Democrat Brandon Presley (Yes, That Presley) Makes Final Pitch To Mississippi Voters Ahead of Tuesday’s Gubernatorial Election 

In deep-red Mississippi, voters will head to the polls on Tuesday for what has emerged as a surprisingly competitive race for governor. 

Both candidates face hurdles. An ongoing corruption scandal involving former professional football star Brett Favre and a new volleyball stadium has plagued sitting Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ campaign at the same time as the state’s rural hospital system teeters on the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, Commissioner Brandon Presley — cousin to rock n’ roll legend Elvis Presley — has to not only mobilize, but win over voters as a Democrat in one of the nation’s most reliably Republican strongholds.

It’s one of only three gubernatorial races this year, but each has presented a potentially significant shift that could send ripples across the South as more issues, like Medicaid expansion and transgender rights, are being decided at the state level. In Louisiana, Attorney General Jeff Landry won the governor’s race last month, flipping the only Democratic governor’s seat in the Deep South — previously held by Gov. John Bel Edwards — from blue to red. Kentucky incumbent Andy Breshear appears locked in a tight race with Republican state Attorney General Daniel Cameron. A Presley win on Tuesday could provide Democrats with a lifeline in the region ahead of next year’s presidential election. 

A recent poll sponsored by the Democratic Governors Association showed the race nearly tied with Reeves at 46% and Presley at 45%, and last month, the Cook Political Report, which analyzes races across the country, moved the race rating from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.” 

Not to mention, Presley significantly outraised Reeves. Since January, Presley raised $5 million more than Reeves, according to figures filed last week. 

Still, Presley faces an uphill battle on Tuesday, according to Republican strategist Austin Barbour: “Mississippi is a conservative state, and that’s why you still give Tate Reeves the advantage on Election Day.” 

Barbour said he’s not surprised by how competitive the race has become considering how much money Presley raised, noting a significant investment from national Democrats. 

“The demographics are there for Democrats if they can be funded and if they can be taken seriously, to have a chance on Election Day. And that’s sort of the race that we’ve been in for many months,” he said. 

Inside Elections analyst and reporter Jacob Rubashkin echoed Barbour’s comments in a separate conversation with The Messenger, noting that “it’s very difficult for a Democrat to win in Mississippi.” 

“The math is just brutal,” Rubashkin said.  

That math, however, hasn’t deterred Presley. Despite having already visited all 82 counties in the state during the campaign, he continues to make stops — visiting everywhere from college campuses to local businesses and small towns, pitching a message of unity over partisan politics in the final few days before the election. 

After completing his 82-county journey a few weeks back, Presley said he estimated the campaign made an additional 50 stops since then. “We’re going back over,” he told The Messenger last Thursday, while visiting small business and soul food restaurant, Mama Ruby’s, in Brookhaven, Mississippi — his second stop of multiple for the day. 

Earlier in the day, he stopped to speak with a room full of voters in Vicksburg, Mississippi, a city west of Jackson perched on the bluff of the Mississippi River near the Louisiana border.

“When I got in this race, it wasn’t just to be governor for Democrats in Mississippi, it was to be governor for everybody in Mississippi,” Presley said, speaking at a community center in Vicksburg. 

“That includes Republicans and Democrats and Independents. Black Mississippians, white Mississippians, rich Mississippians, poor Mississippians, all Mississippians — not just one part of our state. And that’s how we’re going to win on Tuesday, this is a coalition campaign,” he continued.  

Mississippi, according to the most recent census, was made up of nearly 40% Black residents, a major — and largely untapped — voting group given the historic disarray of the state Democratic party. And Presley isn’t afraid to speak about the deep-rooted racial divisions in the state.

“I’m just going to talk straight to you, they’re banking on Black voters not showing up,” Presley said, receiving vocal agreements from the audience.  

“Show ’em different, rub their nose in it on Tuesday,” he continued. “Because the truth is, this bunch has divided our state long enough. They’ve taken White people like me from rural country backgrounds and have pitted us against Black people in this state for decades for two reasons: Money and power.” 

Reeves took the governor’s mansion in 2020 with roughly 52% of the vote. While in office, he has built a solidly conservative record, and has continued to tout his record on the campaign trail. His campaign did not respond to The Messenger’s request for comment.  

Presley on the other hand, has attempted to thread the needle as a Democrat in the conservative state, like calling himself “pro-life from the womb to the tomb” and a “Red-Letter Christian,” referring to the text in the Bible that Jesus spoke himself. And Presley uses that message to draw attention to one of his and Reeve’s major points of disagreement: Medicaid expansion. 

“We’re losing $1 billion a year that could be going to our hospitals and bringing health care to 230,000 people,” Presley said to the crowd in Vicksburg on Thursday. “It’s about 230,000 souls. Behind those cold numbers are warm bodies of people, people that need help.” Mississippi is one of a handful of states that have not accepted the Medicaid expansion made possible through the Affordable Care Act.

“Where else in your opportunity before they put you in the ground, would you have the opportunity to say, ‘I played a role in 230,000 lives being better?’ Everybody tells you, ‘This is the most important election in history.’ You hear that every four years. The truth of the matter is there are going to be 230,000 people that are not going to get healthcare if we lose this election,” he said. 

Polls have shown a substantial majority of Mississippi voters support Medicaid expansion, but Republican governors and the GOP-led state legislature have blocked it at every turn, a policy Reeves has indicated he will continue to follow.

Of course, whether voters agree with Presley’s pitch will only get him so far. Although he has raised more money this year than Reeves, the governor has the advantages of incumbency and a much stronger state party apparatus.

According to Rubashkin of Inside Elections, Presley will have to do two specific things on Election Day: “Motivate the level of Black turnout that the state hasn’t seen since Barack Obama in 2012,” as well as get as close to 30% of white voters as possible. 

Although it’s a long shot, Rubashkin still said he thinks Presley has a chance. 

“He’s got a shot,” Rubashkin said. “Sometimes you look at a race and you say, ‘I cannot imagine a world in which this candidate wins. There is no realistic scenario.’ That’s not the case here.” 

That long-shot chance has motivated supporters across the state, including 81-year-old Nanci Youngblood of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who attended a rally for Presley on Thursday evening. 

“We just feel like that for the first time in a long time, we have got a chance to elect a Democratic governor that is not just a Democratic governor, but a really, really good one,” Youngblood said. 

Presley’s campaign isn’t the only group looking to engage with Black voters in the state. The NAACP’s local and national organizations have also invested in “Get Out The Vote” efforts ahead of Tuesday’s election. 

The group invested in what they called “Front Porch Focus Groups” where they spoke with “low propensity African-American voters” about their attitudes toward voting, and have also knocked on close to 100,000 doors this year, according to Charles Taylor, Mississippi NAACP Executive Director. 

“For the rest of the world, it’s an off year. For us, it is the year. Our longest ballot is in 2023 and 2024 is just presidential, our shortest ballot,” he said. 

“African American voters in Mississippi are an important piece of the electorate,” Taylor said, later adding, “We have to recognize that if we want African-American voters to turn out, we have to invest in African-American voters.”

According to Taylor, there needs to be year-round investment, not just before an election, “and that’s not something that a campaign necessarily can do,” he said. If Mississippi wants to be the “next Georgia,” which flipped from a reliably red state to purple during the 2020 election, there “has to be year round investment and it has to be deep investment,” Taylor said. 

And whether it’s possible for Mississippi to become a more progressive state? “Not only do I think it’s possible. I think it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of when,” Taylor said.