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By Thigpen Posted in 2007 | Mississippi — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

When Haley Barbour took office as governor of Mississippi four years ago, he made good on a campaign promise to make tort reform his first priority. After the new House Speaker and his cronies refused to act, Barbour used one of the few powers a governor has under the Mississippi constitution: he called a special session and forced the issue to be dealt with.

He won.

Today, the governor tells potential suitors, “Mississippi is open for business.” Toyota, among others, apparently concurs. When the automaker recently announced plans to build a $1.3 billion plant in Mississippi, a top company official made clear that Toyota would not have chosen Mississippi if not for tort reform. A recent survey found that 95% of the members of the state chamber of commerce believe Mississippi is headed in the right direction under Barbour’s leadership, not only because of tort reform but also for his performance following Hurricane Katrina.

Read on . . .

Trial lawyers do not share that exuberance for Barbour and his success, and on Tuesday, they will have a chance to avenge the loss of their pot of gold. All 174 legislative seats and eight statewide offices, including the governorship, will be on the ballot. One of the trial lawyers’ own, John Arthur Eaves, is the Democratic nominee for governor. Another from their ranks, state Rep. Jamie Franks, is the Democrats’ nominee for lieutenant governor. Attorney General Jim Hood is not a trial lawyer, but he has a cozy relationship with them. His top donor was awarded $14 million in fees for eight months’ work in one case. Republicans are trying to tie Hood to the less popular lawyers at the top of the Democratic ticket, asking voters if they want to put “the law firm of Eaves, Franks, and Hood” in charge of the state.

Trial Lawyers Punish Stray Democrats

Not surprisingly, plaintiffs’ attorneys are almost exclusively backing Democrats, but they don’t mind knocking off Democrats who don’t comply with their agenda - even one who has won eight statewide elections.

Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, a trial lawyer who collected a reported $1 billion as the lead attorney in the settlement between major tobacco companies and state attorneys general a decade ago, created a political action committee this summer with one donor and one aim. The one donor, with a deposit of $250,000, was Scruggs himself. The one aim: unseating Democrat George Dale, the longest-serving insurance commissioner in the country, who was seeking a ninth four-year term. Scruggs, who lost one of his own homes to Hurricane Katrina and has represented clients whose homes were also damaged or destroyed (including his brother-in-law, U.S. Senator Trent Lott), accused Dale of defending insurance companies instead of homeowners after the storm.

On Aug. 7, Scruggs exacted his revenge. Dale lost the Democratic nomination to former state fiscal officer Gary Anderson.

The state Democratic Executive Committee, headed by trial lawyer and former congressman Wayne Dowdy, celebrated Dale’s defeat. Earlier this year, the committee voted to remove Dale from the Democratic primary ballot, ostensibly because he had publicly supported George W. Bush in 2004. It was too late for Dale to file as a Republican or Independent, so he sued the party, won, and was placed back on the ballot, only to lose to Anderson.

The tort bar is investing heavily in legislative races. In addition to support for individual candidates, they are pouring their cash into political action committees. Their own PAC, called “Justice for All Mississippians,” has raised about $400,000 as of their last report (they seem to have missed the latest report deadline, which violates a law that is selectively enforced by the Attorney General). House Speaker Billy McCoy’s PAC has taken in almost $800,000, most of which has come from trial lawyers. McCoy, a populist New Deal-style Democrat, will be challenged for the Speakership in January by Rep. Jeff Smith, a conservative Democrat who supported tort reform and who is likely to have the votes of House Republicans as well as his fellow conservative Democrats.

If McCoy is replaced as speaker, a major impediment to Governor Barbour’s agenda will be removed. In the tort reform battle, for instance, when an apparent majority of the House wanted to vote on the tort reform bill that was stalled in committee (the committee to which McCoy had assigned the bill was chaired by a trial lawyer appointed by McCoy), the Speaker forced an immediate change in the House rule that allowed a majority of members to “petition” a bill out of committee. McCoy, in part because of that move and in part because he is the most visible and powerful Democrat in the state, has been a major issue in some House races, where Republicans - and some Democrats - are advertising their pledge to vote for a new Speaker.

Barbour and the Rise of the Republican Party

Of course, tort reform is only part of Mississippi’s political story. The developmental stage of the two-party system could be described as late puberty - it’s near maturity, but its voice still cracks a little. In some parts of the state, Democratic primaries are still the only realistic venue for local candidates, regardless of their ideology. In statewide races, however, Republicans have become dominant. The last time the state voted for a Democrat for president was three decades ago, when Jimmy Carter, a Southerner, beat Gerald Ford. And the last time it sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate was in 1982, when the young Haley Barbour failed in his bid to unseat legendary Sen. John Stennis.

Thirty years ago, there were only three Republicans in the state legislature. This year, for the first time since Reconstruction, the GOP gained a majority in the state Senate, due to special elections and two party switchers. (This “takeover” had no real practical impact, as there are no party caucuses in the Senate and chairmanships are not determined exclusively by party affiliation.)

Haley Barbour can legitimately take credit for much of the party’s success. His political and organizational skills were honed in the early 1970s , when he served as executive director of the state party. He later carried those skills to the national party, where, in 1994, he oversaw the party’s machine as it took both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

In the last four years, Barbour has been effective in setting many policy battles as partisan ones, especially when he and Speaker McCoy disagree. At least partially at Barbour’s urging, all GOP House members this year committed to voting against McCoy for Speaker in 2008. In most states, it would not be news for one party to vote against another party’s candidate for Speaker. But in the Mississippi legislature, party affiliation has not been a major factor until now.

McCoy, like other Speakers, has appointed both Democrats and Republicans to chair committees, so some Republicans who now have (or hoped to get) a chairmanship have been loyal to McCoy. But those Republicans have either felt the heat from Barbour to toe the party line, or they expect McCoy to name only Democrats to chair committees if he is re-elected Speaker.

Tuesday’s Elections

Democrats tell voters they stand for the “little man” against big business, which fits nicely with the rhetoric of trial lawyers who have made millions helping the poor and the helpless “little man.” This year, they are united against their common enemy, Barbour.

The traditional foot soldiers of the Democratic Party - labor unions, poverty groups, and minority rights advocates - have not left the battlefield. But the state party, which closed its headquarters a few years ago due to lack of money, is flush with funds from plaintiffs attorneys, who now control the party’s battle plan.

Barbour will win his election, but not by the margins most people seem to be expecting. Anything above 55% will be a major victory. His opponent, John Arthur Eaves, is aggressively pursuing the social conservative vote. He uses religious imagery at every chance, and says he is pro-life and pro-gun, he’s against illegal immigration, and he’s for prayer in schools. (He obviously has no plans to run for national office as a Democrat, but it works in Mississippi.)

The real test of Barbour’s impact will be the down ticket and legislative races, where Republicans - and even some Democrats - have invoked the name of Haley Barbour as often as GOP presidential contenders use the name of Ronald Reagan.

With legislative redistricting in the hands of the next legislature, the effects of this election will reverberate for decades to come. Barbour and the trial lawyers know this and have put considerable resources into statehouse races. The results on Tuesday will determine whether trial lawyers will be emboldened by their success and press for repeal of Barbour’s tort reforms, or whether they will ride the Democratic Party train into the wilderness of legislative irrelevance.

Forest Thigpen is president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, an independent think tank in Jackson, Mississippi that advances the ideals of limited government, free markets, and strong traditional families. The views expressed here are the author’s and not necessarily those of the Center.