Gov. Haley Barbour (R) Elected 2003, 1st term up Jan. 2008
Born:	Oct. 22, 1947, Yazoo City
Home:	Yazoo City
Education:	Attended U. of MS; U. of MS, J.D. 1973
Religion:	Presbyterian
Marital Status:	married (Marsha)
Professional Career:	State Dir., US Census Bureau, 1969-70; RNC Committeeman, 1984-98; Dir., White House Office of Political Affairs, 1985-87; CEO, Founder, Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, 1991-present; Chmn., RNC, 1993-97.
Office	State Capitol, P.O. Box 139, Jackson 39205, 601-359-3150; Fax: 601-359-3741; Web: www.governor.state.ms.us.
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Haley Barbour was elected governor in 2003, only the second Republican to win the office since Reconstruction. He was born and grew up in Yazoo City in the Mississippi Delta. His father was a local lawyer who died of a heart attack when Haley was 2 years old, leaving his 31-year-old mother to raise the three Barbour boys. A star athlete and class valedictorian, Barbour was voted Mr. Yazoo High School and won scholarship money to attend Ole Miss but he left his senior year before graduating to take a job on Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign. He returned to Ole Miss and graduated from its law school in 1973; then he ran Gerald Ford's 1976 campaign in the Southeast and worked on John Connally's campaign for president in 1980. In 1982 he was the Republican nominee for Senate against Senator John C. Stennis, then the senior member of the Senate, a chairman of Armed Services from 1969-81 and later chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Stennis had not faced a serious challenge since 1947, when he was elected to replace Theodore G. Bilbo, and some expected that the octogenarian would not seek reelection in 1982. But he did and Barbour approached the issue of Stennis' advanced age gingerly. He ran with the slogan, "A senator for the '80s," knowing that it would remind voters that he was running against a senator who was actually in his 80s. The strategy didn't work; Stennis won 64%-36%, carrying 80 of 82 counties despite being outspent by Barbour. But at age 35, Barbour showed a sophisticated understanding of the nexus between money and politics: in what was then the most expensive race in state history, he raised and spent more than $1 million at a time when that amount could buy a great deal of attention in Mississippi.

It also got him noticed in Washington, where he became Ronald Reagan's White House political director in 1985 and later an adviser to George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign. In 1991 he took advantage of his Republican connections and hung out his own shingle, founding Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, now one of D.C.'s powerhouse lobbying firms; then he served as Republican National Committee chairman from 1993-97. He chaired the party when it won a congressional majority for the first time in 40 years and he shared in the credit. When he left the RNC and returned to his lobbying firm, he was positioned as one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, well-connected to key members of the House and Senate and much sought-after by big corporate clients with interests before the Republican Congress.

In all his time in Washington, Barbour had maintained his ties back home. He served as a Republican national committeeman from 1984 until 1998 and regularly commuted back to Yazoo City where his wife and sons resided. He was approached in 2001 about running for governor and a year later announced he would challenge Governor Ronnie Musgrove in 2003.

Musgrove had been elected governor by the Mississippi House of Representatives in January 2000, after leading the popular vote in November 1999 by a 49.6%-48.5% margin. But winning the popular vote was not decisive under Mississippi law. The law said that if no candidate won a majority of the popular vote the winner would be determined by which candidate won the most state House districts. After the tedious tabulation, it appeared that 61 districts voted for Musgrove and 61 for Parker. Under the 1890 law, the decision then went to the state House of Representatives, where Democrats had a big margin. On January 4, 2000, Musgrove was finally elected by a margin of 86-36.

In his first legislative session, Musgrove achieved his biggest goal, a six-year, $338 million teacher pay raise, up to the Southeastern state average. And he was pleased to announce that Nissan was building a $930 million plant employing 4,000 in Canton, just north of Jackson. The issue of the Mississippi flag was kindled in May 2000, when the state Supreme Court ruled that the flag, which features the Confederate battle cross in the upper left corner, was not legally the state flag, because the 1894 law authorizing it was not included in the full codification in state laws in 1906. Musgrove appointed a commission to design a new flag which he and four other statewide officials endorsed, but legislators decided to send the issue to voters in a referendum in April 2001. Most blacks and many business leaders support the new design, but there was vocal opposition from many whites, and many feared--or hoped--that a large majority of white voters would choose that in the privacy of the voting booth. The new flag design was defeated by a resounding 65%-35%.

The big issue of 2002 was the civil justice system. Mississippi had become a trial lawyers' paradise, with huge verdicts awarded by juries in tiny impoverished counties. Musgrove was supported by and generally friendly to trial lawyers. In November 2002, as the legislature was conferring on the issue, a pro-trial lawyer state supreme court justice was defeated. Nonetheless, Musgrove vetoed a second time a bill opposed by trial lawyers capping damages from fraudulent lending. Meanwhile, there were newspaper reports that investigators were looking into allegations that two prominent trial lawyers Paul Minor and Richard Scruggs paid off debts owed by two judges and were looking into the pattern of Musgrove receiving big contributions from trial lawyers just before he made judicial appointments.

Musgrove's own survival was also in doubt. He was the last remaining Democratic governor in the Deep South after incumbents in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina failed to win second terms in 2002. There was widespread speculation that he was seeking to be named president of Delta State University, rather than stand for reelection. Musgrove, though known for his hyperkinetic energy, seemed to lack a sense of urgency, raising money but not starting his campaign in earnest until a few months before the election. By that time, Barbour already had been touring the state for a year promising voters that he would use his Washington connections to help create jobs in Mississippi and had spent more than $2 million, much of it on television ads.

Musgrove won the August primary with 76% against four minor opponents; Barbour won 83%-17% against Mitch Tyner, a trial lawyer who pounded on him as a "fat cat" lobbyist and whose campaign created a website called WashingtonFatCat.com. Barbour ignored him; there was speculation that Tyner was a stalking horse for the trial lawyers lobby, which didn't like Barbour's calls for additional limits on civil lawsuits. Tyner denied it, but was revealed to be a donor to Musgrove's 1999 campaign.

Musgrove picked up where Tyner left off and both candidates sounded economic themes in the general election. "I've put Mississippi first. Haley Barbour has spent the last 20 years in Washington, D.C., putting special interests first," Musgrove said after winning the primary. He framed Barbour as an outsider who was closely tied to big tobacco and pharmaceutical companies. He called Barbour a "hired gun for Mexico" who lobbied for passage of NAFTA which, Musgrove said, cost Mississippi 41,000 jobs. Barbour denied lobbying for passage of NAFTA and said he didn't start lobbying for the Mexican government until 2000 or 2001, long after NAFTA had passed in 1993, and he focused only the issue of Mexican trucks entering the U.S.

In a September debate, Barbour claimed Musgrove mismanaged the state economy and wasn't serious enough about fixing the civil justice system. "We've got to hitch up our britches and get serious about tort reform," he said. Musgrove responded that Barbour was "running down Mississippi, talking about what we haven't done and what we couldn't do. Now that may be the way they do it in Washington, but that's not the way we do it here." Musgrove said Mississippi was faring better than most states despite a weak national economy; he pointed to the opening of the new Nissan auto plant in Madison County and took credit for creating 56,000 new jobs across the state. Attending the debate, in the front row of the Barbour section, was Melanie Musgrove, from whom the governor got divorced in 2001 after 24 years of marriage. She left afterwards without answering questions; Ronnie Musgrove said he hadn't noticed her in the audience.

Musgrove sought to keep his distance from the national Democratic party. His television ads referred to him as an "independent conservative" but Barbour sought to remind voters of Musgrove's endorsement of Al Gore in 2000 by airing a commercial with footage of Gore and Musgrove embracing. Musgrove was not helped by Senate Democrats' October 2003 filibuster of the nomination of Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Musgrove publicly backed Pickering's nomination, and sent senators a letter urging them to confirm Pickering, who was criticized for his record on civil rights issues. Barbour, also a strong Pickering supporter, was no bystander: His D.C. lobbying firm was heavily involved in the campaign supporting Pickering's nomination.

The Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, trial lawyer and state Senator Barbara Blackmon, was no asset either. In October Blackmon drew widespread criticism for signing a sworn statement saying she had never had an abortion and then challenging Lieutenant Governor Amy Tuck to sign a similar affidavit. Barbour attacked the "liberal" Musgrove-Blackmon "ticket," though in Mississippi both offices are elected separately. The state Republican party sent mailers featuring photos of the two candidates inside a valentine heart. Some Democrats called that a thinly-veiled appeal to racism since Blackmon is African-American; they pointed also to Republican use of the state flag issue against Musgrove.

Money was not a problem for either candidate: Barbour raised $10.6 million to Musgrove's $8.5 million, in what was the most expensive race in state history. Barbour won 53%-46%. He carried 51 of 82 counties and won big margins amid heavy turnout in key Republican counties like fast-growing DeSoto County, just south of Memphis, and suburban Rankin County, just east of Jackson. That offset high black voter turnout, which Democrats had counted on because of the presence of two African-American statewide nominees, Blackmon and state treasurer candidate Gary Anderson. Both lost; Blackmon by a wide 61%-37% margin and Anderson by a narrower 52%-47%. Exit polls (the first live run conducted for the National Election Pool in preparation for 2004) showed a racially polarized electorate: black voters went 94% for Musgrove and white voters went 77% for Barbour.

Barbour took office facing Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and said job creation was his top priority. He unveiled a budget that called for $709 million in spending cuts over 2 years, threatened to veto any new tax increases and proposed a package of comprehensive changes to the civil justice system that included a lowering of the caps on pain-and-suffering damages. Barbour called a special session in May 2004 and in June signed a bill capping pain and suffering damages generally to $1 million and to $500,000 in medical malpractice cases, further limiting forum-shopping and protecting "innocent sellers" of faulty products. "I want to tell job creators across America that our scales of justice are now in balance," Barbour said. "It is time for them to come and take another look at Mississippi as a place to locate." He took credit for several economic development deals--a 500-job Textron Fastening Systems plant in Greenville and a 400-job FedEx Ground facility in Olive Branch. The legislature approved a nursing home bed tax increase to help fund the state's ailing Medicaid program but his attempt to cut rising costs by eliminating coverage for 50,000 recipients was stalled by a federal judge.

In 2005, he proposed cutting most agency budgets by 5%. The legislature failed to pass a budget in regular session but Barbour managed to address the state's Medicaid crisis by calling a special session in mid-March that restored the program to solvency by borrowing $240 million from the state's health care trust fund and instituting tighter restrictions on the number of prescriptions, emergency room visits and home health care visits. Barbour was not entirely forgotten in Washington. In November 2004, his office denied rumors he was under consideration for a Cabinet position under George W. Bush. And some Republicans listed him as a possible candidate for president in 2008.

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2003 general	Haley Barbour (R)	470,404	53%
	Ronnie Musgrove (D)	409,787	46%
	Other	14,296	2%
2003 primary	Haley Barbour (R)	158,284	83%
	Mitch Tyner (R)	31,762	17%
1999 general	Ronnie Musgrove (D)	379,034	50%
	Mike Parker (R)	370,691	49%
	Other	14,213	2%