PHILADELPHIA, Miss.— Mississippi needs to lower its grocery and income taxes, three of the state’s top Republican leaders argued at the Neshoba County Fair last week.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, State Auditor Shad White and Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson all voiced support for the policy, which was a core tenet of Democrat Brandon Presley’s failed campaign for governor last year.
During his speech on July 31, the lieutenant governor said that Mississippi has reduced income taxes by $524 million and lowered the franchise taxes during his time in office but that the state still needs to reduce its grocery tax.
“But we haven’t lowered the one we need to, and that’s the grocery tax. This year, it’s time to lower the grocery tax,” Hosemann said during his remarks at the fair.
As he did during the 2023 campaign, Gov. Tate Reeves has remained silent about calls to reduce or eliminate the grocery tax—the highest in the nation at 7%. But he did tout his success at reducing the state’s income tax to 4.7% in his speech on Aug. 1.
Gipson said the state should cut or reduce property, land, grocery and income taxes because they take away from working people’s savings.
“The workers of Mississippi are our backbone. It’s time for somebody to step up for them for a change and that’s me,” he told the crowd at the Neshoba County Fair on Aug. 1.
Auditor White Focuses on DEI, Attacking Hosemann
Instead of using taxpayer dollars to fund diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public schools and universities, Republican State Auditor Shad White suggested lowering the income and grocery taxes. Following years of attacks on so-called “critical race theory” and so-called “wokeness”, many conservative Republicans like White have trained their ire on DEI programs that promote racial and gender diversity.
During his remarks, White noted that his job as state auditor was not to change the policies, but to detect fraud, waste and abuse in state government.
“I always have to think of the fact that, well, we could be paying for a tax but we’ve got all this money that we’re wasting in state government. It’s just going down the drain,” he said in his speech. White called Hosemann “DEI Delbert” because bills that would have eliminated funding for DEI programs in the state’s institutions of higher learning have died under Hosemann’s tenure as Senate president.
Political observers have long speculated that White and Hosemann could both run in the Republican primary for governor in 2028, after Gov. Reeves finishes his second term in office.
Speaker Vows Continued Fight for Medicaid Expansion
Republican Mississippi House Speaker Rep. Jason White, R-West, said at the fair on Aug. 1 that expanding Medicaid may not be the most popular idea among conservatives but that he was willing to work on a solution to get health care to more working Mississippians after hearing from citizens.
The Mississippi House and Senate failed to pass a Medicaid-expansion bill in the 2024 legislative session despite drafting several proposals with different ways to get health care for working Mississippians who cannot afford private insurance. The proposals included varying degrees of work requirements, which became a point of contention between the House under White and the Senate under Lt. Gov. Hosemann.
“For too long, for political reasons, for self-interest, politicians have refused to engage in meaningful debate to address problems in our health-care system, specifically as it relates to rural health care and the delivery of it for my people, for your people,” White said. “I’ll admit to you, I was one of those who was willing to look the other way for a long time, but when (people) … began to demand solutions to find access to health care for working Mississippians, we began to listen.”
The Senate is still looking for ways in the upcoming legislative session to restore the ballot initiative and expand Medicaid for Mississippians, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said during his speech at the fair on July 31. Gov. Tate Reeves told reporters on Aug. 1 that he was still opposed to Medicaid expansion.
Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson spoke out against expanding Medicaid, which he called “welfare expansion” in his speech.
“We don’t need another welfare program; we need folks to get back to work, and jobs is where it is,” Gipson said.
Women’s Reproductive Health
Gov. Tate Reeves and Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson celebrated Mississippi’s part in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
Under Reeves’ leadership as lieutenant governor in the Senate, the state passed a 15-week abortion ban, drafted by an Arizona-based right-wing Christian legal organization, that resulted in the Dobbs case.
During his speech, Reeves noted that in 2014, he also spoke on the Neshoba County Fair pavilion stage “about defending the unborn.”
“The biggest win for the conservative movement in my lifetime: The overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Reeves said in his speech on Aug. 1. “Now, approximately 200,000 lives are saved all across America each and every year because of a dream that started right here in Neshoba County.”
Men should not control women’s reproductive health because men cannot get pregnant and produce a child, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Ty Pinkins argued in his speech. He is challenging Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, who opposes abortion, in November’s general election.
“As a man, I am not qualified to tell a woman what to do with her body. That’s between her, her God and her doctor,” Pinkins said on Aug. 1.
When a reporter asked about how Mississippi can improve its health-care system and lower what are among the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the nation, Reeves pointed to the fact that he signed a bipartisan bill into law that gives presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women as one of the ways the state is working to improve its health-care system.
“Our public health statistics are not good. We all know that. Now, I will tell you that a lot of the reason for that is not directly related to government,” Reeves told reporters on Aug. 1.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the state still needs to work on women’s health care, child care and human trafficking.
“Being pro-life means being pro-birth, also pro-family and pro-child,” he said in his speech on July 31.
Elections and Voting
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said he has worked to help pass legislation that prevents non-U.S. citizens from voting in Mississippi’s elections. Though Watson claims that non-citizens have attempted to vote in state elections, there is no public evidence showing that it is happening in Mississippi.
He said 8,000 people are currently registered to vote in both Mississippi and Alabama, but that no one should be registered to vote in more than one state. That can happen when a person moves out of state without informing local election officials that they are moving so they can be taken off the voter rolls.
“We require all of our election machines to have paper, verifiable trials,” the secretary said in his speech on Aug. 1.
Watson announced that the state will audit all 82 counties by 2027 to ensure local election commissioners and circuit clerks “are following the law.” He said his office will also make all elected officials file campaign finances electronically “from the mayor up on to the governor” by 2025.
State Invests in Mississippi Roads, Israeli Defense
Mississippi invested $380 million in maintaining roads, bridges and infrastructure in 2023, with $30 million going to county roads and bridges, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said in his speech on July 31. He announced that the state allocated $250 million for new highways in 2024.
“Our state has been breaking records over and over and over,” Gov. Reeves said in his speech.
Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson said almost 500,000 jobs came to the state in the past year through business investments that Reeves has garnered in the agriculture, forestry and food service industries.
Mississippi made $375 million from investments since 2023 and has given $50 million in Israeli bonds through the Israeli Defense Act since 2019, State Treasurer David McRae said at the fair.
“Let’s let Mississippi rebuild Israel,” he said.
Reeves on Trump’s Attacks on Harris’ Race
At the fair, WAPT reporter Ross Adams asked Gov. Tate Reeves what he thought about former president Donald Trump’s recent lies about Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity.
Trump suggested during an interview with Black journalists last week that Harris, whose immigrant mother was an Indian woman and whose immigrant father was a Black man from Jamaica, previously identified publicly as Indian but “suddenly became a Black person” for political gain. Harris has always publicly identified as both Black and Indian; she attended college at Howard University, a historically Black university where she became a member of the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha.
“One thing I’ll tell you about Donald Trump is Donald Trump is going to be Donald Trump. I’m going to focus on the policies that Kamala Harris is looking at,” Reeves told reporters at the Neshoba County Fair.
@tatereeves dodging questions about Donald Trump claim that @VP ‘happened to turn black’ pic.twitter.com/XZcdp4zbS6
— Ross Adams (@radamsWAPT) August 1, 2024
Adams pressed further for Reeves to respond specifically to Trump’s attack.
“You’ll have to ask the president or his team what he meant by that. I will tell you she’s the most liberal senator from the state of California,” Reeves told the press, adding that he was going to focus on Harris’ record on immigration and the economy—not her race.
