Those ads were a good reminder just how right-wing Northern Mississippi is. The only outlier was Nancy Collins, whose ads consisted of talking about "protecting Social Security and Medicare".......she almost sounded like a conservative Democrat.
Southern Mississippi (Pallazzo's district) is even more conservative. Chris McDaniel and some other notable right-wingers hail from there.. Northern still elects considerable number of "good old boy" conservative Democrats on state and local level at least...
It's a different kind of conservatism though. North Mississippi is more of a strong social conservatism while South Mississippi conservatives are generally more concerned about the fiscal side of politics (this is especially true in the more 'urban' areas like Gulfport/Biloxi and Hattiesburg). South Mississippians are generally social conservatives as well, but most vote GOP because of their stances on fiscal issues.
Yes. IMHO, that's distinction is exemplified by such well-known figures of the past from NE Mississippi as Theodore Bilbo (racist, anti-Semite, but New Dealer) and, to some extent, John Rankin (racist, anti-Semite, but, at least initially, somewhat New Dealer too). Of course - South Mississippi politicians of the past tended to be racist too (Colmer, for example), but seldom - of the same intensity...
That makes sense given the # of Dixiecrats still in Northern Mississippi. The area seems to be very conservative now, but it certainly seems to care more about values voters.
