Did towns on Memphis’ edge bleed blue into Mississippi?
Since Democrat Mike Espy lost the Mississippi Senate race to Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, a woman who believes that public hangings are the stuff of laughter and not pain, pundits have blasted the state for being stuck in the past. But Memphis may be key in prying it loose. Many people who work in Memphis live in the Mississippi counties of Tunica, Marshall and DeSoto — counties which are part of Memphis’ metropolitan statistic area. Espy, who was aiming to become Mississippi’s first African-American U.S. senator since Reconstruction, won Tunica and Marshall counties, while Hyde-Smith won DeSoto.
Espy’s win in Tunica County likely lies in the fact that more than 70 percent of the 10,000 or so people who live there are African-American, while Marshall County’s 40,000 population is half African-American and half white.
Yet while Hyde-Smith won DeSoto County, where around 170,000 people live, with just under 60 percent of the vote, Espy still showed surprising strength there. More than 70 percent of DeSoto residents are white, 21 percent are African-American, and 5 percent are Latino.
College-educated white voters, as well as transplants from the city of Memphis, likely drove those results, said Eric Groenendynk, associate professor of political science at the University of Memphis.
Even The New York Times took note.
It reported that even as Hyde-Smith ran strongly in Mississippi’s whitest and rural areas, in “areas with greater numbers of college-educated white voters, such as the Memphis suburbs, she did less well, allowing Mr. Espy to draw closer than Democrats ordinarily do.”
“I think we make a lot out of the red state versus blue state thing, but it’s really urban versus rural,” said Groenendynk, whose research centers on party identification and what motivates people politically.
“This story is really about culture,” he said. “As people from Memphis sprawl into Mississippi, and more educated people move into the area, you’ll see a change over time.” Signs of that already exist. Last summer in DeSoto County, Shelby County’s economic rival, Democrats made history by winning three aldermen seats — one in Horn Lake and two in Walls.
LaShonda Johnson, who won the Horn Lake seat, became the first African-American woman to do so.
Harold Harris, president of the DeSoto County Democratic Party, said although Democrats still have a ways to go to make serious inroads in that county, those victories were a start.
But it’s a start that could ultimately lead to a Democratic finish, Groenendynk said. That’s what happened in Virginia. That state, which is home to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, hadn’t chosen a Democrat for president since 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson was elected.
Then it chose Barack Obama in 2008 and in 2012, and Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Virginia’s own senator Tim Kaine, in 2016.
And after a bruising gubernatorial race between GOP candidate Ed Gillespie — who invoked President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during his campaign — and Democrat Ralph Northam, Gillespie lost by 9 percentage points.
Much of the reason for Democratic gains is because over time, northern Virginia became more urbanized, and people with higher levels of education and diverse backgrounds moved there. Many workers in Washington D.C., where Democrats dominate elections, also live there.
“You see that Virginia is a blue state now,” Groenendynk said. “You also saw the same transformation in Georgia and in Texas.”
In Georgia, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp. In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke narrowly lost to incumbent Republican Ted Cruz.
“That all shows that inroads are being made,” Groenendynk said.
Then again, Mississippi isn’t Virginia. But if demographics are destiny, as Virginia has shown, then Memphis’ influence in the Mississippi counties that border it could play a significant role in blunting the politics of its racist past and bringing it — albeit kicking and screaming — into the future.
Which is why, instead of looking at Espy’s loss as a sign that Mississippi will never change, the better strategy is to look at the Memphis bedroom counties of DeSoto, Marshall and Tunica as places where that change can begin.
And get to working on it.