CALEB BEDILLION Municipal elections could yield greater GOP dominance

There aren’t too many bright spots for the Democratic Party in Mississippi, electorally speaking. And with this year’s municipal election cycle, an already dim landscape may just about be completely dark for the party.

Democrats currently hold the mayor’s office in the three largest cities in Northeast Mississippi: Tupelo, Starkville and Oxford. Starkville and Oxford are college towns and trend bluer than the surrounding areas, but Tupelo has long been safely Republican, with the GOP holding a super majority on the City Council as well as a nearly 30-year run on the mayor’s office until 2013.

When Jason Shelton snapped that streak in 2013 and was elected mayor of Tupelo, the party sat up and noticed. He quickly earned the “rising star” label and was widely perceived as a future candidate for statewide office.

In 2017, local Republicans didn’t even field a candidate against Shelton.

Four years later, however, upcoming municipal elections seriously threaten the Democratic hold of multiple mayoral seats.

Shelton’s not running for reelection, and the GOP is eager to regain the seat. Two Republicans are in the running to replace Shelton – City Councilman Markel Whittington and County Supervisor Todd Jordan – with local attorney Victor Fleitas announcing last week he try to hold the mayor’s office for Democrats.

Quietly, local Democrats are frank: Fleitas has a strong personal story, with immigrant roots and a military background, but the race is going to an uphill battle.

At the same time, Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill, an incumbent Democrat, announced recently that in her reelection bid she will shed party labels and run as an independent.

In other words, the racial polarization of partisan affiliation in Mississippi continues to deepen and there appears to be no ceiling on just how dominant the Republican Party can grow in Mississippi within any voting district that doesn’t have a majority of Black voters.

The example of Shelton is instructive. He won in 2013 with a coalition of younger voters, moderate and business oriented Republicans and traditionally Democratic voters. He was a fresh face in city politics promising a revitalization of civic energies alongside fiscal conservatism.

It was a winning campaign, but not exactly a template the party could take statewide. His local roots and East Tupelo credentials were a key part of Shelton’s appeal. His fiscal conservatism would have awkwardly translated to a statewide Democratic campaign. And Tupelo trends Republican, but typically a more moderate brand of the GOP.

But even with all that said, Shelton’s victory seemed to prove that in the right circumstances, with the right campaign and the right candidate, a Democrat could break through.

But since then, there have been precious few examples of that happening.

Another factor any Democrat mayoral hopefuls will have to navigate: the ever accelerating toxicity of national politics. In 2013, Shelton shrugged off attacks from the state party based on his donations to national Democratic figures, including Hillary Clinton

In 2020, however, Shelton’s unstinting criticism on social media of President Donald Trump have garnered significant blowback locally. Even Shelton’s own chief operations officer, Don Lewis, sought to distance himself from Shelton’s Twitter barbs during a short-lived mayoral run.

The state Democratic Party is more or less constantly promising fresh efforts to renew the party, build new infrastructure and recruit quality candidates. If that talk has any substance at all, then municipal elections are a key test. If Democrats can’t be competitive in places like Oxford or even Tupelo, then vast swathes of the state are far, far out of reach.