In the midst of busy personal and professional lives, they made time to read and provide careful edits to my drafts. This paper contains the results of a qualitative study of 11 Mississippi state party chairs who were interviewed about their role in the state and how that role was affected by redistricting. Successful county party organizations recognized their strengths and targeted winnable races with a focus on word-of-mouth communication, quality candidates, fair competition, and extensive voter education, both formal and informal.
The presidencies involved their communities through their organizations, using existing social networks to connect in a "pyramid" hierarchy of district party presidents, executive committee members, districts. All of the county party chairs I spoke to could benefit from more support from the state party in the form of increased resources, carefully crafted strategy, and continued training for new or struggling county party members.
INTRODUCTION
I seek to answer all of these questions through a qualitative study of county party organization in the state of Mississippi. I then discuss the implications of these themes and suggest ways county party organizations can improve their outreach to voters based on what other county chairmen have found to be successful and the national literature suggests. A significant part of my conversations with the county party chairmen was their response to the effects of redistricting on their operations.
Another important conclusion from my research was the focus of county party chairmen on word-of-mouth communication and their reliance on community groups such as churches and. Successful party chairmen involved their communities through their organizations and used the existing social networks in their communities to connect in a "pyramid" hierarchy of county party chairmen, executive committee members, district representatives, church and community leaders and voters.
LITERATURE REVIEW
These claims are not without merit, as many historians have examined the impact of the VRA in the South and Mississippi specifically. Some activists were calling for the Department to do a test case overseas (Ballotpedia 6). The governor discussed his personal lack of concern for the process as his reading of it.
Despite the similarities between the 2011 redistricting cycle and the disastrous 1991 cycle, locals recognized an important difference. As a local unit, the county party is the closest unit of the party to the voters.
METHODOLOGY
As the vanguard of the party, the provincial party organizations are constantly the main point of contact for many voters. These organizations and the perceived role of these organizations can reveal a lot about the priorities and realities of the party system at the local level. The semi-structured format of the interviews allowed me to be flexible in the application of my questions and fully explore each concept mentioned in the interview.
After I collected my interviews, I used my notes to make partial transcripts of each interview, discarding parts of the interview that were irrelevant or off the record as indicated by the participants. In my analysis, I compare and contrast the different views of the mayoral presidents, referring to the party affiliation and mayorship of the mayors.
TWO PARTY RESPONSE COUNTY INTERVIEWS
I asked him what he saw as the primary role of the county chairman in the county party organization. Even with community support for the party, McLeod said it's up to the county party to get people interested in the races to drive turnout. McLeod indicated that the historical actions of the country have a great influence on how it is positioned today.
Persoon generally sees the role of the county chairman as a support system for the Republicans in his county. 13.9%) and the country's population is divided between 68.8% white and 29.2% black residents with the remaining percentage of the population split between. The district captains give out information and try to involve members of the community in the party at the county level.
That is basically what the role of the county chairman is, to make sure that we have our people lined up for the upcoming election." Regardless of the strategy, Coleman lamented that he does not have enough engaged members to implement the strategy in the country. I was elected at the county convention to represent my county, Jones County, on the Jones County Executive Committee.
They come to him for information as he has been in the country since childhood. Yoder is relatively new to the county chair position, having only held office for a year and a half. He speculated that working in the country now is not much different than it used to be.
I was interested in the response of the county presidents given their proximity to Delta County and the influence of Oxford and the University of Mississippi on county politics. He manages the party's fund-raising and constituency campaigning, in addition to managing elections.
ONE PARTY RESPONSE COUNTY INTERVIEWS
Taylor wondered how so many of the state's eligible voters had not participated in the election. The county party, with the help of the Republican Women's chapter, directs voter registration at all local high schools. Republican or Democratic, but that the group excites him about the future of leadership in the state.
He hopes that the state party will make more use of the provincial chairmen in the future. This county is located in the northern part of the state on the border of the Mississippi Delta. Marion County is a medium-sized county on the state's southern border with Louisiana.
Patterson stated that she became interested in party activities through the Republican Women. Patterson mentioned that she is the main driving force behind many of the Republican women and county party activities. She noted a deep integration of the membership of the Republican Women with the membership of the county party organization.
The Republican Women and the county organization are made up of the same people, if allowed. Jasper County is a relatively rural county in the southern part of the state located three counties east of the state capital in Jackson. We are a small county.” She clarified her statement and gave credit to the citizens of the district.
She suggested that the churches connected many involved members of the community in one place. You have a group of people there, and most of the people there are people who work in the community.
INTERVIEW RESPONSE ANALYSIS
The role of party chairs as party officials can be important at various levels. In many ways, the role of the county chair is to remain a neutral but partisan force in the county. John Taylor of the Madison County GOP mentioned an anecdote about this concept of the county chairman as organizer.
He spoke of the apparent tension between the various levels of the party in the county. It is not enough simply to make people aware of the candidates and the issues; the county chairmen seek to get enough of the people to act on their knowledge. The group's primary assets are their willingness to volunteer and ability to attract new members to the party.
For some county leaders, the strength of the churches lay in the leadership of the churches. John Taylor, the Republican chairman of Madison County, saw this power firsthand in the chaos of the 2014 midterm Republican primary runoff. A big part of the county chairman's role was to select quality captains and county boards to bring people to the party.
The pattern of responses from district chairmen would indicate that the level of competition in the country is low. One county president, James Person, attributed it to the character of the state and its history. The district has some of the best public schools in the country and one of the fastest growing retail areas in the region.
DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION
One of the most striking observations I made early in the interview was the synonymous nature of "Negro" and "Democrat" in the vernacular of the Mississippi County Party Chairmen. I have seen this characteristic interchangeably use of the word in black and white, young and old, Republican and Democratic county party chairmen. As a native Mississippian, I wasn't surprised to see questions about race pop up in my interviews, but the casual interchangeability of the two terms surprised me.
While it is true that the vast majority of African-American voters in the state lean Democratic, there are still African-American Republicans and more whites. My brief study of Descriptive Representation initiatives and the effects of the Voting Rights Act on the Southern voting contest, along with my interactions with the County Chairmen, has led me to question the underlying ideology of Descriptive Representation as it currently stands. As a white man living in a state with a history of oppressing minorities, I recognize the need for the government to ensure that all sections of the population have access to the polls, and I do not want to deny any group that right.
But I have to wonder if we are fully aware of the implications that structuring states to eliminate competition between parties can have on government and the wider electorate. My hope is that with further study we can design a districting system that will reintroduce two-way competition throughout the state and still ultimately provide minority representation at both the state and federal levels. While the state has relied on federal intervention to draw its districts for the past fifty years, it will now be able to make or break on its own.
Scholars, journalists, policy makers, and most importantly, citizens, will need to closely monitor the state's actions to ensure that it does not abuse its newfound freedom. The state side can and should be able to equip their district heads with the tools and resources for success. As the state's demographics change over the next decade, party organizations cannot afford to ignore their district chairs.
