Mississippi Gov. Bryant declines to debate Gray, his dark-horse Democratic challenger

JACKSON, Miss.— Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant says he won’t debate his Democratic challenger, Robert Gray, before the Nov. 3 general election.

His decision is bound to disappoint voters who wanted to see how Gray, a long-haul trucker with the CB handle Silent Knight, would fare in a side-by-side format with one of the state’s longestserving officials.

During an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Bryant answered quickly and firmly when asked if he would debate: “No, I don’t intend to.”

That decision makes him Mississippi’s first governor in two decades not to debate a challenger while seeking a second term.

“I have this other extremely busy job with being governor,” said Bryant, 60. “I think the best thing I can do as a candidate right now is be the best governor I can be.”

Gray, 46, surprised the political establishment — and, he said, even himself — by defeating two candidates in the Aug. 4 Democratic primary. He never told his closest relatives, his mom and his sister, that he was running for governor, and said he didn’t spend a dime on his campaign. Gray said he didn’t vote for himself because he was busy running errands that day.

In interviews since becoming the nominee, Gray has said he wants to debate Bryant, and he has made it clear that they have policy differences.

For example, Gray wants to expand Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of people who currently earn too much to qualify for the government-paid health insurance but too little to afford private coverage. More than half the states have expanded Medicaid, which is an option under the federal health overhaul that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010. Bryant opposes it, saying he doesn’t trust the federal government’s promise to pay most of the tab.

“He’s got the ability to make things better,” Gray said of Bryant. “He’s not doing it.”

Gray also says Bryant and the Republican-controlled Legislature have failed to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, a budget formula designed to give school districts enough money to meet midlevel academic standards. MAEP was put into law by a Democratic-controlled Legislature in 1997, and it has been fully funded only two years since then. Bryant counters that while MAEP is not fully funded, the current state budget puts a record amount of money into schools, including support for reading coaches in early elementary grades.

Bryant is sitting on millions in campaign cash, while Gray is running a shoestring campaign. A debate would give Gray free attention — something candidates rarely want their opponents to have.

Mississippi has a relatively short history of governors being able to seek back-to-back terms because its ban on gubernatorial succession was lifted in the 1980s.

The first governor in modern times to win a second consecutive term was Republican Kirk Fordice, first elected in 1991. During his successful re-election campaign in 1995, Fordice debated his Democratic challenger, Dick Molpus, several times.

Fordice’s successor, Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, was elected governor in 1999. As he unsuccessfully sought a second term in 2003, Musgrove debated — and was outspent by — challenger Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman and high-profile Washington lobbyist.

As Barbour sought re-election in 2007, he debated his Democratic challenger, attorney John Eaves Jr., in Biloxi and Starkville.

The exchanges between incumbent and challenger were frequently tense and confrontational. They probably weren’t much fun for the incumbents. But they gave voters a chance to directly compare the style and substance of candidates who sought to lead state government. Unless Bryant changes his mind, that’s an opportunity voters won’t get this year.