Mississippi GOP’s governor primary forced into runoff

The front-runner in Mississippi’s Republican primary election for governor was forced into a runoff Tuesday by two rivals who have broken with Southern conservative orthodoxy to support Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

The front-runner, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, is a believer in small government who opposes expanding the federal health care program in Mississippi.

But his primary challengers — William Waller Jr., a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and Robert Foster, a state representative — ran on a promise to expand government health care in one of the country’s reddest states. Waller also supports raising a gas tax to fix roads and bridges, an idea Reeves opposes.

The Associated Press declared early Wednesday that Reeves and Waller would face off in an Aug. 27 runoff. With 97% of precincts reporting, Reeves had 48.9% of the vote, less than the 50% needed to avoid a runoff. Waller had 33.4% of the vote, and Foster had 17.8%.

The winner of the runoff will face Attorney General Jim Hood, the winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary, who received 69% of the votes counted in a field of eight candidates. Hood, a moderate who is fond of showing off his down-home bona fides, is the only Democrat holding statewide office, and he is considered a serious challenger in the general election.

That race, like the primary, could be informed by two central, sometimes conflicting realities in Mississippi life: a strong anti-government streak and the fact that the state is one of the poorest in the nation. Hood, too, supports raising the gas tax and Medicaid expansion.

The Center for Mississippi Health Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, predicted that Medicaid expansion could bring health coverage to as many as 300,000 uninsured residents and provide up to 9,000 jobs.

With fewer than 3 million residents, Mississippi has often been described as being more like a club than a state, and personality is likely to play a serious role in deciding the next governor.