Mississippians are smart. They know campaigns cost money, and they know support comes from inside and outside our state. That’s true for Democrats, and it’s true for Republicans. Accepting out-of-state money is not a scandal; it’s politics in 2025.
The scandal is pretending your side is pure while attacking your opponents for doing the same thing, and assuming the people of Mississippi won’t notice.
Consider the last governor’s race. Both campaigns drew national support. The Democratic Governors Association invested in Brandon Presley; the Republican Governors Association invested in Tate Reeves. Mississippi Today’s analysis quantified it plainly: as of Oct. 29, 2023, Presley received about $5.85 million from his national committee and Reeves received about $1 million from his. Same playbook, different jerseys.
Look closer at the Republican side and the facts get even less convenient for the “only Democrats take outside money” narrative. In June 2023, a Washington, D.C.–based PAC called Mississippi Strong sent $500,000 to the Reeves campaign, on the very day that PAC took in $600,000 from the Republican Governors Association. That isn’t a Mississippi bake sale; that’s a national pipeline.
And that’s just direct contributions. Republican primaries have been awash in outside spending too. When Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann faced a challenge from the right in 2023, about $1 million in out-of-state, dark-money spending flooded that race, enough for Hosemann himself to call for reform. Again, the money wasn’t coming from Main Street in McComb; it was routed through Beltway-area groups.
Corporate money? There’s more. Reeves’ single largest check in the late stretch came from Centene, a St. Louis–based managed-care giant that does business with Mississippi’s Medicaid program: $100,000 in one shot, and Centene ranks among his top cumulative donors. That might be legal, but let’s not pretend it’s “homegrown.”
It’s also no secret that several conservative groups shaping Mississippi policy rely on national money.
Empower Mississippi, the main driver behind charter school expansion and private-school vouchers, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from out-of-state donors such as Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children and the Walton Family Foundation—funds used to lobby lawmakers and bankroll pro–school choice candidates.
Likewise, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a Jackson think tank funded by Koch-affiliated foundations and DonorsTrust, has spent years pushing flat-tax reforms, anti-Medicaid-expansion campaigns, and bills to phase out the state income tax.
Both groups quietly pour national money into rewriting Mississippi’s laws—proof that “out-of-state influence” isn’t a partisan problem; it’s a political reality that the GOP simply prefers not to mention.
So let’s end the fairy tale that one party is bankrolled by sinister “outsiders” and the other is powered by lemonade stands and yard signs. Both parties raise national money. The difference is how honestly you talk to voters about it.
Here’s the bigger issue: when Republicans accuse Democrats of “dark money” while quietly depositing their own out-of-state checks, it’s not just hypocrisy. It’s an insult to the intelligence of every voter: Republican, Democrat, and independent. Mississippians deserve a debate about ideas, not a performance about who can throw the sharpest rock from a glass house.
Our party will put policy on the table. We’ll talk about expanding Medicaid to keep rural hospitals open, because that’s pro-family and pro-work. We’ll talk about raising wages and cutting car-tag fees responsibly, not with gimmicks that shift costs onto counties.
We’ll talk about public schools that parents and teachers can be proud of and about letting taxpayer dollars strengthen those schools instead of siphoning them away. And yes, we’ll keep pushing for clean government so Mississippians can trust that state contracts and appointments are earned on merit, not greased by campaign checks.
(If you missed it, reporting showed top Reeves donors later tied to $1.4 billion in state contracts or grants under his administration. That’s a policy and ethics conversation we ought to have in the sunlight.)
To Mississippi Republicans who keep telling voters that only Democrats accept outside help: Stop. You know it isn’t true. Your own filings and news coverage say otherwise.
To Mississippi voters: Demand better. Don’t let anyone (including me) distract you from the issues that touch your paycheck, your clinic, your classroom, your roads. Ask every candidate, at every level:
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What’s your plan for hospitals and health care access?
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How will you grow jobs and skills without leaving our rural communities behind?
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What’s your plan to raise student achievement in the schools most families actually attend?
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How will you root out pay-to-play and restore confidence in our state government?
If Republicans want to beat us, beat us with policy. Bring your plan. Defend your record. Tell the truth about your donors, and we’ll tell the truth about ours. That’s how a serious state does politics. Mississippi deserves nothing less.
Mississippi is tired of being talked down to. We are tired of campaign season morality plays about “outsiders” while national checks clear in the background.
Tell us what you’ll do, how you’ll pay for it, and who it will help. Then let the best ideas win.
If you want to beat us, beat us with policy. Not lies. All Mississippi voters, Democrat and Republican alike, deserve that.
Mikel Bolden is Executive Director of the Mississippi Democratic Party. He can be reached at party headquarters at (601) 969-2913 during regular office hours.
