Mississippi Rises Again

By Don Winbush/Jackson

A seven-piece band served up a bouncy rendition of the once popular tune Ain't No Stopping Us Now. In the steamy hotel ballroom, Democratic partisans lifted a rhythmic chant: "Mabus, Mabus, Mabus." On the podium, Mississippi's new Governor-elect let out a short celebratory whoop, then slowly declared, "Change has come." He repeated his campaign theme, "Mississippi will never be last again!"

The assertions were not entirely outlandish. Raymond Mabus Jr., a wispy, cocksure state auditor, had spent four years in a zealous crusade against public corruption during his first term in public office. Then, in an iconoclastic campaign for Governor, he railed against the decadence of "old- time politics and the oldtime politicians." Last week, at 39, he was elected one of the nation's youngest Governors and the leader of an awakening movement to free Mississippi from its long-standing image of lethargy and backwardness.

It was the second gust of reform to hit the Deep South in a month, similar to the election of Buddy Roemer as Governor of Louisiana, Mississippi's partner at the bottom of most measures of prosperity. Both men are young reformers with graduate degrees from Harvard who are dedicated to dispelling the tarnished establishments that have dominated their states' politics, beefing up education systems and aggressively seeking new forms of industry.

Mabus' opponent, Jack Reed, stressed many of the same themes. Reed, a progressive, respected businessman who served on the state board of education, got 47% of the vote, more than any other Republican since Reconstruction.

Along with Mabus, Mississippi voters swept a whole team of young, fresh- faced reformers into the statehouse. Mike Moore, 35, a county district attorney who until recently was scarcely known outside his Gulf Coast habitat, was elected attorney general, the youngest since 1912. Pete Johnson, 39, a third-generation politician who counts a grandfather and an uncle among former Mississippi Governors, was elected state auditor, replacing Mabus. Said Johnson: "This has been a mandate that Mississippians want to see our state move forward." In other rites of passage, John Stennis, 86, has announced his retirement after 40 years in the Senate. And Ross Barnett, the segregationist Governor who only under the guns of federal troops in 1962 admitted James Meredith as the first black student at the University of Mississippi, died last week at the age of 89.

For a state stereotyped as piteously poor and prejudiced, Mississippi has shown its eagerness to cast off the plagues of racial politics, an archaic constitution and rural-dominated economics. One recent symbol: the crowning last summer of a black woman, 23-year-old Toni Seawright, as Miss Mississippi. ! Yet the attitude is hardly unanimous. Last week voters finally repealed a 97- year-old constitutional ban on interracial marriage (which had already been struck down by the courts), but they did so by an embarrassingly close 52% to 48%.

Mabus announced that his first business will be to raise the pay of schoolteachers to the average of the other states in the Southeast, $23,100. That will cost the state close to $165 million, and he proposed, perhaps unrealistically, to fund the hike without raising taxes. His brashness alone might go a long way toward restoring his state's pride. When asked which state would serve as his model for education reform and economic development, he replied, "The one state that people ought to look at is Mississippi. We're gonna be an inspiration."