What is the story here that is making this election so close?
My take on this race from two months ago:
Brandon Pressley is almost a caricature of the type of Democrat you need to run to be competitive in MS, campaigning as an even more socially conservative and practicing Christian than Jim Hood (who was always too ambiguous about his stances on some of those issues and had some authenticity issues in that regard), painting Reeves as part of a corrupt, out-of-touch 'ol'-boy' network which has destroyed the quality of life for working people in the state, and steering clear of any racial rhetoric/issues that would alienate the white voting base while going all in on a convincing brand of economic populism. Has it ever occurred to people that the actual reason Mississippi is usually "inelastic" in elections is precisely because Democrats don’t usually run candidates like Brandon Pressley? If MS were as inelastic as it’s made out to be, Espy wouldn’t have overperformed by that much and Hood wouldn’t have come within 5 points of beating Reeves (who was a stronger opponent in 2019 than he is now).
People meme about this, but it’s undeniable that social conservatism is a make-or-break area for Democrats in the Deep South and that there is in fact a large chunk of white voters who are very much waiting for a conservative Pressley-type Democrat to support against against an arrogant pol like Reeves who thinks he can get away with anything because of partisanship. Yes, Republicans usually don’t bleed white voters in the Deep South, but "when it rains, it pours" (as we saw in LA in 2015).
The path for Pressley is very clear and certainly real. Whether he’ll actually win is a different matter, but nobody should be writing him off because of some weird preconceptions about states and meaningless buzzwords which are proven wrong every cycle. Even a quick look at their campaign ads should tell you which campaign is acting more desperate — Reeves' only response to the state's myriad problems is literally "let’s stop trans athletes from participating in women's sports" (something that’s basically unheard of in MS):
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/07/12/brandon-presley-tate-reeves-tv-ads-governor/
It doesn’t get more out-of-touch than that. He’s doing nothing to change the perception that he is a sleazy, selfish pol putting himself above the state and only ever throwing red meat when it’s campaign season. This type of candidate really, really doesn’t play well in the Deep South.
Pressley has also focused on the right issues (rural hospitals shutting down, Medicaid expansion to low-income workers, infrastructure projects, etc.) and painted Reeves' administration with its culture of corruption (think mismanaging/stealing welfare money, selling government positions to his donors, enriching his wife, etc.) as standing in the way of addressing those issues.
