Southern Politics in the 1990s by Alexander P. Lamis

Author:Alexander P. Lamis [Lamis, Alexander P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807123744
Google: GNr40qOoXOoC
Goodreads: 5480193
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 1999-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

VIGOROUS TWO-PARTY COMPETITION, 1992 TO 1994

Electoral activity for state offices in Mississippi normally goes into a hiatus following a gubernatorial election, since all executive and legislative posts are elected on the same four-year cycle. A 1991 federal district court ruling, however, held that newly adopted legislative district lines could be used only for that November’s elections and directed the legislature to produce new senate and house boundaries in time for a November 1992 special legislative election. The three-judge panel held that the 1991 redistricting failed to meet federal Voting Rights Act standards for promoting minority electoral influence. The legislature responded in the spring of 1992 with new plans that created 50 black-majority districts (38 in the house and 12 in the senate), which were accepted by the plaintiffs, the Justice Department, and the federal district court panel.

The new districts largely achieved their intended results: black candidates won 32 house seats (26 percent of that chamber) and 10 senate posts (19 percent). These gains represented a major breakthrough for African American representation, which had begun in 1967 with a lonely pioneer, Representative Robert Clark, had seen its first two senators elected twelve years later, and had grown incrementally from 10 percent to 14 percent of the legislature’s 174 seats between 1979 and 1991.

The new lines, which had been promoted by an alliance of black and Republican legislators, not only created more black-majority districts but rendered many neighboring seats “whiter” and more Republican. Not surprisingly, Republicans registered gains in the 1992 elections, when their senate strength rose from 9 to 13, and their house delegation increased from 23 to 27. These inroads occurred chiefly in urban areas, particularly along the Gulf Coast, in open seats vacated by retiring white Democrats, and through incumbents switching parties.

Republican ranks were also bolstered by seven Democratic legislators who switched parties during Fordice’s first year in office. Significantly, six of them were able to win reelection under their new colors in the 1992 special election. Fordice played an active role in that year’s legislative elections, campaigning and raising funds for more than a dozen Republican candidates. This activism prompted many Democratic lawmakers to consider how the party could protect its traditional domination of the legislature. House Democrats soon formed an informal Democratic caucus, but the group found it difficult to exert any real power, largely because of fears that a more activist legislative agenda and enforcement of party discipline would spark further defections to the GOP. Also, no comparable organization was formed in the senate. Legislators continued to vest the power of making committee assignments and designating chairmanships with the house speaker and lieutenant governor (even under the Republican Briggs), and each chamber’s leader selected chairmen from both parties.17

As the 1992 presidential election began, few national observers expected Mississippi’s seven electoral votes to be seriously contested since Republicans had won over 60 percent of the vote in the state in 1984 and 1988. Because of voter anxiety about the economy and because their ticket boasted two candidates

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