When Delbert Killed a Conservative’s Career

Delbert Hosemann claims to be a “Reagan guy.” But would a true “Reagan guy” go after a real conservative leader and ruin their career? Of course not. But Delbert Hosemann is not a true “Reagan guy,” his rhetoric to the contrary. Only a liberal Democrat would do such a dastardly thing. But that’s exactly what Delbert the Democrat did to one of the Mississippi Senate’s most conservative members. 

A few weeks ago, Senator Jenifer Branning, a Delbert shill who represents District 18 (Leake, Neshoba, Winston), was in Leake County speaking on behalf of Delbert Hosemann and attempted to defend the Lt. Governor against the allegation that he used re-districting to cut Senator Melanie Sojourner out of her district. But Senator Branning, like her benefactor, Delbert Hosemann, is lying.

One would be hard pressed to find a truer conservative than Melanie Sojourner, who has been at the forefront of every major fight for Mississippi conservative values during her two terms in office. Yet Hosemann told his aides and those working on re-districting, like Branning and Senator Daniel Sparks, to “get rid of her district.”

During her speech, Branning claimed to want the voters to “have all the facts, not just some of the facts, all of the facts. I appreciate the whole truth.” But that’s not what she did during her speech. She presented only her truth and her very select facts.

So, let’s look at the dubious claims made by Senator Branning and refute it with the whole truth:

Branning claimed that she “studied that map and did a deep dive into it.” But this is untrue, since the new map with the new districts was presented to the Senate just before a vote was scheduled on it. This is a long-standing liberal Democratic tactic employed by Delbert to ram it through with little debate.

Branning stated that Sojourner’s district had “such a high black voting age population that it had only been held by a Republican two times in the state’s history.” The truth is that there are other districts in the state that have a higher percentage of black votes than Sojourner’s and they had never been held by Republicans. So why not go after one of those?

Branning stated that the “truth is, while we did collapse one Republican district, we have 36 solid Republican ones.”  

But, again, the real truth is that one of the districts Branning voted to keep is statistically a much weaker Republican district than Sojourner’s, which means that Mississippi could have had 37 solid Republican districts.

Also, we can point out that Branning, in an effort led by Delbert Hosemann himself, voted to protect all 16 Democrat districts instead of working to gain an additional Republican district.

Aside from Branning’s less-than-truthful remarks, here are some additional claims made by Delbert and his minions:

1.  Sojourner’s district lost population and the demographics changed.

FALSE. With the new census data, Sojourner’s district was still within the required range of voters and the black voting age population was relatively unchanged.

2.  Delbert’s people claimed there was a population loss of 60,000 in the Delta that forced them to eliminate a district.  

FALSE. Sojourner’s district is three hours from the Delta. There are six or seven districts, depending on what is counted, that touch the Delta. If they lost that many people then that equals almost one Senate district. They could have collapsed those in the Delta down to one last district. The problem there is that by taking that route it would have gotten rid of a Democratic district. And obviously Delbert didn’t want that so they went after a very conservative Republican.

3.  Delbert and his minions claimed that they had to get rid of a Republican district to comply with what the Voting Rights Act requires in terms of minority districts.  

FALSE. Mississippi has more minority districts than the Voting Rights Act requires. In fact, two more than the required limit. 

So, as you can see, Branning is not telling the “whole truth,” as she claims. She’s only telling you, the voters, what she and Delbert want you to know.

This is further proof that Delbert Hosemann is not who is claims to be. He’s no “Reagan guy.” He’s not a true Republican. He’s Delbert the Democrat, a destroyer of conservative careers and with it conservative policies.