Most of the statewide attention in Mississippi for next week’s general election has been directed at the governor’s race between Tate Reeves, the Republican incumbent, and his Democratic challenger, Brandon Presley.
There are, however, seven other statewide contests on the ballot as well. Unlike some recent previous elections, in which the Democrats didn’t even bother to field a candidate for each contest, this time all seven of the Republican incumbents have Democratic opponents, although the majority of the challengers have run token campaigns.
We recommend voting for all seven Republican incumbents: Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Secretary of State Michael Watson, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, State Auditor Shad White, Treasurer David McRae, Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson and Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney.
All for the most part have carried out their duties competently, all have been free of scandal, all deserve a second term.
If we have any reservations, they pertain to only one of the seven — Lynn Fitch.
Fitch is completing her first term as the state’s chief legal officer after serving eight years as state treasurer.
Perhaps this is true of all attorneys general, but Fitch has been particularly selective on what areas of the law her agency focuses. She seems to mostly like what’s in prosecutorial vogue — social media abuses and human trafficking, for example — while ignoring the parts of her job that are arguably much more important and require more guts to carry out.
Under her leadership, the Attorney General’s Office has been weak at pursuing those who steal or misspend government money, including being a total nonentity in prosecuting the massive welfare scandal. It’s done little to enforce the state’s campaign finance laws. Most recently, it has been criticized for turning a blind eye to illegal foreign ownership of agricultural land. Veiled criticism of her misplaced priorities have come from none other than fellow GOP state officials, including Hosemann, White and Watson.
The main reason we would give Fitch four more years to do better, though, is her successful effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that had legalized abortion on demand. It admittedly took a conservative takeover of the nation’s highest court to make this possible. Nevertheless, Fitch deserves credit for guiding Mississippi’s defense of a pro-life law, which became the genesis for returning abortion policy to the states to individually decide. The Dobbs case was a monumental step in protecting the unborn if not everywhere at least in the states where inconvenience is not considered a valid reason to terminate a human life.
Fitch’s Democratic opponent, Greta Kemp Martin, is on the wrong side of this issue. Her main motivation for entering the race was to defend abortion rights. Although some of her positions, such as aggressively prosecuting public corruption and creating a civil rights division to evaluate discrimination cases, have merit, we can’t get past her belief that a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy — no matter the reason — supersedes the unborn’s right to live.
Therefore, we endorse Fitch while hoping, should she win, that she will listen to those who are frustrated with her seeming indifference to fulfilling some of her major duties.
Coming Saturday: Endorsement in governor’s race.
