MS-Gov: Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood recently released a commercial that argued that Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves used "political pressure" to try to get taxpayers to fund a $2 million road that would have been built between the gated community where he lives in the Jackson suburb of Flowood and a nearby shopping mall. Reeves now up with a response ad, which, along with two others (available here and here), also portray Hood as in the pocket of trial lawyers.
Reeves’ road ad begins with a clip of Hood saying, “Tate Reeves tried to build a road with your tax dollars.” Reeves’ narrator quickly denounces this as a lie, claiming that both the mayor of Flowood and the state transportation commissioner “proved it’s a lie, and Jim Hood knows it.” The narrator then goes on the offensive and quotes a local paper calling Hood “guilty of abuse of power for personal gain,” though he doesn’t offer any actual details. The spot then argues, “Hood’s largest campaign donors are the very firms he’s awarded the most lucrative contracts.”
The Reeves ad doesn’t actually say much about the $2 million road controversy, but we will. Reeves has been a major supporter of a $43 million project to add lanes to Lakeland Drive, a major road near his subdivision in Flowood. While Mississippi Department of Transportation officials said they believed the expansion was necessary, they placed it on hold because there were greater needs elsewhere, given the state’s limited resources. But despite this decision, MDOT officials say Reeves and the legislature added an earmark to the budget to require them to prioritize work on Lakeland Drive.
In July of last year, the Clarion Ledger reported that Reeves staffers kept particularly close tabs on a part of the Lakeland project that would have built a frontage road from the lieutenant governor’s gated community to a shopping center. While the $2 million road was officially to be built for safety reasons, a 2014 report prepared for the MDOT said there were in fact few safety concerns, and that they could in any event be alleviated by building a directional median for just $200,000 instead. However, MDOT records say that Reeves’ neighborhood property owners’ association protested this cheaper plan.
MDOT Director Melinda McGrath was asked by the paper why the frontage road was being built and responded bluntly: “Political pressure. From the Legislature. We would not have done this otherwise.” McGrath also specified the pressure was coming from “the Senate side,” which Reeves leads.
Later that month, MDOT Commissioner Dick Hall announced he’d halted the frontage road project pending further evaluation. Hall claimed he’d been responsible for the project and insisted that Reeves had not pressured him about it. However, when Hall was asked about McGrath’s comments, he responded, “I have no reason to doubt Melinda McGrath on anything.” Reeves has claimed he knew little about the project’s details and had nothing to do with it getting the green light.
Last year, before either candidate joined the race for governor, Hood’s office began investigating Reeves in connection with the Lakeland project. Last month, after both men had won their respective primaries, Hood released a report concluding that Reeves might have “applied political pressure” to get the road built, which may in turn have violated a section of the state constitution intended to prevent corruption. However, Hood said he wouldn’t take any further action, explaining that it would be up to the next attorney general to decide what to do about this matter.
Hood has denied that politics motivated his investigation and had two former Mississippi Supreme Court justices, including one appointed by GOP Gov. Phil Bryant, review the report prior to publication. However, Reeves’ team argued that the report, which Hood wrote, was a “43-page political dirty trick,” and insisted that the attorney general failed to interview Reeves and other key officials. Hood’s report, though, said that the investigation “was hampered by misleading public statements and the refusal to produce documents which should have been available.”