State Sen. Chris McDaniel finished over 1,000 votes ahead of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate. But McDaniel — with 49.5 percent of the vote — is short of a majority, the threshold needed to avoid a runoff. So we’ll have that runoff June 24. […] Read more »
McDaniel’s ‘Friends and Neighbors’
In his classic book Southern Politics in State and Nation, V.O. Key Jr. wrote about the importance of “friends and neighbors” in one-party southern elections. More than half a century after the book was written, strength at home powered yet another Deep South candidate. Tuesday night featured about as dramatic […] Read more »
One Party, Two Factions: South’s Republicans Look a Lot Like Its 1970s Democrats
… As the Democrats’ regional fortunes have waned and Republicans have taken over statehouses and congressional delegations, the cultural and ideological divisions of the so-called Dixiecrats are now found under a different party banner. With the Republican nomination tantamount to victory in the general election, incumbents are increasingly facing primaries, […] Read more »
The Deep South and Medicaid Expansion
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) expands Medicaid so that it can provide health insurance to a larger pool of low income uninsured adults, including adults with no children and whose incomes are below about $16,000 a year. … In the Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South […] Read more »