Fortitude: Secret Sauce of Mississippi's Past and MSGOP's Future

*Note: The highlighted portions of the text are links to resources.  Click on them to take you to the link explaining my position.

Fortitude Personified:

William Edward Wiggins, eighteen years old and the son of a sawmill owner in Monroeville, AL, boarded the train to Pensacola, FL to seek his fortune.  Between boarding the train and joining a pile driving crew, he met a Moss Point, Mississippi drugstore owner named Mr. Rape.  The year was 1917 and drugstores were much more than pharmacies; they were places for community gatherings.  Mr. Rape on the train ride took a liking to Ed and told him that if things did not work out in Pensacola, come back to Moss Point and he would give him a job.  After two months in Pensacola driving piles, Ed resolved his future lay in business, like his father.  He moved to Moss Point and Mr. Rape, true to his word, gave Ed a job--sweeping floors. Through diligence, hard work and applying his business acumen Ed, who would come to be known as "Poppy," became owner of his drugstore within a few years of that first night sweeping floors.  With no college education, but using fortitude and applying his skills, he grew this drugstore into a chain of approximately six throughout Jackson County, Mississippi.  Ed went on to become a leading businessman, a Rotarian, a developer and the mayor of Pascagoula.   Ed "Poppy" Wiggins was my great-grandfather. 

Fortitude Continued:

Poppy went on to have four children, the eldest, Julius, was my grandfather.  Julius became a welder, worked for International Paper and retired a foreman for Papco Industries.  Julius' passion, like Poppy's, was fishing the Gulf Waters.  Julius married Gertrude "Trudy" Pilstrom from Moss Point.  Her parents, my great-grandparents, were first generation immigrants from Sweden.  My great-grandfather Pilstrom was a laborer, skilled in everything from painting to wallpapering to construction.  He, too, had no college education. Julius and Trudy's son, Chris Wiggins, my father, went on to become the first in our family to attend college then went on to medical school becoming an orthopedic surgeon.  (Not to leave out the other side of my family: my grandmother Jean Meredith was raised in the hills of Tennessee and my grandfather Dr. Bill Meredith was born in rural Paris, Arkansas going on to become a surgeon as well. They went on to have twelve grandchildren and umpteen great-grandchildren).

The Mississippi Metaphor :

This is not a blog about the life history of Brice Wiggins.  It is, however, a metaphor for Mississippi, Mississippians AND the Mississippi GOP. Regrettably, the nastiness that was and continues to be the Mississippi U.S. Senate Republican primary between Senator Thad Cochran and State Senator Chris McDaniel has put Mississippi in a negative light nationally, reinforcing the historical negative stereotypes that outsiders have of us;  the same stereotypes that I got into politics to have a hand in eradicating.  The story of Ed "Poppy" Wiggins rings true, I am sure, for many Mississippians, certainly for many Jackson Countians many of whom are descendants of fishermen, shrimpers, shipbuilders, welders, sawmill workers, electricians, and the like.  It ought to ring true for all Republicans: perseverance, fortitude, and hard work of immigrants and working class folks all of whom are striving to create a good and better life for their children and grandchildren in the land of opportunity without looking for a handout but willing to offer a hand up. Is this not the American dream?  Is this not what Thomas Jefferson lived and envisioned when he went from being a planter to the founder of the University of Virginia?  Is this right to improve your lot in life not what we as Americans stand for?

The Danger of Euphemisms

During the U.S. Senate primary, to my dismay, I have seen euphemisms like "elitist," "establishment" "RINO," "conservative," "Democrat," etc. thrown around.  Now, one of the campaigns has descended into making claims of race baiting and purging people if and when they don't associate like they want them to. In my own chamber of the Mississippi Senate a minority of senators has chosen to adopt the name the Conservative Coalition, as if to imply other Republicans are not conservative.   When I hear these terms, I get heated.  I get heated because the values I describe above ARE CONSERVATIVE, MISSISSIPPI VALUES.  The people that deliberately (as opposed to unintentionally) use these euphemisms effectively drive a wedge for their own personal gain or to not say what they truly want to say for fear of being seen in the public eye as extreme.  The effect? An eradication of support for the Republican Party and a loss of the understanding of true Republican principles. Speaking with the rank and file voters and looking at the numbers, the discussion has not been TEA Party vs. Establishment (though certain individuals would have you believe that), rather it has been about voters' worry Republicans have catered to the "business, moneyed class" to the exclusion of "the working class" and its value system described above.

Can't Ignore the Sound of the Ballot Box:

That being said, the Mississippi Republican Party cannot ignore the tide that is out there.  For the majority of voters, the closeness of the race did not reflect anti-Cochran mood; rather, it reflected anti-Washington, anti-ignoring of the working middle class values.  To put a term on it, the passion out there is a rising tide of populism; and, there is nothing wrong with that; in fact it is good.  It makes us elected Republicans responsive to the people. The country, and the South in particular, has been defined by populism throughout U.S. history.  This populism is personified in the form of the TEA Party movement. ( A form of populism from the left side recently aggregated in the Occupy Wall Street movement.)  Yet, there has to be caution, as populism can turn into fascism, socialism or other such forms of extremism.  And those who self-identify with this populist passion must hold those speaking for them accountable.  Otherwise, they run the risk of extremism or worse, non-existence.  (e.g., Occupy Movement).  Our founders selected a republican form of government rather than a pure democratic form of government, reasons for which can be found in The Federalist Papers.  Pure democracy is untenable and fails under its own weight. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, all scholars of political thought, knew this which is why they selected representative democracy for our country.  In this form of government, the duty of a representative is not simply to communicate the wishes of the electorate but also to use his or her own judgement in the exercise of his or her powers. In other words, govern. 

Jackson County the Model GOP?

 In my previous blog I discussed the importance of Jackson County to the Republican Party statewide.  Led by Former U.S. Majority Leader Trent Lott, whose parents worked at Ingalls Shipbuilding, Jackson County became Republican long before the rest of the state when he ran for Congress as a Republican in 1972 after working for Democratic Congressman William Colmer. In other words, as a whole, Jackson County was voting Republican while the rest of Mississippi was Democratic.   Similarly, Gov. Haley Barbour, hailing from Yazoo City, rose to prominence to usher in the Republican Party nationally.  Mississippi politics has changed over the last generation from being Solid South Democratic state to a Republican led state with a 5 vote majority in the MS House of Representatives. Why did Senator Cochran seek and receive the endorsement of the Metal Trades Council during the runoff?  I submit not because he was pandering for Democratic votes.  Rather, he was seeking and needed the Ingalls workers,---welders, shipfitters, electricians, pipefitters and the like--those classified as working class with working class values and who vote their working class values, which most of the time is Republican both locally and nationally.  

So, in the end, we cannot ignore the sound emanating from the ballot box.  We need to recognize what this voice is about.  The Republican Party in Mississippi can, should and will continue to foster a pro-business environment.  Likewise, though, it needs to know that it must represent the working class citizens and their/our values--white, black, African American, Latino-- and do a better job of listening, and representing, those constituents. These constituents, though, don't always have the resources to speak through campaign contributions, which we must keep in mind. All of us Mississippians, from the Delta, to the Coast to the Appalachian hills, do have that special sauce--fortitude.  Because we all share this special sauce this means reaching out to and working with members of the Democratic party, just as I have done and will continue to do, to make Mississippi better for our children and grandchildren.  Just like Mississippians in Jackson County have been doing for decades.

The recount of Ed "Poppy" Wiggins is taken from the historical research coallted in Ancestry of William Edward Wiggins by Dr. Chris E. Wiggins, Past-President of the Jackson County Historical Society.  Further, I serve with Senator McDaniel in the Mississippi Senate and have worked with the Office of Senator Thad Cochran for the betterment of the State of Mississippi in my position as Mississippi State Senator.