7/25/2007 6:00:00 PM
Ruling on open primaries
could upend state politics
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By ADAM NOSSITER
The New York Times
JACKSON - A federal court ruling that forces voters to register by party could return Mississippi to the days of racially polarized politics, many white Democrats are warning. They argue that thousands of white voters will now opt definitively for the Republicans.
Republican-leaning voters in Mississippi have long been able to cross party lines in primaries, voting for centrist Democrats in state and local races while staying loyal to Republican candidates in national races. But political experts here say that by limiting these voters to Republican primaries, the ruling will push centrist Democratic candidates to the Republican Party.
Most black voters in Mississippi are Democrats, and black political leaders have been pushing for years to prevent crossover voting by conservative whites in Democratic primaries. Black leaders say they want to end precisely what white Democrats here seek to preserve, a strong moderate-to-conservative voice in the Democratic Party. In the process, black leaders hope to pick up more state and local posts.
The decision last month by U.S. District Judge W. Allen Pepper allowed the legal remedy sought by black leaders, ruling that the Democratic Party in Mississippi had a right to "disassociate itself" from voters who were not genuine Democrats. Most other Southern states have open primaries.
As a result of the ruling, which was handed down June 8 and is to go into effect next year, few whites are likely to remain in the Democratic Party, experts here say, a prospect that Republicans regard with glee, white Democrats regard with horror, and black leaders, who have been pushing for the change, regard with indifference.
Not for the first time in the South, Republicans and blacks have a de facto unspoken alliance. Common-interest alliances between Republicans and black Democrats have been particularly evident in the drawing of congressional districts, where blacks are packed into majority-black districts, leaving little space for moderate white Democrats to be elected.
If the white voters go, so too, eventually, will the white candidates and office-holders, ending a persistent anomaly in this deep-red, President Bush-loving state where hundreds of local officeholders remain Democrats. As is true elsewhere in the South, grassroots leaders tend to be moderate Democrats with age-old roots in the New Deal.
In races this year for local offices like sheriff, supervisor and circuit clerk, about 2,500 of 3,000 candidates were Democrats, said W. Martin Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University.
That dominance is now threatened by the ruling by Pepper, who was a roommate of Republican Sen. Trent Lott at the University of Mississippi.
"If they are required to re-register, the Democratic Party will be a shell of its former self because I just don't think you'll see those conservative whites re-register as Democratic," said Jere Nash, who is white and is a veteran consultant and former chief of staff to Ray Mabus, a former Democratic governor.
R. Andrew Taggart, a white lawyer who succeeded Nash when Kirk Fordice, a Republican, became governor, agreed. The ruling was "very far-reaching," said Taggart. "He has essentially ruled our entire primary structure must be changed."
"If forced to make a decision," Taggart added, "a plurality of Mississippi voters will identify themselves as Republican."
Black Democrats who pushed the lawsuit that led to the ruling seemed to view the potential hemorrhaging of white voters with equanimity. One of their leaders is Ike Brown, a state Democratic Executive Committee member recently found by another federal judge to have systematically violated voting rights of whites, through intimidation and other means, as party boss in his home county of Noxubee in the eastern part of the state.
Welcoming Pepper's ruling, Brown said in an interview: "We are tired of being abused by the white Democrats in Mississippi. We have just had enough. We want the Republicans out of our party."
Democrats here have recently made efforts to rid their party of Republican leanings, attempting, for instance, to force the state's conservative insurance commissioner, George Dale, off their primary ballot because he voted for Bush. A judge put him back on.
None of these efforts has much chance at being as successful as the lawsuit, however. Ellis Turnage, the lawyer who filed it, said he was not worried about whites quitting the party. "If they want to leave, let them leave," Turnage said. "When they integrated the schools, look what happened. That's not for me to deal with."
Yet if that happens, the racial polarization of politics here could be complete. Until now, an important bridge across the racial divide in Mississippi has occurred in the state Legislature, where for three decades blacks and centrist white Democrats have formed coalitions to fund public education, or to push back against conservative Republican governors who sought cuts in social programs.
"The beauty of what I've witnessed over the last 28 years is, we've worked together," said Thomas Upton Reynolds II, the white state representative in the quiet courthouse town of Charleston in the north Mississippi hills.
Brown, by contrast, feels that Reynolds' district, and others like it, would be more properly represented by a black official - another motive cited here for pursuing closed primaries.
A stooped country lawyer with a populist bent, Reynolds has traversed much of Mississippi's four-decade emergence from segregation in the state Legislature, preoccupied with what he sees as Democratic causes - better education and health care. To get past the judge's ruling, Reynolds is counting on the voters he greets by first name in the courthouse square to support him, regardless or party or race.
"These folks, black and white, are my friends," he said.
That support, however, cannot be taken for granted in a state where 85 percent of white voters voted for Bush in 2004.
Calling the ruling a "tragedy," Reynolds said voters should be allowed to vote for the candidate of their choice, regardless of party.
"Of all the things that could have happened, this doesn't help us," he said. "It would further racially polarize Mississippi, and that's one thing we don't want."
Pepper has ordered the Mississippi Legislature to implement the new system, ruling the new primaries must be in place by Aug. 31, 2008. He also said photo identification for voters should be instituted, a requirement that is meeting resistance from some who welcome his other findings, including Turnage.
Others - old-line white Democrats - are hoping against hope that the judge's ruling will simply prove a fleeting nightmare if it is overturned in a possible appeal or muddied by the Legislature.
"If this thing comes to pass, it's the end of the Democratic Party in the state of Mississippi," said Hob Bryan, a longtime centrist state senator from the northeastern part of the state.
"I don't want to exclude anyone from the Democratic Party," Bryan said. "I want to include more people."
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