“Mississippi’s favorite scourge looks to afflict politics again this year,” writes Bill Crawford, in his latest column in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. And by scourge he means the race issue. Yet this always-volatile topic has yet to emerge in the campaign season of 2023 in Mississippi, until now, as Crawford himself is the first to raise it.

The campaign for Mississippi’s Lt. Governor will be, in the words of one writer, “the most contentious” in the state in 2023. And that’s because of the battle in the Republican primary, a fight between Senator Chris McDaniel and the incumbent, Delbert Hosemann.

It has been barely a week in the campaign for Mississippi Lt. Governor and the state’s media has already jumped in to carry water for incumbent Delbert Hosemann. They have written attack pieces against Hosemann’s opponent, Senator Chris McDaniel, and columns defending the incumbent’s less-than stellar record in office. But this early series of attacks is not a sign of strength from Hosemann; it is a sign of weakness and fear. 

“Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived.” So wrote Senator John F. Kennedy in his 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage.

Courage can be defined as strength in the face of fear, pain, or grief. Political courage is showing such strength while doing what is right, even as pressure mounts from constituents, well-funded political action committees, or one’s political opponents. Kennedy well understood that elected officials face pressure to be liked, to be re-elected, and from special interest groups to do their bidding. 

James Madison called it “a powerful instrument” and a “most complete and effectual weapon” in the hands of Congress, giving them authority over the other two branches of government. And that power was control of the purse strings of the country.

Mississippi was once a solid Democratic state. From the days of Reconstruction until the 1960s, Mississippi voted for Democrats. That’s just the way it was. But the old Democratic Party is no more, a far cry from the days of Jefferson, Jackson, Cleveland, and even JFK.