Mississippi: Black Democrats’ Last Stand

by Dr. GS Potter | WURD Contributor | StrategyCamp | @doc_strategy

Mississippi should have been the most watched battle of the midterms. There were 2 seats up for re-election. In an election with historic turnout polarized by race, white nationalism was on the ticket in a state with a 40% black population. One of the Democratic candidates was running neck and neck with a Trump supported white nationalists that recently made a joke about lynching. He is a black man. And now, that man — Mike Espy — is in a runoff election where, if he wins, he stands to be the first black Senator in a state where the Confederate flag still flies since Reconstruction.

And the Democrats are silent.

Black Democrats have proven without a shadow of a doubt that they are the most loyal bloc of the party. They have also proven that mobilizing their votes can flip elections on their heads. The defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama saw to that. And black democrats have long demanded that the Party stop taking their votes for granted and start giving them the support and representation they have more than earned. And still, there is practically no effort going into supporting black voters in Mississippi as they try to combat the neo-Confederacy with a black Democratic candidate in a state that rests in the soil that birthed the Civil Rights movement.

That needs to change. Now.

On November 27, Mississippi voters will return to the polls to cast their ballots for either Black Democrat Mike Espy or White Nationalist Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. White Democrats are trying to write the election off as a loss and have no plans to rally behind Espy or black Mississippi. And we can’t let them do that.

If black Democrats want to send a message to white Democratic leadership that the party needs to put its money where its mouth is, then they need to come together across the nation to support their brothers and sisters in Mississippi. The entire nation needs to demand that the DNC defends all black people from Trump’s white nationalists and they need to start in Mississippi. And black communities, organizations, and leaders need to prepare to get the job done if the white Democrats refuse to do it themselves.

The time for Black Democrats to show their power is now. The place is Mississippi.

Despite what white analysts will tell you, Espy has the numbers to pull off a major upset and flip the Magnolia State from red to blue. It’s not too hard to see through their white math.

Traditional analysts use percentages when looking at election results and projections. For example, the percentage they want you to focus on right now is 16.5%. That is the number of votes that the 3rd place candidate Chris McDaniel received in the November 6 election. Why is that number important?

According to Politico, Mikey Espy received 40.6% of the vote while Cindy Hyde-Smith edged him out of the lead with 41.5%. The race between the 2 was extremely close, but analysts expect that the 16.5% of the votes received by Republican candidate Chris McDaniel will transfer over to Hyde-Smith come November 27. And this is a fair assumption.

As a far-right tea party candidate, it is highly likely that the voters that came out for McDaniel will come out either in support of Hyde-Smith or against Espy. The problem is, percentages don’t tell us much.

Percentages can make big numbers looks small, and make small numbers look big. For example, if you had $1 and found 1 more dollar, you increased the amount of money you have by 200%! But…you still only have $2. Similarly, if I said that only .0001% of Americans are killed as a result of gun violence per day, that might seem really low. If I tell you that 342 people are killed everyday with a gun in America, that may seem shocking — even though they are the same thing.

Similarly, analysts looking at the Mississippi Senate run-off are thinking that with around 57% of the vote to Espy’s 41%, there’s no point in placing any bets on Mississippi electing its first black Senator since the 1800s here in 2018. But if you look at the actual numbers, they tell a different story.

Politico reports that Hyde-Smith received close to 375,000 votes while Espy secured just over 370,000. With McDaniel’s votes transferring to the GOP candidate, that puts Espy in the underdog position with 370,000 votes to Hyde-Smith’s projected 525,000. That’s a gap of over 155,000 votes.

Let’s put that in context.

Veterans Memorial Stadium holds over 60,000 people. It would take the same amount of people it takes to sell out 2 and a half panthers game to put a black man in one of the most powerful seats in the state and the nation. But how does that translate to voters in Mississippi?

Are there 155,000 black votes to be found for Espy by November 27? You’d better believe it.

Mississippi has a voting age population of approximately 2.3 million people. Over 920,000 are black. Turnout was projected at under 40% making the black turnout (projected at 40% as well) approximately 365000. That leaves 555,000 black voters left untapped. That’s 400,000 more votes than is needed for Mike Espy to take the lead and the Senate seat away from Cindy Hyde Smith.

And they aren’t too hard to find.

Mississippi has a number of counties where black voters outnumber white voters. These counties include Warren, Yazoo, Jasper, Tallahatchie, and Sharkey. Warren is the largest with just under 23,000 black residents. It is also a red county where black voters have been ignored by the Democratic party. The remaining counties voted blue, but only by a slim margin. They have large pockets of unmobilized black voters that can be tapped into. In fact, in these counties alone there are over 45,000 black voters just waiting to be tapped.

There are a number or large counties that are majority white but that have huge black communities within them that can be mobilized to make black Mississippi history also. Hinds county, the largest county in the state, boasts 68,000 black folks. Washington county has 33,000 black residents. And Lauderdale county has 30,000 black members in their community. Oktibbeha, Jones, Sunflower, Leflore, and Bolivar counties also have black populations hovering around 20,000 a piece. That’s 231,000 black folks to add to the pool of citizens ready to mobilize to take a stand against white power in Mississippi.

With just under 300,000 residents and a voting eligible population of about 80%, that gives Espy 240,000 potential votes if the Democrats and all of black American launched a strategic effort to take Mississippi back from it’s white power handlers and put it in the hands of a black Senator. And while a 100% turnout rate is unlikely in a county, it would only take 65% of these voters to turn out for Espy to win. And that is with a 0% turnout rate for the remaining 255,000 black voters that didn’t vote in the November 6 election.

This is a race that Black Democrats can win. This is a race they deserve to win. Not only in Mississippi, but across the nation. This is a chance for black voters to formally demand that the Democratic Party take a stand for their black constituents and their candidates. It’s a chance for black Democrats to unequivocally show their power as an organized voting block and a force against white power. It is a chance for black voters to take back what is theirs in Mississippi and the Democratic party.

And if black folks across the nation demand that the Democratic party, black Democrats and allies across the nation put all their efforts into helping black Mississippi elect its first black Senator since Reconstruction — the chances look really good.

To learn more about Dr. GS Potter and the Strategic Institute for Intersectional Policy (SIIP), visit: http://strategycampsite.org/v2/