Jim Hood: You can't win Governor.
Years ago a friend of mine, a Democrat, took me out to lunch to announce his candidacy for a statewide position. He was elated at the coming opportunity. I looked back at him and said simply, “Don’t do it.” Why? he inquired, as I had most assuredly been the first in his world to discourage. “Because you can’t win.” But his friends and family were cheering him on, buttressed by hope and a poll where they thought they detected vulnerability in the Republican candidate.
He ran. He got shellacked. And the night before the loss, his friends and family were still telling him it was going to happen.
Fast-forward to today. Current Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood says he is doing what he can to get ready to run for the privilege of living in the gubernatorial mansion in the near future.
None too few Republicans have been waiting for this moment.
It’s not that Hood won’t be formidable in the coming election. He will be. But he can’t win. And if he had more than a cheering section around him urging him to run, he would know this.
The state GOP would love to see him run, though, and behind closed doors they will tell you as much. His doing so will vacate an office a Republican will most assuredly win; thus the full slate of state-wide offices will belong to the GOP. The current AG has been hard to remove given Mississippians’ penchant for incumbency.
And while a poll here and there may suggest Republican weakness or Hood strength, don’t believe it; a Hood candidacy for the office of governor is doomed. In all likelihood, the already impressive campaign coffers of Tate Reeves will be too much to overcome. But that is not the biggest reason why a Democrat running for office in Mississippi at the state-wide level is destined for loss. Hood loses because he belongs to a party that, nationally, has sided with a litany of economic and social platforms that don’t fly in the Deep South—pro-abortion, pro-homosexual rights, anti-gun, pro-taxation, pro-government growth, pro-education lobby…and, unfortunately, the list goes on and on.
I have met Jim Hood, albeit briefly. He is—by all appearances—a nice guy and, again, would be a formidable presence in a race. But being the state’s leading Democrat and an affable gentleman can’t overcome the millstone hanging around your neck that is a Democratic party liberal beyond all reason.
Once when I was in conversation with former Governor Ronnie Musgrove, he suggested that politics was “cyclical” in this state. I smiled. Nothing cyclical about politics being 100 percent Democrat for virtually the entire history of the state…until it wasn’t. And if by “cyclical” you mean that things are bending back around to the politics of the left…well, no, “cyclical” isn’t happening in Mississippi—nor will it for some time, if ever.
Hood says he is waiting on his wife for permission. Not so sure of the wisdom of dragging your family into the public eye like that; even so, let’s see if she has the good sense to sit this one out, given the impossible odds of Mississippi voting for failed liberalism.