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In Mississippi, Ruling Is Seen as Racial Split
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Jul 18, 2007 09:34pm |
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| Category | Legal Ruling |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Thursday, July 19, 2007 03:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | A federal court ruling in June that forces voters to register by party could return Mississippi to the days of racially polarized politics, as many white Democrats warn that thousands of white voters will now opt definitively for the Republican Party.
As a result of the ruling, which was handed down June 8 and barring an appeal will 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 with horror and black leaders with indifference. Not for the first time in the South, Republicans and blacks have achieved a de facto unspoken alliance of common interests that has 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 white voters go Republican in these districts, so too, will white candidates and office-holders, ending a persistent anomaly in a state that easily went twice for President Bush but where hundreds of local officeholders remain Democrats. As elsewhere in the South, grass-roots leaders tend to be moderate Democrats with roots in the New Deal.
“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 a veteran consultant and onetime chief of staff to former Gov. Ray Mabus, a Democrat. |
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