Democrats are so used to losing statewide elections in blood-red Mississippi that they hardly worry about a candidate for governor anymore. Still, polls took place days before Tuesday’s elections

Democratic

The nominee Brandon Presley is a second cousin of the other Presley, who lived down the road in Tupelo, as Brandon says, in a close race with the scandal-ridden Republican governor. Tate Reeves, in what the nonpartisan Cook Political Report called the most surprising race among several gubernatorial contests this off-year election season.

To win, Presley must generate high turnout among black voters, who make up 38% of Mississippi’s eligible voters, a larger share than in any other state. By Presley’s own calculation: to gain an outright majority and avoid a runoff,

he needs enough

Black voters must make up 34% of the electorate, as they did in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president, but more than in the two previous gubernatorial elections and 9 out of 10 must elect him.

That is the problem: Black rise.

While James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist in neighboring Louisiana, repeatedly gets stomach aches during his podcast and TV appearances, Democrats across the country are failing to mobilize black voters, and especially young black voters, in the numbers that their party needs to win elections.

Carville didn’t even find much comfort last year when Democrats won far more elections in the 2022 midterm elections than either party expected. As he looks to 2024 and worries about President Biden’s re-election prospects, he laments, “The biggest story in my mind from 2022 is the terribly low Black turnout.”

That makes the race in Mississippi, where it has been 24 years since a Democrat was elected governor, something of a test case for the party, a test to make black voters believe that Democrats hear them and that their votes matter.

Presley leans deep into a personal story that is even more difficult than Elvis’ original story, and one that resonates with voters in his impoverished state. He lives in what he calls a stoplight town, Nettleton, and in the same house where he grew up and could see through holes in the floor at the dirt below. (It’s now been nicely renovated, as a campaign video shows.)

His alcoholic father was murdered when Presley was eight. The family was so poor that the power was cut off. Now he runs utilities in northern Mississippi as a fourth-term member of the state Public Service Commission, after serving as mayor of Nettleton. Presley, a conservative Democrat, the only breed with a prayer for statewide election in Mississippi, is pro-gun rights, anti-abortion and populist.

Reeves, Presley says, is only looking out for himself and his wealthy friends, like those who gave new meaning to the term welfare fraud by sacrificing government welfare funds for personal use. (

Reeves denies involvement because he wasn’t governor at the time, but he was

lieutenant governor and head of the legislative committee

who oversaw state social spending.)

Presley is campaigning on promises to address crying needs, especially in health care and education, while Reeves reflects his party’s fixation on culture wars. A headline on the news site Mississippi Today summed up the dichotomy: In new TV ads, Presley promotes helping poor Mississippians, while Reeves pushes the ban on trans athletes.

It’s a wonder that Reeves would actually invent a problem that affects at most a negligible portion of his population if he fails to address the problems. trials that affect so many of her constituents.

Mississippi is deep in the nation’s basement when it comes to measures of overall poverty, child poverty, and maternal health and mortality. And Reeves remains adamantly opposed to the one policy that could do the most to improve lives: expanding Medicaid by accepting billions of dollars in federal funds under the Affordable Care Act of 2010 to help hundreds of thousands of Mississippians get health insurance .

Meanwhile, hospitals across the state are closing because there are too many patients who cannot pay. Still, Reeves vowed in his annual State of the State address to resist the left’s push for endless, government-run health care. Presley, who has pledged to work on Medicaid expansion, responded from a closed ER: It’s no surprise that we lead the nation in the deaths of children under the age of one. How is that pro-life?

Reeves usually tries to tie Presley to Biden. On Tuesday, he got help from former President Trump, who released a video chatting about Biden’s people owning Presley. Reeves also tried to impeach Presley by association with another Democrat, the governor of California. Gavin Newsom, but Presley responds that Reeves and Newsom deserve each other – they’re both part of a bunch of elites who sit in jacuzzis and wear penny loafers.

Presley has been competitive with Reeves in raising money, and the national Democratic Party has invested more than in previous races in Mississippi. He is seen as a good campaigner, drawing a larger and more diverse audience than recent Democratic gubernatorial candidates.

Reeves started the year heavily favored given Mississippi’s political leanings. But he has shown some weakness within his party, while Presley has made progress among some white moderates, but especially

gadget

Black voters.

He has had

help from the state’s most prominent black Democrat, former House Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson on Jan. 6, and even from Oscar winner and Mississippian Morgan Freeman.

So it was that the Cook Political Report shifted its position

on the race

: from “solid Republican” to “probably Republican” to, last week, simply “thin Republican.”

Presley just has to keep pushing, with a message that appeals to people

Black voters

in his state and convinces them that there is power in numbers

as

they turn out. As Presley tells the audience, Republicans are hoping black voters won’t turn out to vote in November.

Of course he hopes they do, very much.

The same challenge applies to Biden and the Democrats next November. Their work should be well underway.

@jackiekcalmes