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Big Winners/Losers We Know About As of Tonight
Here's a race list of who/what won and lost tonight. It's not exhaustive because we're exhausted. We'll attach numbers tomorrow. JFP endorsements have astericks:
Early Returns on Personhood 45% Yes 55 % NO; Voter ID Winning 62% So Far
Early returns (17 percent or so) indicate that (a) Phil Bryant is winning, (b) Jim Hood is winning, (c) Personhood is LOSING and (d) Voter ID is winning. More when we sort it out. A lot going on there. Follow us on Twitter @jxnfreepress #jfppolitics for fast news!
Start the Party Right: What Are Your Predictions?
OK, it's that time when you first get to the party and haven't had enough to drink. Or the part of karaoke when Todd Stauffer sings "I Am Woman" to try to shake up some activity. So let's get this party started right with some election predictions: Who's gonna win? Lose? How much? (You can use your Facebook log-in to post even if you're not a member.) Bring it.
Polls Have Closed; JFP Team Ready to Roll
Take a deep breath, all. The polls just closed. Who will be our next governor, attorney general, treasurer, legislators? Will Personhood pass? Voter ID? Eminent Domain? The JFP team—Todd, Ronni, Valerie, R.L., Lacey, Elizabeth, Robbie—are all ready to analyze the heck out of tonight's results—and bring you the quirk and craziness that is Mississippi politics. You can follow our main Twitter feed @jxnfreepress and go straight to the special front page of the JFP site tonight, which is reconfigured into a special election page with all sorts of live blogging going on. Let us know what you think (remember you can use your Facebook log-in if you're not a member of the site). Let's roll, Mississippi.
Frank Melton is No Barack Obama
It's déjà vu all over again. Four years ago this week, I was writing a column calling for—no, begging—Jacksonians not to vote for Frank Melton as mayor in the Democratic primary.
Time to Swim, not Sink, Together
With evidence everywhere that good public education is key to our city and our state's economic future, not to mention public safety, it is time that to slay the dinosaurs of the past who don't want to fund or reform education in a way that makes sense for the most children.
Change Felony Voting Laws for All
Here's what continues to get us about former Gov. Haley Barbour's excuses for all those pardons. He keeps saying that he is a Christian and, thus, is concerned about the trustys and others whom he believes served enough time and now should be able to go vote and hunt and get professional licenses and the like. Our question to Barbour is: Where were you all these years?
Let It Shine
I'm not going to tell a lie: One of the reasons I left my home state back in 1983 was religious intolerance. That makes it all the more ironic that I have found a deeper faith than I could have imagined in the years since I've returned.
Services Aren't Like Toasters
Politicians, especially the tight-fisted ones, love to compare the government to your home. When money is tight at home, they'll explain condescendingly, you may have to send your toaster to a repair shop, put off that Disney family vacation or drive that old clunker around for another year or two.
Good Friday ... Saturday ... Monday ...
Walking on the beach last week in my undisclosed vacation spot butting up to the Gulf of Mexico, I noticed two teen girls, say around age 17, walking toward Todd and me in string bikinis. Suddenly, one of them bent down and gently picked up a big piece of plastic lying on the beach and kept walking.
Uptown Hate
When the 2000 election devolved into chad-counting in South Florida, I headed down from New York City to cover the mess for the Village Voice. And with all the talk in the media of how there couldn't possibly be any conservatives in Palm Beach I decided to see what I could turn up.
Let Us Begin Again
Not long ago, an evangelical minister and his teenage son visited me at the JFP offices. We sat in the classroom, under the watchful gaze of Emmett Till from a movie poster on the wall, and talked about being inspired to live a good life. The dad is well known in the state for his very conservative views and, well, I'm not.
Listen to the Moans
Sunday morning, I was organizing my new writing room at home and turned on the Galloway Methodist broadcast on WAPT to keep me company. I didn't pay much attention until I heard Rev. Ross Olivier challenge his audience to "listen to the moans." I pulled up a chair to listen.
We Like ‘Obamacare'
With the U.S. Supreme Court considering health-care reform, we thought we'd mention that (a) our health-insurance rates are down, (b) we appreciate the tax credits for our small business, and (c) we've already seen cases where pre-existing conditions or gaps in coverage—which used to keep employees from getting insurance—are no longer barriers to coverage.
With Gentleness and Reverence
When Todd and I used to live in Belhaven, we'd often walk in the mornings. Nearly every morning, we would watch a harried mother--often in a big SUV talking on a cell phone with at least one kid in the car--screech through the streets, presumably taking the child to school. Almost every day, we watched moms run stop signs, and more than once, had to jump out of the way to keep from getting hit.
Fight or Fight
It's an odd world where Councilman Kenny Stokes is standing with FOX News celebrities who care more about profiling young blacks than protecting citizens' rights. But in the aftermath of the Frank Melton acquittals last week, we are living in a bizarro-land populated by strange bedfellows, led by a mayor and police chief who yelp about "drug houses" but arrest no drug dealers.
Mississippians Be Damned
For more on Haley Barbour, see Donna Ladd's blog and Jackpedia: Haley Barbour
Barbour's Shameful Pardons
We first heard that then-Gov. Haley Barbour had pardoned another wife-killer Saturday night on WLBT after the Saints game. From there, the news snowballed, with another wife-killer added to the mix, culminating in a list of more than 200 pardons and grants of clemency that we were trying to sort through as the paper went to press.
A Romney Runs Through Us
Campaigning in Mississippi last week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney set off a mini-firestorm in our offices. Sometime between joking about grits and forking up some hay, down-south style, Romney uttered words that made us nearly sputter in response: "If the federal government were run more like here in Mississippi, the whole country would be a lot better off." Say what, Gov. Romney?!
Why Peterson Needs to Stay DA
I didn't know Faye Peterson from Eve when she ran for re-election four years ago. I knew much was being made about the criminal "backlog" (that she inherited). I knew that her white Republican opponent, oddly endorsed by The Clarion-Ledger, had never tried a criminal case, and that he was making a lot out of outdated crime figures.