as lieutenant governor.

The drama escalated last month when one of the defendants in the state's lawsuit, which is seeking to recover more than $20 million of the funds from dozens of people and businesses, sued the governor for allegedly controlling the lawsuit to protect his political allies. Reeves has denied any wrongdoing.

The scandal was a major talking point for Presley, who criticized his opponent as "the poster child of this broken, corrupt system" during last week's only debate in the governor's race.

Reeves' Tuesday victory may have been due to a last-minute boost he received from former President Donald Trump, who endorsed the governor a week before Election Day.

In a video backing Reeves and praising his "fantastic job" as governor, Trump said, "Joe Biden's people are funding Brandon Presley's campaign. They own him. He'll do whatever they want him to do."

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

Mississippi was one of five states holding statewide elections this year and one of three that hold gubernatorial elections in an odd year. Voters in Kentucky also elected their next governor on Tuesday, while Republicans flipped the Democrat-held seat in Louisiana last month.